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-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/lab10_strap012.java148
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/lab11_strap012.java115
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/lab12_strap012.java103
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/lab13_strap012.java31
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/lab4_strap012.java101
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/lab5_strap012.java90
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/lab6_strap012.java64
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/lab7_strap012.java62
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/lab8_strap012.java166
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/lab9_strap012.java139
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/project2_strap012.java148
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/project3/Words.java90
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/project3/project3_strap012.java118
-rw-r--r--csci1913/Java/project3/warAndPeace.txt66055
14 files changed, 0 insertions, 67430 deletions
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/lab10_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/lab10_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index 06c0dfa..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/lab10_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,148 +0,0 @@
-class AssociationList<Key, Value> {
- private class Node {
- private Key key;
- private Value value;
- private Node next;
- private Node(Key k, Value v, Node n) {
- key=k; value=v; next=n;
- }
- }
- private Node head;
- public AssociationList() {
- head = new Node(null, null, null);
- }
- public void delete(Key key) {
- Node left = head;
- Node right = head.next;
- while (right!=null) {
- if (isEqual(right.key, key)) {
- left.next=right.next;
- break;
- } else {
- left=right; right=right.next;
- }
- }
-
- }
- public Value get(Key key) {
- Node where=head.next;
- while (where!=null) {
- if (isEqual(where.key,key)) {
- return where.value;
- } else {
- where=where.next;
- }
- } //No matching key found
- throw new IllegalArgumentException();
- }
- private boolean isEqual(Key leftKey, Key rightKey) {
- if (leftKey == null || rightKey == null) {
- return leftKey == rightKey;
- } else {
- return leftKey.equals(rightKey);
- }
- }
- public boolean isIn(Key key) {
- Node where = head.next;
- while (where != null) {
- if (isEqual(where.key, key)) {
- return true;
- } else {
- where = where.next;
- }
- } // No matching key found
- return false;
- }
- public void put(Key key, Value value) {
- Node where=head.next;
- boolean found=false;
- while (where!=null){
- if(isEqual(key, where.key)) {
- where.value=value;
- found=true;
- break;
- } else {
- where=where.next;
- }
- } //End of while
- if (!found) {
- Node temp=head.next;
- head.next= new Node(key, value, temp);
- }
- }
-}
-
-//
-// Tests for CSci 1913 Lab 10
-// James Moen
-// 08 Apr 19
-//
-// The TRY-CATCH statements catch exceptions thrown by ASSOCIATION LIST's
-// methods, so that the program can continue to run even if a method fails.
-//
-// Each test has a comment that shows what it should print and how many points
-// it is worth, for a total of 40 points.
-
-// HOGWARTS. The Hogwarts dating service.
-
-class Hogwarts {
-
- // MAIN. Make an instance of ASSOCIATION LIST and test it.
-
- public static void main(String[] args) {
- AssociationList<String, String> list = new AssociationList<String, String>();
-
- System.out.println(list.isIn(null)); // false 2 points.
-
- try {
- System.out.println(list.get(null));
- } catch (IllegalArgumentException ignore) {
- System.out.println("No null"); // No null 2 points.
- }
-
- list.put(null, "Wormtail");
- list.put("Ron", "Lavender");
- list.put("Voldemort", null);
- list.put("Dean", "Ginny");
-
- System.out.println(list.isIn("Dean")); // true 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.isIn("Ginny")); // false 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.isIn("Ron")); // true 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.isIn("Voldemort")); // true 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.isIn(null)); // true 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.isIn("Joanne")); // false 2 points.
-
- System.out.println(list.get("Ron")); // Lavender 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.get("Dean")); // Ginny 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.get("Voldemort")); // null 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.get(null)); // Wormtail 2 points.
-
- try {
- System.out.println(list.get("Joanne"));
- } catch (IllegalArgumentException ignore) {
- System.out.println("No Joanne"); // No Joanne 2 points.
- }
-
- list.delete(null);
-
- System.out.println(list.isIn(null)); // false 2 points.
-
- list.put(null, null);
- list.put("Harry", "Ginny");
- list.put("Ron", "Hermione");
-
- System.out.println(list.isIn(null)); // true 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.get(null)); // null 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.get("Harry")); // Ginny 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.get("Dean")); // Ginny 2 points.
- System.out.println(list.get("Ron")); // Hermione 2 points.
-
- list.delete("Dean");
-
- try {
- System.out.println(list.get("Dean"));
- } catch (IllegalArgumentException ignore) {
- System.out.println("No Dean"); // No Dean 2 points.
- }
- }
-} \ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/lab11_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/lab11_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index 7eb146a..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/lab11_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,115 +0,0 @@
-class Deque<Base> {
- private Node head;
- private class Node {
- private Base object;
- private Node left;
- private Node right;
- private Node(Base o, Node l, Node r) {
- object = o;
- left = l; right = r;
- }
- }
- public Deque() {
- head = new Node(null, null, null);
- head.left=head; head.right=head;
- }
- public void enqueueRear(Base object) {
- Node tempL = head;
- Node newNode = new Node(object, tempL.left, tempL);
- tempL.left.right = newNode;
- tempL.left = newNode;
- }
- public void enqueueFront(Base object) {
- Node tempR = head;
- Node newNode = new Node(object, tempR, tempR.right);
- tempR.right.left = newNode;
- tempR.right = newNode;
- }
- public Base dequeueRear() {
- if (isEmpty()) {
- throw new IllegalStateException();
- } else {
- Node temp = head.left;
- temp.left.right = head;
- head.left = temp.left;
- return temp.object;
- }
- }
- public Base dequeueFront() {
- if (isEmpty()) {
- throw new IllegalStateException();
- } else {
- Node temp = head.right;
- temp.right.left = head;
- head.right = temp.right;
- return temp.object;
- }
- }
- public Boolean isEmpty() {
- return head.right==head && head.left==head;
- }
-}
-
-// OBSERVATION DEQUE. Test the class DEQUE. 40 points total.
-class ObservationDeque{
-// MAIN. Test the DEQUE on various example arguments.
- public static void main(String [] args) {
- Deque<String> deque = new Deque<String>();
- System.out.println(deque.isEmpty()); // true 2 points.
- try {
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueFront());
- } catch (IllegalStateException ignore) {
- System.out.println("No dequeueFront."); // No dequeueFront. 2 points.
- }
- try { System.out.println(deque.dequeueRear());
- } catch (IllegalStateException ignore) {
- System.out.println("No dequeueRear."); // No dequeueRear. 2 points.
- }
-//Enqueueing to the rear and dequeueing from the rear makes the DEQUE act
-// like a stack.
- deque.enqueueRear("A");
- deque.enqueueRear("B");
- deque.enqueueRear("C");
-
- System.out.println(deque.isEmpty()); // false 2 points.
-
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueRear()); // C 2 points.
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueRear()); // B 2 points.
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueRear()); // A 2 points.
- System.out.println(deque.isEmpty()); // true 2 points.
-// Enqueueing to the rear and dequeueing from the front makes the DEQUE act
-// like a queue.
- deque.enqueueRear("A");
- deque.enqueueRear("B");
- deque.enqueueRear("C");
-
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueFront()); // A 2 points.
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueFront()); // B 2 points.
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueFront()); // C 2 points.
-
- System.out.println(deque.isEmpty()); // true 2 points.
-//Enqueueing to the front and dequeueing from the front makes the DEQUE act
-//like a stack.
- deque.enqueueFront("A");
- deque.enqueueFront("B");
- deque.enqueueFront("C");
-
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueFront()); // C 2 points.
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueFront()); // B 2 points.
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueFront()); // A 2 points.
-
- System.out.println(deque.isEmpty()); // true 2 points.
-
-// Enqueueing to the front and dequeueing from the rear makes the DEQUE act
-// like a queue.
- deque.enqueueFront("A");
- deque.enqueueFront("B");
- deque.enqueueFront("C");
-
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueRear()); // A 2 points.
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueRear()); // B 2 points.
- System.out.println(deque.dequeueRear()); // C 2 points.
-
- System.out.println(deque.isEmpty()); // true 2 points.
- }
-} \ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/lab12_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/lab12_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index 351cc1c..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/lab12_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,103 +0,0 @@
-class PriorityQueue<Base> {
- private class Node {
- private Base object;
- private int rank;
- private Node left;
- private Node right;
- private Node(Base object, int rank) {
- this.object = object;
- this.rank = rank;
- left = null;
- right = null;
- }
- }
- private Node root; // Root node of the BST.
-
- public PriorityQueue() {
- root = new Node(null, -1); // root is the lone King of Kings
- }
- public boolean isEmpty() {
- return root.right == root.left;
- }
-
- public Base dequeue() {
- if (isEmpty())
- throw new IllegalStateException();
- Node top = root;
- Node bottom = root.right;
- while (bottom.left != null) {
- top = bottom;
- bottom = bottom.left;
- }
- if (top.object == null) // Special case for top being the head node
- top.right = bottom.right;
- else
- top.left = bottom.right;
- return bottom.object;
- }
-
- public void enqueue(Base object, int rank) {
- if (rank < 0) // No extra negative ranks allowed
- throw new IllegalArgumentException();
- boolean lessOrEqual = false;
- Node top = root;
- Node bottom = root.right;
- while (bottom != null) {
- top = bottom;
- if (rank <= bottom.rank) {
- bottom = bottom.left;
- lessOrEqual = true;
- } else {
- bottom = bottom.right;
- lessOrEqual = false;
- }
- }
- if (lessOrEqual)
- top.left = new Node(object, rank);
- else
- top.right = new Node(object, rank);
- }
-}
-// SNOBBERY. How the aristocracy behaves in a queue. 20 points.
-
-class Snobbery {
-
- // MAIN. Queue them up.
-
- public static void main(String[] args) {
- PriorityQueue<String> queue = new PriorityQueue<String>();
-
- System.out.println(queue.isEmpty()); // true 2 points
-
- try {
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue());
- } catch (IllegalStateException ignore) {
- System.out.println("Blimey!"); // Blimey! 2 points
- }
-
- queue.enqueue("Lancelot", 5);
- queue.enqueue("Fawlty", 7);
- queue.enqueue("Elizabeth", 0);
- queue.enqueue("Charles", 1);
- queue.enqueue("Turing", 7);
-
- try {
- queue.enqueue("Zeus", -100);
- } catch (IllegalArgumentException ignore) {
- System.out.println("No gods!"); // No gods! 2 points
- }
-
- System.out.println(queue.isEmpty()); // false 2 points
-
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue()); // Elizabeth 2 points
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue()); // Charles 2 points
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue()); // Lancelot 2 points
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue()); // Turing 2 points
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue()); // Fawlty 2 points
-
- // It's OK if Fawlty comes out before Turing, but both must come out last.
-
- System.out.println(queue.isEmpty()); // true 2 points.
- }
-
-}
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/lab13_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/lab13_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index 8645a98..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/lab13_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,31 +0,0 @@
-class Test
-{
- private static final String [] reserved =
- { "and",
- "begin",
- "define",
- "do",
- "else",
- "end",
- "if",
- "not",
- "or",
- "return",
- "then",
- "while" };
-
- private static int hash(String name)
- {
- return ((name.charAt(0) + name.charAt(name.length()-1)) * name.length()) % 255;
- }
-
- public static void main(String [] args)
- {
- for (int index = 0; index < reserved.length ; index += 1)
- {
- System.out.print("h(\"" + reserved[index] + "\") = ");
- System.out.print(hash(reserved[index]));
- System.out.println();
- }
- }
-} \ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/lab4_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/lab4_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index de3f2f6..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/lab4_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,101 +0,0 @@
-// DRIVER. The MAIN method has tests for your class ZILLION. Each test has a
-// comment that shows what the test should print if your code is correct. It
-// also has the number of points you will receive if the test is successful.
-// These tests are worth a total of 25 points.
-
-class Zillion {
- private int s;
- private int[] number;
- public Zillion(int size) {
- number = new int[size];
- s = size;
- }
- public void increment(){
- int n = 0;
- boolean isCorrect = false;
- while (isCorrect==false) {
- number[n]+=1;
- if (number[n] >= 10) {
- number[n]=0;
- if (n<(s-1)) {
- n+=1;
- }
- else {
- isCorrect = true;
- }
- }
- else {
- isCorrect=true;
- }
- }
-
- }
- public String toString(){
- String test = "";
- for (int n=(s-1); n>=0; n-=1) {
- test+=number[n];
- }
- return test;
- }
-}
-
-class Driver
-{
- public static void main(String[] args)
- {
- Zillion z = new Zillion(2);
- System.out.println(z); // 00 2 points
-
- z.increment();
- System.out.println(z); // 01 2 points
-
- z.increment();
- System.out.println(z); // 02 2 points
-
- z.increment();
- z.increment();
- z.increment();
- z.increment();
- z.increment();
- z.increment();
- z.increment();
- z.increment();
-
- System.out.println(z); // 10 2 points
- z.increment();
- System.out.println(z); // 11 2 points
-
- z = new Zillion(4);
- System.out.println(z); // 0000 2 points
-
- for (int j = 1; j <= 999; j += 1)
- {
- z.increment();
- }
- System.out.println(z); // 0999 2 points
-
- z.increment();
- System.out.println(z); // 1000 2 points
-
- for (int j = 1; j <= 999; j += 1)
- {
- z.increment();
- }
- System.out.println(z); // 1999 2 points
-
- z.increment();
- System.out.println(z); // 2000 2 points
-
- for (int j = 1; j <= 7999; j += 1)
- {
- z.increment();
- }
- System.out.println(z); // 9999 2 points
-
- z.increment();
- System.out.println(z); // 0000 2 points
-
- z.increment();
- System.out.println(z); // 0001 1 point
- }
-}
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/lab5_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/lab5_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index 45a101b..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/lab5_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,90 +0,0 @@
-//
-// SIEVE. The Sieve of Eratosthenes.
-//
-// James B. Moen
-// 08 Oct 19
-//
-// Test the SIEVE class, for 30 points total.
-//
-
-//
-// Put your code for the class SIEVE here!!!
-//
-class Sieve {
- private boolean[] numbers;
- private int realMax;
- public Sieve(int max){
- if (max<2)
- throw new IllegalArgumentException();
- numbers = new boolean[max];
- realMax = (max - 1);
- for (int i=2; i<max; i+=1) { numbers[i]=true; }
- }
- public void findPrimes() {
- for (int i=2; i<=realMax; i+=1) {
- //Only look for composite numbers if the number is prime
- if (numbers[i]) {
- for (int j=(i*2); j<=realMax; j+=i) {
- numbers[j]=false;
- }
- }
- // System.out.println(i);
- }
- }
- public String toString(){
- String str = "";
- for (int n = 0; n <= realMax; n += 1) {
- if (numbers[n]) {
- str += n; str += " ";
- }
- }
- return str;
- }
-}
-// TOSS THE KNEES. Run SIEVE on some examples.
-
-class TossTheKnees
-{
-
-// MAIN. Find some primes.
-
- public static void main(String [] args)
- {
- Sieve sieve = null; // We must initialize SIEVE or Java will cry.
-
-// 5 points. This must print "Sieve size must be at least 2." but without the
-// quotes.
-
- try
- {
- sieve = new Sieve(0);
- }
- catch (IllegalArgumentException oops)
- {
- System.out.println("Sieve size must be at least 2.");
- }
-
-// 5 points. This must print nothing.
-
- try
- {
- sieve = new Sieve(100);
- }
- catch (IllegalArgumentException oops)
- {
- System.out.println("Sieve size must be at least 2.");
- }
-
-// 10 points. This must print integers from 2 to 99, separated by blanks.
-
- System.out.println(sieve);
-
-// 10 points. This must print the prime numbers between 2 and 99, separated by
-// blanks. They are:
-//
-// 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71 73 79 83 89 97
-
- sieve.findPrimes();
- System.out.println(sieve);
- }
-}
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/lab6_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/lab6_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index df8d3d3..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/lab6_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,64 +0,0 @@
-class Polygon {
- private int[] sideLengths;
-
- public Polygon(int sides, int... lengths) {
- int index = 0;
- sideLengths = new int[sides];
- for (int length : lengths) {
- sideLengths[index] = length;
- index += 1;
- }
- }
-
- public int side(int number) {
- return sideLengths[number];
- }
-
- public int perimeter() {
- int total = 0;
- for (int index = 0; index < sideLengths.length; index += 1) {
- total += side(index);
- }
- return total;
- }
-}
-
-class Rectangle extends Polygon {
- public Rectangle(int l, int w) {
- super(4, l, w, l, w);
- }
- public int area() {
- return this.side(0)*this.side(1);
- }
-}
-
-class Square extends Rectangle {
- public Square(int l) {
- super(l, l);
- }
- // public int area() {
- // return this.side(0)*this.side(1);
- // }
-}
-
-class Shapes {
- public static void main(String[] args) {
- Rectangle wreck = new Rectangle(3, 5);
-
- System.out.println(wreck.side(0)); // 3 1 point.
- System.out.println(wreck.side(1)); // 5 1 point.
- System.out.println(wreck.side(2)); // 3 1 point.
- System.out.println(wreck.side(3)); // 5 1 point.
- System.out.println(wreck.area()); // 15 1 point.
- System.out.println(wreck.perimeter()); // 16 1 point.
-
- Square nerd = new Square(7);
-
- System.out.println(nerd.side(0)); // 7 1 point.
- System.out.println(nerd.side(1)); // 7 1 point.
- System.out.println(nerd.side(2)); // 7 1 point.
- System.out.println(nerd.side(3)); // 7 1 point.
- System.out.println(nerd.area()); // 49 1 point.
- System.out.println(nerd.perimeter()); // 28 1 point.
- }
-} \ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/lab7_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/lab7_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index cfb89ed..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/lab7_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,62 +0,0 @@
-class BinaryVsLinear
-{
-
- private static int linearSearch(int key, int[] keys)
- {
- int searchCount = 0;
- for (int i=0; i<keys.length; i+=1) {
- searchCount += 1;
- if (keys[i]==key) {
- return searchCount;
- }
- } return -1;
- }
-
-
- private static int binarySearch(int key, int[] keys)
- {
- int left=0; int right=(keys.length-1); int mid=0;
- int searchCount=0;
- while (true) {
- if (left>right) {
- mid=-1;
- break;
- } else {
- mid=(left+right)/2;
- searchCount += 2;
- if (key<keys[mid]) {
- right=mid-1;
- }
- else if (key>keys[mid]) {
- left=mid+1;
- } else {
- break;
- }
- }
- } return searchCount;
- }
-
- public static void main(String[] args)
- {
- for (int length = 1; length <= 30; length += 1)
- {
- int[] array = new int[length];
- for (int index = 0; index < length; index += 1)
- {
- array[index] = index;
- }
-
- double linearTotal = 0.0;
- double binaryTotal = 0.0;
- for (int element = 0; element < length; element += 1)
- {
- linearTotal += linearSearch(element, array);
- binaryTotal += binarySearch(element, array);
- }
-
- double linearAverage = linearTotal / length;
- double binaryAverage = binaryTotal / length;
- System.out.println(length + " " + linearAverage + " " + binaryAverage);
- }
- }
-}
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/lab8_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/lab8_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index 5335f79..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/lab8_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,166 +0,0 @@
-class RunnyStack<Base> {
- private int numRuns;
- private int numDepth;
- private Run top;
- //Constructors
- private class Run {
- private Base base;
- private int l;
- private Run next;
- private Run(Base base, Run next) {
- this.base=base;
- this.l=l+1;
- this.next=next;
- }
- }
- public RunnyStack() {
- top=null;
- }
- //Methods
- private boolean isEqual(Run b1, Base b2){
- if (b1 == null || b2 == null) {
- return b1 == b2;
- } else {
- return b1.base.equals(b2);
- }
- }
- public boolean isEmpty() {
- return top==null;
- }
- public int depth() {
- return numDepth;
- }
- public Base peek() {
- if (isEmpty()) {
- throw new IllegalStateException();
- } else {
- return top.base;
- }
- }
- public void pop() {
- if (isEmpty()) {
- throw new IllegalStateException();
- } else {
- top.l--;
- numDepth--;
- if (top.l == 0) {
- top=top.next;
- numRuns--;
- }
- }
- }
- public void push(Base base) {
- numDepth++;
- if (isEqual(top, base)) {
- top.l++;
- } else {
- numRuns++;
- top=new Run(base, top);
- }
- }
- public int runs() {
- return numRuns;
- }
-
-}
-
-//
-// Tests for CSci 1913 Lab 8
-// James Moen
-// 20 Mar 17
-//
-// The TRY-CATCH statements catch exceptions thrown by RUNNY STACK's methods,
-// so that the program can continue to run even if a method fails. We still
-// haven't talked about TRY-CATCH'es in the lectures yet.
-//
-// Most tests have comments that show what they should print, and how many
-// points they are worth, for a total of 40 points.
-//
-// Camembert is a soft French cheese. It may be runny. It can be stacked.
-//
-
-class Camembert {
- public static void main(String[] args) {
- RunnyStack<String> s = new RunnyStack<String>();
-
- System.out.println(s.isEmpty()); // true 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 0 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 0 1 point
-
- try {
- s.pop();
- } catch (IllegalStateException ignore) {
- System.out.println("No pop"); // No pop 1 point
- }
-
- try {
- System.out.println(s.peek());
- } catch (IllegalStateException ignore) {
- System.out.println("No peek"); // No peek 1 point
- }
-
- s.push("A");
- System.out.println(s.peek()); // A 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 1 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 1 1 point
-
- System.out.println(s.isEmpty()); // false 1 point
-
- s.push("B");
- System.out.println(s.peek()); // B 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 2 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 2 1 point
-
- s.push("B");
- System.out.println(s.peek()); // B 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 3 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 2 1 point
-
- s.push("B");
- System.out.println(s.peek()); // B 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 4 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 2 1 point
-
- s.push("C");
- System.out.println(s.peek()); // C 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 5 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 3 1 point
-
- s.push("C");
- System.out.println(s.peek()); // C 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 6 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 3 1 point
-
- s.pop();
- System.out.println(s.peek()); // C 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 5 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 3 1 point
-
- s.pop();
- System.out.println(s.peek()); // B 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 4 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 2 1 point
-
- s.pop();
- System.out.println(s.peek()); // B 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 3 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 2 1 point
-
- s.pop();
- s.pop();
- System.out.println(s.peek()); // A 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 1 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 1 1 point
-
- s.pop();
- System.out.println(s.isEmpty()); // true 1 point
- System.out.println(s.depth()); // 0 1 point
- System.out.println(s.runs()); // 0 1 point
-
- try {
- System.out.println(s.peek());
- } catch (IllegalStateException ignore) {
- System.out.println("No peek"); // No peek 1 point
- }
- }
-}
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/lab9_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/lab9_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index 8dd0032..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/lab9_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,139 +0,0 @@
-import java.util.Iterator;
-
-// ARRAY QUEUE. A fixed length queue implemented as a circular array.
-
-class ArrayQueue<Base> {
- private int front; // Index of front object in BASES.
- private int rear; // Index of rear object in BASES.
- private Base[] bases; // The BASEs in the queue.
-
- // Constructor. Make a new empty queue that can hold SIZE - 1 elements.
-
- public ArrayQueue(int size) {
- if (size >= 1) {
- front = 0;
- rear = 0;
- bases = (Base[]) new Object[size];
- } else {
- throw new IllegalArgumentException("Size must be at least 1.");
- }
- }
-
- // DEQUEUE. Remove a BASE from the front of the queue and return it.
-
- public Base dequeue() {
- if (isEmpty()) {
- throw new IllegalStateException("Queue is empty.");
- } else {
- front = (front + 1) % bases.length;
- Base temp = bases[front];
- bases[front] = null;
- return temp;
- }
- }
-
- // ENQUEUE. Add BASE to the rear of the queue.
-
- public void enqueue(Base base) {
- int nextRear = (rear + 1) % bases.length;
- if (front == nextRear) {
- throw new IllegalStateException("Queue is full.");
- } else {
- rear = nextRear;
- bases[rear] = base;
- }
- }
-
- // IS EMPTY. Test if the queue is empty.
-
- public boolean isEmpty() {
- return front == rear;
- }
-
- // IS FULL. Test if the queue can hold no more elements.
-
- public boolean isFull() {
- return front == (rear + 1) % bases.length;
- }
-
- private class ArrayQueueIterator implements Iterator<Base> {
- private int where;
- private ArrayQueueIterator() {
- where = (front + 1) % bases.length;
- }
- public boolean hasNext() {
- return where != (rear + 1 ) % bases.length;
- }
- public Base next() {
- if (hasNext()){
- Base temp = bases[where];
- where = (where + 1) % bases.length;
- return temp;
- } else {
- throw new IllegalStateException("Queue is at its end.");
- }
- }
- public void remove() {
- //Do nothing
- }
- }
- public Iterator<Base> iterator() {
- return new ArrayQueueIterator();
- }
-}
-
-
-// QUEUETERATOR. Test ARRAY QUEUE's iterator. It's worth 20 points.
-
-class Queueterator {
-
- // MAIN. Start execution here.
-
- public static void main(String[] args) {
-
- // Make an ARRAY QUEUE and enqueue some STRINGs. It can hold at most three.
-
- ArrayQueue<String> queue = new ArrayQueue<String>(4);
-
- queue.enqueue("A");
- queue.enqueue("B");
- queue.enqueue("C");
-
- // Make a FIRST iterator for QUEUE and use it to visit QUEUE's elements.
-
- Iterator<String> first = queue.iterator();
- while (first.hasNext()) {
- System.out.println(first.next()); // A B C one per line 5 pts.
- }
-
- // Make sure FIRST hasn't changed QUEUE.
-
- System.out.println(queue.isEmpty()); // false 1 pt.
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue()); // A 1 pt.
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue()); // B 1 pt.
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue()); // C 1 pt.
- System.out.println(queue.isEmpty()); // true 1 pt.
-
- // Let's enqueue more three more things to QUEUE.
-
- queue.enqueue("X");
- queue.enqueue("Y");
- queue.enqueue("Z");
-
- // Now make a SECOND iterator for QUEUE. The FIRST one does not work any more,
- // because QUEUE has changed. Use SECOND to visit QUEUE's new elements.
-
- Iterator<String> second = queue.iterator();
- while (second.hasNext()) {
- System.out.println(second.next()); // X Y Z one per line 5 pts.
- }
-
- // The new iterator hasn't changed QUEUE either.
-
- System.out.println(queue.isEmpty()); // false 1 pt.
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue()); // X 1 pt.
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue()); // Y 1 pt.
- System.out.println(queue.dequeue()); // Z 1 pt.
- System.out.println(queue.isEmpty()); // true 1 pt.
- }
-} \ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/project2_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/project2_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index 3cbfa80..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/project2_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,148 +0,0 @@
-// SORT. Sort a linear singly-linked list of INTs.
-
-class Sort {
-
- // NODE. A node in a linear singly linked list of INTs.
-
- private static class Node {
- private int number; // The INT in the node, duh.
- private Node next; // The NODE that follows this one, or NULL.
-
- // Constructor. Initialize a new NODE with NUMBER and NEXT.
-
- private Node(int number, Node next) {
- this.number = number;
- this.next = next;
- }
- }
-
- // MAKE NODES. Return a list of NODEs that contains INTs from NUMBERS in order
- // of their appearance.
-
- private static Node makeNodes(int... numbers) {
- if (numbers.length > 0) {
- Node first = new Node(numbers[0], null);
- Node last = first;
- for (int index = 1; index < numbers.length; index += 1) {
- last.next = new Node(numbers[index], null);
- last = last.next;
- }
- return first;
- } else {
- return null;
- }
- }
-
- // WRITE NODES. Write the INTs from a list of NODEs in paired square brackets,
- // separated by commas, with a newline at the end.
-
- private static void writeNodes(Node nodes) {
- System.out.print('[');
- if (nodes != null) {
- System.out.print(nodes.number);
- nodes = nodes.next;
- while (nodes != null) {
- System.out.print(", ");
- System.out.print(nodes.number);
- nodes = nodes.next;
- }
- }
- System.out.println(']');
- }
-
- // SORT NODES. Sort UNSORTED, a list of NODEs, into nondecreasing order of its
- // NUMBER slots, without making new NODEs.
-
- private static Node sortNodes(Node unsorted) {
- Node left = null, right = null;
- if (unsorted==null || unsorted.next==null) {
- //unsorted is either empty or of length 1
- return unsorted;
- }
- //Halving phase
- else {
- int step = 1;
- while (unsorted != null) {
- Node next = unsorted.next;
- if (step % 2 == 0) { //Even case
- //Pops out first value and puts into Right
- unsorted.next = right;
- right = unsorted;
- } else { //Odd case
- // Pops out first value and puts into Left
- unsorted.next = left;
- left = unsorted;
- }
- step++;
- unsorted = next;
- }
- }
- //Sorting (recursive) Phase
- left = sortNodes(left);
- right = sortNodes(right);
-
- //Combining phase, variables needed for Q funs
- Node end = null, temp = null, sorted = null;
- //Special Initial Case
- if (left.number < right.number) {
- sorted = left;
- end = left;
- temp = left.next;
- left = temp;
- end.next = null;
- } else {
- temp = right.next;
- sorted = right;
- end = right;
- right = temp;
- end.next = null;
- }
- //Loop for rearranging pointers. Easily the hardest part of the assignment
- while (left != null && right != null) {
- if (left.number < right.number) {
- end.next = left;
- end = left;
- temp = left.next;
- end.next = null;
- left = temp;
- } else { //Right is smaller or equal, put it at the end.
- end.next = right;
- end = right;
- temp = right.next;
- end.next = null;
- right = temp;
- }
- }
-
- if (left == null) {
- end.next=right;
- } else if (right == null) {
- end.next=left;
- }
- return sorted;
- }
-
- // MAIN. Run some examples. The comments show what must be printed.
-
- public static void main(String[] args) {
- writeNodes(sortNodes(makeNodes())); // []
- writeNodes(sortNodes(makeNodes(1))); // [1]
- writeNodes(sortNodes(makeNodes(1, 2))); // [1, 2]
- writeNodes(sortNodes(makeNodes(2, 1))); // [1, 2]
-
- writeNodes(sortNodes(makeNodes(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)));
- // [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
-
- writeNodes(sortNodes(makeNodes(9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1)));
- // [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
-
- writeNodes(sortNodes(makeNodes(3, 1, 4, 5, 9, 2, 6, 8, 7)));
- // [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
-
- writeNodes(sortNodes(makeNodes(5,5,5,1,2,3,6,90,12,1,14)));
- // [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 12, 14, 90]
-
- writeNodes(sortNodes(makeNodes(1, 100, 6, 100, 1, 15, 10000, 12, 2, 0, -15)));
- // [-15, 0, 1, 1, 2, 6, 12, 15, 100, 100, 10000]
- }
-} \ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/project3/Words.java b/csci1913/Java/project3/Words.java
deleted file mode 100644
index 0487267..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/project3/Words.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,90 +0,0 @@
-package project3;
-//
-// WORDS. An iterator that reads lower case words from a text file.
-//
-// James Moen
-// 19 Apr 17
-//
-
-import java.io.FileReader; // Read Unicode chars from a file.
-import java.io.IOException; // In case there's IO trouble.
-
-// WORDS. Iterator. Read words, represented as STRINGs, from a text file. Each
-// word is the longest possible contiguous series of alphabetic ASCII CHARs.
-
-class Words {
- private int ch; // Last CHAR from READER, as an INT.
- private FileReader reader; // Read CHARs from here.
- private StringBuilder word; // Last word read from READER.
-
- // Constructor. Initialize an instance of WORDS, so it reads words from a file
- // whose pathname is PATH. Throw an exception if we can't open PATH.
-
- public Words(String path) {
- try {
- reader = new FileReader(path);
- ch = reader.read();
- } catch (IOException ignore) {
- throw new IllegalArgumentException("Cannot open '" + path + "'.");
- }
- }
-
- // HAS NEXT. Try to read a WORD from READER, converting it to lower case as we
- // go. Test if we were successful.
-
- public boolean hasNext() {
- word = new StringBuilder();
- while (ch > 0 && !isAlphabetic((char) ch)) {
- read();
- }
- while (ch > 0 && isAlphabetic((char) ch)) {
- word.append(toLower((char) ch));
- read();
- }
- return word.length() > 0;
- }
-
- // IS ALPHABETIC. Test if CH is an ASCII letter.
-
- private boolean isAlphabetic(char ch) {
- return 'a' <= ch && ch <= 'z' || 'A' <= ch && ch <= 'Z';
- }
-
- // NEXT. If HAS NEXT is true, then return a WORD read from READER as a STRING.
- // Otherwise, return an undefined STRING.
-
- public String next() {
- return word.toString();
- }
-
- // READ. Read the next CHAR from READER. Set CH to the CHAR, represented as an
- // INT. If there are no more CHARs to be read from READER, then set CH to -1.
-
- private void read() {
- try {
- ch = reader.read();
- } catch (IOException ignore) {
- ch = -1;
- }
- }
-
- // TO LOWER. Return the lower case ASCII letter which corresponds to the ASCII
- // letter CH.
-
- private char toLower(char ch) {
- if ('a' <= ch && ch <= 'z') {
- return ch;
- } else {
- return (char) (ch - 'A' + 'a');
- }
- }
- // MAIN. For testing. Open a text file whose pathname is the 0th argument from
- // the command line. Read words from the file, and print them one per line.
-
- public static void main(String[] args) {
- Words words = new Words(args[0]);
- while (words.hasNext()) {
- System.out.println("'" + words.next() + "'");
- }
- }
-}
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/project3/project3_strap012.java b/csci1913/Java/project3/project3_strap012.java
deleted file mode 100644
index ff4ce3a..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/project3/project3_strap012.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,118 +0,0 @@
-//package used to bundle with Words class
-package project3;
-class AnagramTree {
- private TreeNode head;
- private class TreeNode {
- private byte[] summary;
- private WordNode words;
- private TreeNode left, right;
- private TreeNode(String word, byte[] summary) {
- words = new WordNode(word, null);
- this.summary = summary;
- left = null; right = null;
- }
- }
-
- private class WordNode {
- private String word;
- private WordNode next;
- private WordNode(String word, WordNode next) {
- this.word = word;
- this.next = next;
- }
- }
-
- public AnagramTree() {
- head = new TreeNode(null, null);
- }
-
- public void add (String word) {
- byte [] newSumm = new byte [26];
- newSumm = stringToSummary(word);
- TreeNode top = head, bottom = top.right;
- boolean goLeft = false, addWord = false;
- while (bottom != null) {
- int comp = compareSummaries(bottom.summary, newSumm);
- if (comp > 0) { // left is greater than right, go left
- top = bottom;
- goLeft = true;
- bottom = bottom.left;
- } else if (comp < 0) { // right is greater, go right
- top = bottom;
- goLeft = false;
- bottom = bottom.right;
- } else {
- WordNode badNode = bottom.words;
- boolean wordExists = false;
- while (badNode != null) {
- //Traverse word list to find already added entries
- if (badNode.word.equals(word)) {
- wordExists = true;
- break;
- }
- badNode = badNode.next;
- }
- if (!wordExists)
- bottom.words = new WordNode(word, bottom.words);
- addWord = true;
- break;
- }
- }
- if (!addWord) { //Word was not added, add it
- if (goLeft)
- top.left = new TreeNode(word, newSumm);
- else
- top.right = new TreeNode(word, newSumm);
- }
- }
-
- public void anagrams() {
- findAnagrams(head.right);
- }
-
- private void findAnagrams(TreeNode subtree) {
- if (subtree != null) {
- if (subtree.words.next != null) {
- System.out.println();
- while (subtree.words != null) {
- System.out.print(subtree.words.word);
- System.out.print(" ");
- subtree.words = subtree.words.next;
- }
- }
- findAnagrams(subtree.left);
- findAnagrams(subtree.right);
- }
- }
-
- private int compareSummaries(byte[] left, byte[] right) {
- for (int i = 0; i <= 25; i++) {
- if (left[i] != right[i]) {
- return left[i] - right[i];
- }
- }
- //Summaries are identical here
- return 0;
- }
-
- private byte[] stringToSummary(String word) {
- byte[] temp = new byte[26];
- for (byte i = 0; i < word.length(); i++) {
- temp[word.charAt(i) - 'a'] += 1;
- }
- return temp;
- }
-}
-
-class Anagrammer {
- public static void main(String[] args) {
- Words words = new Words(args[0]);
- AnagramTree anagrams = new AnagramTree();
- while (words.hasNext()) {
- anagrams.add(words.next());
- }
- anagrams.anagrams();
- //Print extra line for neatness
- System.out.println();
- }
-} \ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/csci1913/Java/project3/warAndPeace.txt b/csci1913/Java/project3/warAndPeace.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 9ad28f9..0000000
--- a/csci1913/Java/project3/warAndPeace.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,66055 +0,0 @@
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
-no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
-it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
-eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: War and Peace
-
-Author: Leo Tolstoy
-
-Translators: Louise and Aylmer Maude
-
-Posting Date: January 10, 2009 [EBook #2600]
-
-Last Updated: December 17, 2016
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAR AND PEACE ***
-
-
-
-
-An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger
-
-
-
-
-
-
-WAR AND PEACE
-
-
-By Leo Tolstoy/Tolstoi
-
-
-
-
-
- CONTENTS
-
-
- BOOK ONE: 1805
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
- CHAPTER XX
-
- CHAPTER XXI
-
- CHAPTER XXII
-
- CHAPTER XXIII
-
- CHAPTER XXIV
-
- CHAPTER XXV
-
- CHAPTER XXVI
-
- CHAPTER XXVII
-
- CHAPTER XXVIII
-
-
- BOOK TWO: 1805
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
- CHAPTER XX
-
- CHAPTER XXI
-
-
- BOOK THREE: 1805
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
-
- BOOK FOUR: 1806
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
-
- BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
- CHAPTER XX
-
- CHAPTER XXI
-
- CHAPTER XXII
-
-
- BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
- CHAPTER XX
-
- CHAPTER XXI
-
- CHAPTER XXII
-
- CHAPTER XXIII
-
- CHAPTER XXIV
-
- CHAPTER XXV
-
- CHAPTER XXVI
-
-
- BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
-
- BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
- CHAPTER XX
-
- CHAPTER XXI
-
- CHAPTER XXII
-
-
- BOOK NINE: 1812
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
- CHAPTER XX
-
- CHAPTER XXI
-
- CHAPTER XXII
-
- CHAPTER XXIII
-
-
- BOOK TEN: 1812
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
- CHAPTER XX
-
- CHAPTER XXI
-
- CHAPTER XXII
-
- CHAPTER XXIII
-
- CHAPTER XXIV
-
- CHAPTER XXV
-
- CHAPTER XXVI
-
- CHAPTER XXVII
-
- CHAPTER XXVIII
-
- CHAPTER XXIX
-
- CHAPTER XXX
-
- CHAPTER XXXI
-
- CHAPTER XXXII
-
- CHAPTER XXXIII
-
- CHAPTER XXXIV
-
- CHAPTER XXXV
-
- CHAPTER XXXVI
-
- CHAPTER XXXVII
-
- CHAPTER XXXVIII
-
- CHAPTER XXXIX
-
-
- BOOK ELEVEN: 1812
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
- CHAPTER XX
-
- CHAPTER XXI
-
- CHAPTER XXII
-
- CHAPTER XXIII
-
- CHAPTER XXIV
-
- CHAPTER XXV
-
- CHAPTER XXVI
-
- CHAPTER XXVII
-
- CHAPTER XXVIII
-
- CHAPTER XXIX
-
- CHAPTER XXX
-
- CHAPTER XXXI
-
- CHAPTER XXXII
-
- CHAPTER XXXIII
-
- CHAPTER XXXIV
-
-
- BOOK TWELVE: 1812
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
-
- BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
-
- BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
-
- BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
- CHAPTER XVII
-
- CHAPTER XVIII
-
- CHAPTER XIX
-
- CHAPTER XX
-
-
- FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 - 20
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
- CHAPTER XIII
-
- CHAPTER XIV
-
- CHAPTER XV
-
- CHAPTER XVI
-
-
- SECOND EPILOGUE
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CHAPTER VIII
-
- CHAPTER IX
-
- CHAPTER X
-
- CHAPTER XI
-
- CHAPTER XII
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK ONE: 1805
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
-Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war,
-if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that
-Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing
-more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my
-‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I
-have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news.”
-
-It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pávlovna
-Schérer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Márya Fëdorovna.
-With these words she greeted Prince Vasíli Kurágin, a man of high
-rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna
-Pávlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering
-from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used
-only by the elite.
-
-All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered
-by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:
-
-“If you have nothing better to do, Count (or Prince), and if the
-prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible,
-I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10—Annette
-Schérer.”
-
-“Heavens! what a virulent attack!” replied the prince, not in the
-least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an
-embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on
-his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that
-refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and
-with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance
-who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pávlovna,
-kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and shining head,
-and complacently seated himself on the sofa.
-
-“First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend’s
-mind at rest,” said he without altering his tone, beneath the
-politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony
-could be discerned.
-
-“Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times
-like these if one has any feeling?” said Anna Pávlovna. “You are
-staying the whole evening, I hope?”
-
-“And the fete at the English ambassador’s? Today is Wednesday. I
-must put in an appearance there,” said the prince. “My daughter is
-coming for me to take me there.”
-
-“I thought today’s fete had been canceled. I confess all these
-festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome.”
-
-“If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have
-been put off,” said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by force
-of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.
-
-“Don’t tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosíltsev’s
-dispatch? You know everything.”
-
-“What can one say about it?” replied the prince in a cold, listless
-tone. “What has been decided? They have decided that Buonaparte has
-burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to burn ours.”
-
-Prince Vasíli always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale
-part. Anna Pávlovna Schérer on the contrary, despite her forty years,
-overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had
-become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not
-feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the
-expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which, though it
-did not suit her faded features, always played round her lips expressed,
-as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming defect,
-which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to
-correct.
-
-In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pávlovna burst
-out:
-
-“Oh, don’t speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don’t understand
-things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war. She
-is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign
-recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is the one
-thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to perform
-the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble that God will
-not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and crush the hydra of
-revolution, which has become more terrible than ever in the person of
-this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of the just
-one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her commercial
-spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alexander’s
-loftiness of soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to
-find, and still seeks, some secret motive in our actions. What answer
-did Novosíltsev get? None. The English have not understood and cannot
-understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for
-himself, but only desires the good of mankind. And what have they
-promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they will not
-perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and
-that all Europe is powerless before him.... And I don’t believe a
-word that Hardenburg says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian
-neutrality is just a trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty
-destiny of our adored monarch. He will save Europe!”
-
-She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.
-
-“I think,” said the prince with a smile, “that if you had been
-sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King
-of Prussia’s consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me
-a cup of tea?”
-
-“In a moment. À propos,” she added, becoming calm again, “I am
-expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, who
-is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best
-French families. He is one of the genuine émigrés, the good ones. And
-also the Abbé Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He has been
-received by the Emperor. Had you heard?”
-
-“I shall be delighted to meet them,” said the prince. “But
-tell me,” he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just
-occurred to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief
-motive of his visit, “is it true that the Dowager Empress wants
-Baron Funke to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all
-accounts is a poor creature.”
-
-Prince Vasíli wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were
-trying through the Dowager Empress Márya Fëdorovna to secure it for
-the baron.
-
-Anna Pávlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor
-anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or was
-pleased with.
-
-“Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
-sister,” was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.
-
-As she named the Empress, Anna Pávlovna’s face suddenly assumed an
-expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
-sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
-patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron Funke
-beaucoup d’estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.
-
-The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and
-courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pávlovna
-wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak as he had done of a man
-recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she
-said:
-
-“Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
-out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
-beautiful.”
-
-The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.
-
-“I often think,” she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer
-to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political
-and social topics were ended and the time had come for intimate
-conversation—“I often think how unfairly sometimes the joys of life
-are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid children?
-I don’t speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don’t like him,” she
-added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows.
-“Two such charming children. And really you appreciate them less than
-anyone, and so you don’t deserve to have them.”
-
-And she smiled her ecstatic smile.
-
-“I can’t help it,” said the prince. “Lavater would have said I
-lack the bump of paternity.”
-
-“Don’t joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know
-I am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves” (and her
-face assumed its melancholy expression), “he was mentioned at Her
-Majesty’s and you were pitied....”
-
-The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
-awaiting a reply. He frowned.
-
-“What would you have me do?” he said at last. “You know I did all
-a father could for their education, and they have both turned out fools.
-Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That
-is the only difference between them.” He said this smiling in a way
-more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles round
-his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and
-unpleasant.
-
-“And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a
-father there would be nothing I could reproach you with,” said Anna
-Pávlovna, looking up pensively.
-
-“I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
-children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
-is how I explain it to myself. It can’t be helped!”
-
-He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
-gesture. Anna Pávlovna meditated.
-
-“Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?” she
-asked. “They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I
-don’t feel that weakness in myself as yet, I know a little person who
-is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of yours, Princess
-Mary Bolkónskaya.”
-
-Prince Vasíli did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and
-perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of
-the head that he was considering this information.
-
-“Do you know,” he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
-current of his thoughts, “that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
-rubles a year? And,” he went on after a pause, “what will it be in
-five years, if he goes on like this?” Presently he added: “That’s
-what we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours
-rich?”
-
-“Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He is
-the well-known Prince Bolkónski who had to retire from the army under
-the late Emperor, and was nicknamed ‘the King of Prussia.’ He is
-very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy.
-She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise Meinen lately.
-He is an aide-de-camp of Kutúzov’s and will be here tonight.”
-
-“Listen, dear Annette,” said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
-Pávlovna’s hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. “Arrange
-that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-slafe
-with an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She is rich
-and of good family and that’s all I want.”
-
-And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised the
-maid of honor’s hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and fro
-as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.
-
-“Attendez,” said Anna Pávlovna, reflecting, “I’ll speak to
-Lise, young Bolkónski’s wife, this very evening, and perhaps the
-thing can be arranged. It shall be on your family’s behalf that I’ll
-start my apprenticeship as old maid.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-Anna Pávlovna’s drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
-Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
-and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
-Prince Vasíli’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène, came to take her
-father to the ambassador’s entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
-her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess Bolkónskaya,
-known as la femme la plus séduisante de Pétersbourg, * was also there.
-She had been married during the previous winter, and being pregnant did
-not go to any large gatherings, but only to small receptions. Prince
-Vasíli’s son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart, whom he introduced.
-The Abbé Morio and many others had also come.
-
- * The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.
-
-To each new arrival Anna Pávlovna said, “You have not yet seen my
-aunt,” or “You do not know my aunt?” and very gravely conducted
-him or her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her
-cap, who had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests
-began to arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her
-aunt, Anna Pávlovna mentioned each one’s name and then left them.
-
-Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not
-one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them
-cared about; Anna Pávlovna observed these greetings with mournful and
-solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in
-the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of Her
-Majesty, “who, thank God, was better today.” And each visitor,
-though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman
-with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not
-return to her the whole evening.
-
-The young Princess Bolkónskaya had brought some work in a
-gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
-delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her teeth,
-but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming when she
-occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always the case
-with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect—the shortness of her
-upper lip and her half-open mouth—seemed to be her own special and
-peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of this pretty
-young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life and health, and
-carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull dispirited young ones
-who looked at her, after being in her company and talking to her a
-little while, felt as if they too were becoming, like her, full of life
-and health. All who talked to her, and at each word saw her bright smile
-and the constant gleam of her white teeth, thought that they were in a
-specially amiable mood that day.
-
-The little princess went round the table with quick, short, swaying
-steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her dress sat
-down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was doing was a
-pleasure to herself and to all around her. “I have brought my work,”
-said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all present.
-“Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick on me,”
-she added, turning to her hostess. “You wrote that it was to be quite
-a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed.” And she
-spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, dainty gray
-dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.
-
-“Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone
-else,” replied Anna Pávlovna.
-
-“You know,” said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
-French, turning to a general, “my husband is deserting me? He is going
-to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?” she
-added, addressing Prince Vasíli, and without waiting for an answer she
-turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Hélène.
-
-“What a delightful woman this little princess is!” said Prince
-Vasíli to Anna Pávlovna.
-
-One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
-close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
-at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
-young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezúkhov, a well-known
-grandee of Catherine’s time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
-had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had only
-just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this was his
-first appearance in society. Anna Pávlovna greeted him with the nod she
-accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. But in spite of
-this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight
-of something too large and unsuited to the place, came over her face
-when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger than
-the other men in the room, her anxiety could only have reference to
-the clever though shy, but observant and natural, expression which
-distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing room.
-
-“It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
-invalid,” said Anna Pávlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
-aunt as she conducted him to her.
-
-Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look round as
-if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to the little
-princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance.
-
-Anna Pávlovna’s alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
-aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty’s health.
-Anna Pávlovna in dismay detained him with the words: “Do you know the
-Abbé Morio? He is a most interesting man.”
-
-“Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
-interesting but hardly feasible.”
-
-“You think so?” rejoined Anna Pávlovna in order to say something
-and get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now
-committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady before
-she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak to
-another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big feet
-spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the abbé’s
-plan chimerical.
-
-“We will talk of it later,” said Anna Pávlovna with a smile.
-
-And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave, she
-resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, ready
-to help at any point where the conversation might happen to flag. As
-the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands to work, goes
-round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or there one that
-creaks or makes more noise than it should, and hastens to check the
-machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna Pávlovna moved about her
-drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a too-noisy group, and by a
-word or slight rearrangement kept the conversational machine in steady,
-proper, and regular motion. But amid these cares her anxiety about
-Pierre was evident. She kept an anxious watch on him when he approached
-the group round Mortemart to listen to what was being said there, and
-again when he passed to another group whose center was the abbé.
-
-Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna
-Pávlovna’s was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all
-the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like a
-child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of missing
-any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the self-confident
-and refined expression on the faces of those present he was always
-expecting to hear something very profound. At last he came up to Morio.
-Here the conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an
-opportunity to express his own views, as young people are fond of doing.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-Anna Pávlovna’s reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
-steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
-beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
-was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company had
-settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed round
-the abbé. Another, of young people, was grouped round the beautiful
-Princess Hélène, Prince Vasíli’s daughter, and the little Princess
-Bolkónskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump for her age.
-The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna Pávlovna.
-
-The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and polished
-manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out of
-politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
-which he found himself. Anna Pávlovna was obviously serving him up as
-a treat to her guests. As a clever maître d’hôtel serves up as a
-specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen it in
-the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pávlovna served up to
-her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbé, as peculiarly choice
-morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the
-murder of the Duc d’Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc d’Enghien
-had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were particular
-reasons for Buonaparte’s hatred of him.
-
-“Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte,” said Anna Pávlovna,
-with a pleasant feeling that there was something à la Louis XV in the
-sound of that sentence: “Contez nous çela, Vicomte.”
-
-The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness to
-comply. Anna Pávlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone to
-listen to his tale.
-
-“The vicomte knew the duc personally,” whispered Anna Pávlovna to
-one of the guests. “The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur,” said she
-to another. “How evidently he belongs to the best society,” said she
-to a third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest
-and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef
-on a hot dish.
-
-The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.
-
-“Come over here, Hélène, dear,” said Anna Pávlovna to the
-beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of
-another group.
-
-The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with which
-she had first entered the room—the smile of a perfectly beautiful
-woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed with moss
-and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and sparkling
-diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her, not looking
-at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously allowing each the
-privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and shapely shoulders,
-back, and bosom—which in the fashion of those days were very much
-exposed—and she seemed to bring the glamour of a ballroom with her as
-she moved toward Anna Pávlovna. Hélène was so lovely that not only
-did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on the contrary she even
-appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too victorious beauty. She
-seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish its effect.
-
-“How lovely!” said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted his
-shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something extraordinary
-when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also with her
-unchanging smile.
-
-“Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience,” said he,
-smilingly inclining his head.
-
-The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and considered
-a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the story was
-being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful round arm,
-altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her still more
-beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond necklace. From time
-to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and whenever the story
-produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pávlovna, at once adopted just
-the expression she saw on the maid of honor’s face, and again relapsed
-into her radiant smile.
-
-The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Hélène.
-
-“Wait a moment, I’ll get my work.... Now then, what are you
-thinking of?” she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. “Fetch me my
-workbag.”
-
-There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
-merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in her
-seat.
-
-“Now I am all right,” she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
-took up her work.
-
-Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle and
-moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.
-
-Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary resemblance
-to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that in spite of
-this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features were like his
-sister’s, but while in her case everything was lit up by a joyous,
-self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation, and by the
-wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the contrary
-was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of sullen
-self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes, nose, and
-mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace, and his arms
-and legs always fell into unnatural positions.
-
-“It’s not going to be a ghost story?” said he, sitting down beside
-the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
-instrument he could not begin to speak.
-
-“Why no, my dear fellow,” said the astonished narrator, shrugging
-his shoulders.
-
-“Because I hate ghost stories,” said Prince Hippolyte in a tone
-which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he
-had uttered them.
-
-He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure
-whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was dressed in
-a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of cuisse de nymphe
-effrayée, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.
-
-The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then current,
-to the effect that the Duc d’Enghien had gone secretly to Paris to
-visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon Bonaparte,
-who also enjoyed the famous actress’ favors, and that in his presence
-Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits to which he was
-subject, and was thus at the duc’s mercy. The latter spared him, and
-this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by death.
-
-The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
-where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies looked
-agitated.
-
-“Charming!” said Anna Pávlovna with an inquiring glance at the
-little princess.
-
-“Charming!” whispered the little princess, sticking the needle into
-her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of the story
-prevented her from going on with it.
-
-The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
-prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pávlovna, who had kept a
-watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he was
-talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbé, so she hurried to the
-rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbé about
-the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by the young
-man’s simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet theory. Both
-were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally, which was why
-Anna Pávlovna disapproved.
-
-“The means are ... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of
-the people,” the abbé was saying. “It is only necessary for one
-powerful nation like Russia—barbaric as she is said to be—to place
-herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its object
-the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would save the
-world!”
-
-“But how are you to get that balance?” Pierre was beginning.
-
-At that moment Anna Pávlovna came up and, looking severely at Pierre,
-asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The Italian’s
-face instantly changed and assumed an offensively affected, sugary
-expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing with women.
-
-“I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
-society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have had
-the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think of
-the climate,” said he.
-
-Not letting the abbé and Pierre escape, Anna Pávlovna, the more
-conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
-larger circle.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
-Bolkónski, the little princess’ husband. He was a very handsome young
-man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features. Everything about
-him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step,
-offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little wife. It was
-evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had
-found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to
-them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed
-to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away from
-her with a grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna
-Pávlovna’s hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company.
-
-“You are off to the war, Prince?” said Anna Pávlovna.
-
-“General Kutúzov,” said Bolkónski, speaking French and stressing
-the last syllable of the general’s name like a Frenchman, “has been
-pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp....”
-
-“And Lise, your wife?”
-
-“She will go to the country.”
-
-“Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?”
-
-“André,” said his wife, addressing her husband in the same
-coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, “the vicomte has
-been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!”
-
-Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who from
-the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with glad,
-affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he looked round
-Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance with whoever was
-touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre’s beaming face he gave him an
-unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.
-
-“There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?” said he to
-Pierre.
-
-“I knew you would be here,” replied Pierre. “I will come to supper
-with you. May I?” he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the
-vicomte who was continuing his story.
-
-“No, impossible!” said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing
-Pierre’s hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He
-wished to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasíli and his
-daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.
-
-“You must excuse me, dear Vicomte,” said Prince Vasíli to the
-Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
-his rising. “This unfortunate fete at the ambassador’s deprives me
-of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to leave
-your enchanting party,” said he, turning to Anna Pávlovna.
-
-His daughter, Princess Hélène, passed between the chairs, lightly
-holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
-radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
-almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.
-
-“Very lovely,” said Prince Andrew.
-
-“Very,” said Pierre.
-
-In passing Prince Vasíli seized Pierre’s hand and said to Anna
-Pávlovna: “Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me
-a whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
-Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
-women.”
-
-
-Anna Pávlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew his
-father to be a connection of Prince Vasíli’s. The elderly lady who
-had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook Prince
-Vasíli in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had assumed
-had left her kindly and tear-worn face and it now expressed only anxiety
-and fear.
-
-“How about my son Borís, Prince?” said she, hurrying after him into
-the anteroom. “I can’t remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me what
-news I may take back to my poor boy.”
-
-Although Prince Vasíli listened reluctantly and not very politely
-to the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
-ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might not go
-away.
-
-“What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he
-would be transferred to the Guards at once?” said she.
-
-“Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can,” answered Prince
-Vasíli, “but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I should
-advise you to appeal to Rumyántsev through Prince Golítsyn. That would
-be the best way.”
-
-The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskáya, belonging to one of the
-best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
-society had lost her former influential connections. She had now come to
-Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her only son.
-It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasíli that she had obtained an
-invitation to Anna Pávlovna’s reception and had sat listening to
-the vicomte’s story. Prince Vasíli’s words frightened her, an
-embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a moment;
-then she smiled again and clutched Prince Vasíli’s arm more tightly.
-
-“Listen to me, Prince,” said she. “I have never yet asked you
-for anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
-father’s friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God’s sake to
-do this for my son—and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,”
-she added hurriedly. “No, don’t be angry, but promise! I have asked
-Golítsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always were,”
-she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.
-
-“Papa, we shall be late,” said Princess Hélène, turning her
-beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she
-stood waiting by the door.
-
-Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be economized
-if it is to last. Prince Vasíli knew this, and having once realized
-that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him, he would soon be
-unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using his influence. But
-in Princess Drubetskáya’s case he felt, after her second appeal,
-something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded him of what was
-quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the first steps in
-his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners that she was one of
-those women—mostly mothers—who, having once made up their minds,
-will not rest until they have gained their end, and are prepared if
-necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour after hour, and even
-to make scenes. This last consideration moved him.
-
-“My dear Anna Mikháylovna,” said he with his usual familiarity and
-weariness of tone, “it is almost impossible for me to do what you
-ask; but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father’s
-memory, I will do the impossible—your son shall be transferred to the
-Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?”
-
-“My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you—I knew your
-kindness!” He turned to go.
-
-“Wait—just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards...”
-she faltered. “You are on good terms with Michael Ilariónovich
-Kutúzov ... recommend Borís to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at
-rest, and then...”
-
-Prince Vasíli smiled.
-
-“No, I won’t promise that. You don’t know how Kutúzov is pestered
-since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that
-all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as
-adjutants.”
-
-“No, but do promise! I won’t let you go! My dear benefactor...”
-
-“Papa,” said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,
-“we shall be late.”
-
-“Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?”
-
-“Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?”
-
-“Certainly; but about Kutúzov, I don’t promise.”
-
-“Do promise, do promise, Vasíli!” cried Anna Mikháylovna as he
-went, with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably
-came naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.
-
-Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit employed
-all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone her face
-resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She returned to the
-group where the vicomte was still talking, and again pretended to
-listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her task was
-accomplished.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-“And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at
-Milan?” asked Anna Pávlovna, “and of the comedy of the people of
-Genoa and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and
-Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions of
-the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one’s head whirl! It is as
-if the whole world had gone crazy.”
-
-Prince Andrew looked Anna Pávlovna straight in the face with a
-sarcastic smile.
-
-“‘Dieu me la donne, gare à qui la touche!’’ * They say he was
-very fine when he said that,” he remarked, repeating the words in
-Italian: “‘Dio mi l’ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!’’
-
- * God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!
-
-“I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
-over,” Anna Pávlovna continued. “The sovereigns will not be able to
-endure this man who is a menace to everything.”
-
-“The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia,” said the vicomte, polite
-but hopeless: “The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
-XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!” and he became
-more animated. “And believe me, they are reaping the reward of their
-betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they are sending
-ambassadors to compliment the usurper.”
-
-And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.
-
-Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
-through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
-little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Condé
-coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much gravity
-as if she had asked him to do it.
-
-“Bâton de gueules, engrêlé de gueules d’azur—maison Condé,”
-said he.
-
-The princess listened, smiling.
-
-“If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer,” the
-vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
-he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others but
-follows the current of his own thoughts, “things will have gone too
-far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French society—I
-mean good French society—will have been forever destroyed, and
-then....”
-
-He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
-make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pávlovna,
-who had him under observation, interrupted:
-
-“The Emperor Alexander,” said she, with the melancholy which
-always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family, “has
-declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to choose
-their own form of government; and I believe that once free from the
-usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the arms
-of its rightful king,” she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
-royalist emigrant.
-
-“That is doubtful,” said Prince Andrew. “Monsieur le Vicomte quite
-rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it will
-be difficult to return to the old regime.”
-
-“From what I have heard,” said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
-the conversation, “almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
-Bonaparte’s side.”
-
-“It is the Buonapartists who say that,” replied the vicomte without
-looking at Pierre. “At the present time it is difficult to know the
-real state of French public opinion.”
-
-“Bonaparte has said so,” remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic
-smile.
-
-It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
-remarks at him, though without looking at him.
-
-“‘I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow
-it,’” Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting
-Napoleon’s words. “‘I opened my antechambers and they crowded
-in.’ I do not know how far he was justified in saying so.”
-
-“Not in the least,” replied the vicomte. “After the murder of the
-duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
-people,” he went on, turning to Anna Pávlovna, “he ever was a hero,
-after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one
-hero less on earth.”
-
-Before Anna Pávlovna and the others had time to smile their
-appreciation of the vicomte’s epigram, Pierre again broke into the
-conversation, and though Anna Pávlovna felt sure he would say something
-inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.
-
-“The execution of the Duc d’Enghien,” declared Monsieur Pierre,
-“was a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon
-showed greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole
-responsibility of that deed.”
-
-“Dieu! Mon Dieu!” muttered Anna Pávlovna in a terrified whisper.
-
-“What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
-greatness of soul?” said the little princess, smiling and drawing her
-work nearer to her.
-
-“Oh! Oh!” exclaimed several voices.
-
-“Capital!” said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping his
-knee with the palm of his hand.
-
-The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at his
-audience over his spectacles and continued.
-
-“I say so,” he continued desperately, “because the Bourbons fled
-from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon alone
-understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general good,
-he could not stop short for the sake of one man’s life.”
-
-“Won’t you come over to the other table?” suggested Anna
-Pávlovna.
-
-But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.
-
-“No,” cried he, becoming more and more eager, “Napoleon is great
-because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
-preserved all that was good in it—equality of citizenship and freedom
-of speech and of the press—and only for that reason did he obtain
-power.”
-
-“Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
-commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
-called him a great man,” remarked the vicomte.
-
-“He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he might
-rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a great
-man. The Revolution was a grand thing!” continued Monsieur Pierre,
-betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme
-youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.
-
-“What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
-But won’t you come to this other table?” repeated Anna Pávlovna.
-
-“Rousseau’s Contrat Social,” said the vicomte with a tolerant
-smile.
-
-“I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas.”
-
-“Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide,” again interjected an
-ironical voice.
-
-“Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
-important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation from
-prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas Napoleon
-has retained in full force.”
-
-“Liberty and equality,” said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at
-last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words
-were, “high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who does
-not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and
-equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier? On the
-contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it.”
-
-Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
-vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment of
-Pierre’s outburst Anna Pávlovna, despite her social experience, was
-horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre’s sacrilegious words
-had not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
-impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the vicomte in
-a vigorous attack on the orator.
-
-“But, my dear Monsieur Pierre,” said she, “how do you explain the
-fact of a great man executing a duc—or even an ordinary man who—is
-innocent and untried?”
-
-“I should like,” said the vicomte, “to ask how monsieur explains
-the 18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not
-at all like the conduct of a great man!”
-
-“And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!” said the
-little princess, shrugging her shoulders.
-
-“He’s a low fellow, say what you will,” remarked Prince Hippolyte.
-
-Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. His
-smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
-his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
-another—a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed to
-ask forgiveness.
-
-The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly that
-this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested. All were
-silent.
-
-“How do you expect him to answer you all at once?” said Prince
-Andrew. “Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish
-between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.
-So it seems to me.”
-
-“Yes, yes, of course!” Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of
-this reinforcement.
-
-“One must admit,” continued Prince Andrew, “that Napoleon as a man
-was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa where he
-gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but ... but there are other acts
-which it is difficult to justify.”
-
-Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness of
-Pierre’s remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time to
-go.
-
-Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to attend,
-and asking them all to be seated began:
-
-“I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to it.
-Excuse me, Vicomte—I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
-lost....” And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
-as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
-Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
-attention to his story.
-
-“There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She must
-have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was her
-taste. And she had a lady’s maid, also big. She said....”
-
-Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
-difficulty.
-
-“She said.... Oh yes! She said, ‘Girl,’ to the maid, ‘put on a
-livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some
-calls.’”
-
-Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long before his
-audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the narrator. Several
-persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna Pávlovna, did however
-smile.
-
-“She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat and
-her long hair came down....” Here he could contain himself no
-longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: “And the whole world
-knew....”
-
-And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had told
-it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pávlovna and the
-others appreciated Prince Hippolyte’s social tact in so agreeably
-ending Pierre’s unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the anecdote
-the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about the last
-and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom, and when and
-where.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-Having thanked Anna Pávlovna for her charming soiree, the guests began
-to take their leave.
-
-Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with huge
-red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, how to enter a drawing
-room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say something
-particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he was
-absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his own, the
-general’s three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the plume,
-till the general asked him to restore it. All his absent-mindedness and
-inability to enter a room and converse in it was, however, redeemed by
-his kindly, simple, and modest expression. Anna Pávlovna turned toward
-him and, with a Christian mildness that expressed forgiveness of his
-indiscretion, nodded and said: “I hope to see you again, but I also
-hope you will change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre.”
-
-When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again everybody
-saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, “Opinions are
-opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am.” And
-everyone, including Anna Pávlovna, felt this.
-
-Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders
-to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened
-indifferently to his wife’s chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also
-come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty, pregnant
-princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.
-
-“Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold,” said the little princess,
-taking leave of Anna Pávlovna. “It is settled,” she added in a low
-voice.
-
-Anna Pávlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match she
-contemplated between Anatole and the little princess’ sister-in-law.
-
-“I rely on you, my dear,” said Anna Pávlovna, also in a low tone.
-“Write to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au
-revoir! ”—and she left the hall.
-
-Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his face
-close to her, began to whisper something.
-
-Two footmen, the princess’ and his own, stood holding a shawl and
-a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to
-the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of
-understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as usual
-spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.
-
-“I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador’s,” said Prince
-Hippolyte “—so dull—. It has been a delightful evening, has it
-not? Delightful!”
-
-“They say the ball will be very good,” replied the princess, drawing
-up her downy little lip. “All the pretty women in society will be
-there.”
-
-“Not all, for you will not be there; not all,” said Prince Hippolyte
-smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he
-even pushed aside, he began wrapping it round the princess. Either from
-awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after the
-shawl had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long time, as
-though embracing her.
-
-Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at her
-husband. Prince Andrew’s eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did he
-seem.
-
-“Are you ready?” he asked his wife, looking past her.
-
-Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest fashion
-reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out into the porch
-following the princess, whom a footman was helping into the carriage.
-
-“Princesse, au revoir,” cried he, stumbling with his tongue as well
-as with his feet.
-
-The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the dark
-carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince Hippolyte, under
-pretense of helping, was in everyone’s way.
-
-“Allow me, sir,” said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold,
-disagreeable tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path.
-
-“I am expecting you, Pierre,” said the same voice, but gently and
-affectionately.
-
-The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte
-laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte
-whom he had promised to take home.
-
-“Well, mon cher,” said the vicomte, having seated himself beside
-Hippolyte in the carriage, “your little princess is very nice, very
-nice indeed, quite French,” and he kissed the tips of his fingers.
-Hippolyte burst out laughing.
-
-“Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,”
-continued the vicomte. “I pity the poor husband, that little officer
-who gives himself the airs of a monarch.”
-
-Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, “And you were
-saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One has to
-know how to deal with them.”
-
-Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew’s study like
-one quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa, took
-from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was Caesar’s
-Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it in the middle.
-
-“What have you done to Mlle Schérer? She will be quite ill now,”
-said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white
-hands.
-
-Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his eager
-face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.
-
-“That abbé is very interesting but he does not see the thing in the
-right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but—I do not
-know how to express it ... not by a balance of political power....”
-
-It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such abstract
-conversation.
-
-“One can’t everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have
-you at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a
-diplomatist?” asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.
-
-Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.
-
-“Really, I don’t yet know. I don’t like either the one or the
-other.”
-
-“But you must decide on something! Your father expects it.”
-
-Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbé as tutor,
-and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow
-his father dismissed the abbé and said to the young man, “Now go
-to Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to
-anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasíli, and here is money. Write
-to me all about it, and I will help you in everything.” Pierre had
-already been choosing a career for three months, and had not decided
-on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was speaking.
-Pierre rubbed his forehead.
-
-“But he must be a Freemason,” said he, referring to the abbé whom
-he had met that evening.
-
-“That is all nonsense.” Prince Andrew again interrupted him, “let
-us talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?”
-
-“No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted
-to tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for
-freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the army;
-but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in the world is
-not right.”
-
-Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre’s childish words.
-He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such
-nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any other
-answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naïve question.
-
-“If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no
-wars,” he said.
-
-“And that would be splendid,” said Pierre.
-
-Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
-
-“Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about....”
-
-“Well, why are you going to the war?” asked Pierre.
-
-“What for? I don’t know. I must. Besides that I am going....” He
-paused. “I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit
-me!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-The rustle of a woman’s dress was heard in the next room. Prince
-Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it
-had had in Anna Pávlovna’s drawing room. Pierre removed his feet from
-the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a house
-dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose and politely
-placed a chair for her.
-
-“How is it,” she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly
-and fussily in the easy chair, “how is it Annette never got married?
-How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for saying
-so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative fellow you
-are, Monsieur Pierre!”
-
-“And I am still arguing with your husband. I can’t understand why he
-wants to go to the war,” replied Pierre, addressing the princess
-with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their
-intercourse with young women.
-
-The princess started. Evidently Pierre’s words touched her to the
-quick.
-
-“Ah, that is just what I tell him!” said she. “I don’t
-understand it; I don’t in the least understand why men can’t live
-without wars. How is it that we women don’t want anything of the kind,
-don’t need it? Now you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here
-he is Uncle’s aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so
-well known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the
-Apráksins’ I heard a lady asking, ‘Is that the famous Prince
-Andrew?’ I did indeed.” She laughed. “He is so well received
-everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You know
-the Emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were speaking of
-how to arrange it. What do you think?”
-
-Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the
-conversation, gave no reply.
-
-“When are you starting?” he asked.
-
-“Oh, don’t speak of his going, don’t! I won’t hear it spoken
-of,” said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which
-she had spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly
-ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member.
-“Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations
-must be broken off ... and then you know, André...” (she looked
-significantly at her husband) “I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” she
-whispered, and a shudder ran down her back.
-
-Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone besides
-Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a tone of
-frigid politeness.
-
-“What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don’t understand,” said he.
-
-“There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a whim
-of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up alone
-in the country.”
-
-“With my father and sister, remember,” said Prince Andrew gently.
-
-“Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to
-be afraid.”
-
-Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a
-joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if she
-felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though the
-gist of the matter lay in that.
-
-“I still can’t understand what you are afraid of,” said Prince
-Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.
-
-The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.
-
-“No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have....”
-
-“Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier,” said Prince Andrew.
-“You had better go.”
-
-The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip quivered.
-Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about the room.
-
-Pierre looked over his spectacles with naïve surprise, now at him and
-now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.
-
-“Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?” exclaimed the little
-princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a tearful
-grimace. “I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you have changed
-so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the war and have no
-pity for me. Why is it?”
-
-“Lise!” was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed
-an entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself
-regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:
-
-“You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you behave
-like that six months ago?”
-
-“Lise, I beg you to desist,” said Prince Andrew still more
-emphatically.
-
-Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened to
-all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to bear the
-sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.
-
-“Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because.... I assure you
-I myself have experienced ... and so ... because ... No, excuse me!
-An outsider is out of place here.... No, don’t distress yourself....
-Good-by!”
-
-Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
-
-“No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of
-the pleasure of spending the evening with you.”
-
-“No, he thinks only of himself,” muttered the princess without
-restraining her angry tears.
-
-“Lise!” said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch
-which indicates that patience is exhausted.
-
-Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess’ pretty
-face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful eyes
-glanced askance at her husband’s face, and her own assumed the timid,
-deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its
-drooping tail.
-
-“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” she muttered, and lifting her dress with one
-hand she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.
-
-“Good night, Lise,” said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand
-as he would have done to a stranger.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre
-continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his forehead
-with his small hand.
-
-“Let us go and have supper,” he said with a sigh, going to the door.
-
-They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining room.
-Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and glass bore
-that imprint of newness found in the households of the newly married.
-Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the table and,
-with a look of nervous agitation such as Pierre had never before seen on
-his face, began to talk—as one who has long had something on his mind
-and suddenly determines to speak out.
-
-“Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry
-till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of,
-and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen
-her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable
-mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all that is
-good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles.
-Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you marry
-expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every
-step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing
-room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an
-idiot!... But what’s the good?...” and he waved his arm.
-
-Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different and
-the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at his friend
-in amazement.
-
-“My wife,” continued Prince Andrew, “is an excellent woman, one
-of those rare women with whom a man’s honor is safe; but, O God, what
-would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to
-whom I mention this, because I like you.”
-
-As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkónski
-who had lolled in Anna Pávlovna’s easy chairs and with half-closed
-eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his
-thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in which
-the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with brilliant
-light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at ordinary
-times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of almost morbid
-irritation.
-
-“You don’t understand why I say this,” he continued, “but it is
-the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career,” said
-he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), “but Bonaparte when
-he worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had nothing
-but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with
-a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you
-have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with
-regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality—these are
-the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going to the war,
-the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing and am fit for
-nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic wit,” continued Prince
-Andrew, “and at Anna Pávlovna’s they listen to me. And that stupid
-set without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women.... If you only
-knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is
-right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything—that’s what
-women are when you see them in their true colors! When you meet them
-in society it seems as if there were something in them, but there’s
-nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don’t marry, my dear fellow; don’t
-marry!” concluded Prince Andrew.
-
-“It seems funny to me,” said Pierre, “that you, you should
-consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have
-everything before you, everything. And you....”
-
-He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he
-thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.
-
-“How can he talk like that?” thought Pierre. He considered his
-friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the
-highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which might
-be best described as strength of will. Pierre was always astonished at
-Prince Andrew’s calm manner of treating everybody, his extraordinary
-memory, his extensive reading (he had read everything, knew everything,
-and had an opinion about everything), but above all at his capacity for
-work and study. And if Pierre was often struck by Andrew’s lack
-of capacity for philosophical meditation (to which he himself was
-particularly addicted), he regarded even this not as a defect but as a
-sign of strength.
-
-Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life, praise
-and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary to wheels
-that they may run smoothly.
-
-“My part is played out,” said Prince Andrew. “What’s the use of
-talking about me? Let us talk about you,” he added after a silence,
-smiling at his reassuring thoughts.
-
-That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre’s face.
-
-“But what is there to say about me?” said Pierre, his face relaxing
-into a careless, merry smile. “What am I? An illegitimate son!”
-He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a great
-effort to say this. “Without a name and without means... And it
-really...” But he did not say what “it really” was. “For the
-present I am free and am all right. Only I haven’t the least idea what
-I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously.”
-
-Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance—friendly and
-affectionate as it was—expressed a sense of his own superiority.
-
-“I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among our
-whole set. Yes, you’re all right! Choose what you will; it’s all the
-same. You’ll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up visiting
-those Kurágins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so
-badly—all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!”
-
-“What would you have, my dear fellow?” answered Pierre, shrugging
-his shoulders. “Women, my dear fellow; women!”
-
-“I don’t understand it,” replied Prince Andrew. “Women who are
-comme il faut, that’s a different matter; but the Kurágins’ set of
-women, ‘women and wine’ I don’t understand!”
-
-Pierre was staying at Prince Vasíli Kurágin’s and sharing the
-dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to
-reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew’s sister.
-
-“Do you know?” said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy
-thought, “seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading such
-a life I can’t decide or think properly about anything. One’s head
-aches, and one spends all one’s money. He asked me for tonight, but I
-won’t go.”
-
-“You give me your word of honor not to go?”
-
-“On my honor!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-It was past one o’clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a
-cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending
-to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more he
-felt the impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was light
-enough to see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed more like
-morning or evening than night. On the way Pierre remembered that Anatole
-Kurágin was expecting the usual set for cards that evening, after which
-there was generally a drinking bout, finishing with visits of a kind
-Pierre was very fond of.
-
-“I should like to go to Kurágin’s,” thought he.
-
-But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go
-there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so
-passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so accustomed to
-that he decided to go. The thought immediately occurred to him that his
-promise to Prince Andrew was of no account, because before he gave it
-he had already promised Prince Anatole to come to his gathering;
-“besides,” thought he, “all such ‘words of honor’ are
-conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if
-one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or something so
-extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor will be all the
-same!” Pierre often indulged in reflections of this sort, nullifying
-all his decisions and intentions. He went to Kurágin’s.
-
-Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards’ barracks, in which
-Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the stairs,
-and went in at the open door. There was no one in the anteroom; empty
-bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there was a smell of
-alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the distance.
-
-Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet dispersed.
-Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in which were the
-remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw him, was drinking on
-the sly what was left in the glasses. From the third room came sounds of
-laughter, the shouting of familiar voices, the growling of a bear, and
-general commotion. Some eight or nine young men were crowding anxiously
-round an open window. Three others were romping with a young bear, one
-pulling him by the chain and trying to set him at the others.
-
-“I bet a hundred on Stevens!” shouted one.
-
-“Mind, no holding on!” cried another.
-
-“I bet on Dólokhov!” cried a third. “Kurágin, you part our
-hands.”
-
-“There, leave Bruin alone; here’s a bet on.”
-
-“At one draught, or he loses!” shouted a fourth.
-
-“Jacob, bring a bottle!” shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow
-who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine
-linen shirt unfastened in front. “Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here is
-Pétya! Good man!” cried he, addressing Pierre.
-
-Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes,
-particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober
-ring, cried from the window: “Come here; part the bets!” This was
-Dólokhov, an officer of the Semënov regiment, a notorious gambler and
-duelist, who was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about him
-merrily.
-
-“I don’t understand. What’s it all about?”
-
-“Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here,” said Anatole, and
-taking a glass from the table he went up to Pierre.
-
-“First of all you must drink!”
-
-Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows at
-the tipsy guests who were again crowding round the window, and listening
-to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre’s glass while
-explaining that Dólokhov was betting with Stevens, an English naval
-officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the outer ledge
-of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.
-
-“Go on, you must drink it all,” said Anatole, giving Pierre the last
-glass, “or I won’t let you go!”
-
-“No, I won’t,” said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up
-to the window.
-
-Dólokhov was holding the Englishman’s hand and clearly and distinctly
-repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself particularly to
-Anatole and Pierre.
-
-Dólokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue eyes. He
-was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore no mustache,
-so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was clearly
-seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely curved. The middle
-of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed firmly on the firm
-lower one, and something like two distinct smiles played continually
-round the two corners of the mouth; this, together with the resolute,
-insolent intelligence of his eyes, produced an effect which made it
-impossible not to notice his face. Dólokhov was a man of small means
-and no connections. Yet, though Anatole spent tens of thousands of
-rubles, Dólokhov lived with him and had placed himself on such a
-footing that all who knew them, including Anatole himself, respected him
-more than they did Anatole. Dólokhov could play all games and nearly
-always won. However much he drank, he never lost his clearheadedness.
-Both Kurágin and Dólokhov were at that time notorious among the rakes
-and scapegraces of Petersburg.
-
-The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented anyone
-from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two footmen, who
-were evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions and shouts of
-the gentlemen around.
-
-Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted to
-smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame, but
-could not move it. He smashed a pane.
-
-“You have a try, Hercules,” said he, turning to Pierre.
-
-Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame out with
-a crash.
-
-“Take it right out, or they’ll think I’m holding on,” said
-Dólokhov.
-
-“Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?” said Anatole.
-
-“First-rate,” said Pierre, looking at Dólokhov, who with a bottle
-of rum in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of
-the sky, the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.
-
-Dólokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the window
-sill. “Listen!” cried he, standing there and addressing those in the
-room. All were silent.
-
-“I bet fifty imperials”—he spoke French that the Englishman might
-understand him, but he did not speak it very well—“I bet fifty
-imperials ... or do you wish to make it a hundred?” added he,
-addressing the Englishman.
-
-“No, fifty,” replied the latter.
-
-“All right. Fifty imperials ... that I will drink a whole bottle of
-rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on this
-spot” (he stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the window)
-“and without holding on to anything. Is that right?”
-
-“Quite right,” said the Englishman.
-
-Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the buttons
-of his coat and looking down at him—the Englishman was short—began
-repeating the terms of the wager to him in English.
-
-“Wait!” cried Dólokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window
-sill to attract attention. “Wait a bit, Kurágin. Listen! If
-anyone else does the same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you
-understand?”
-
-The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to
-accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and though
-he kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on translating
-Dólokhov’s words into English. A thin young lad, an hussar of the
-Life Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the window
-sill, leaned over, and looked down.
-
-“Oh! Oh! Oh!” he muttered, looking down from the window at the
-stones of the pavement.
-
-“Shut up!” cried Dólokhov, pushing him away from the window. The
-lad jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.
-
-Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it easily,
-Dólokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and lowered
-his legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he adjusted himself
-on his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the right and then to
-the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought two candles and
-placed them on the window sill, though it was already quite light.
-Dólokhov’s back in his white shirt, and his curly head, were lit
-up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the Englishman in
-front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older than the others
-present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared and angry look and wanted
-to seize hold of Dólokhov’s shirt.
-
-“I say, this is folly! He’ll be killed,” said this more sensible
-man.
-
-Anatole stopped him.
-
-“Don’t touch him! You’ll startle him and then he’ll be killed.
-Eh?... What then?... Eh?”
-
-Dólokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands, arranged
-himself on his seat.
-
-“If anyone comes meddling again,” said he, emitting the words
-separately through his thin compressed lips, “I will throw him down
-there. Now then!”
-
-Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the bottle
-and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised his free hand
-to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped to pick up some
-broken glass remained in that position without taking his eyes from the
-window and from Dólokhov’s back. Anatole stood erect with staring
-eyes. The Englishman looked on sideways, pursing up his lips. The man
-who had wished to stop the affair ran to a corner of the room and threw
-himself on a sofa with his face to the wall. Pierre hid his face, from
-which a faint smile forgot to fade though his features now expressed
-horror and fear. All were still. Pierre took his hands from his eyes.
-Dólokhov still sat in the same position, only his head was thrown
-further back till his curly hair touched his shirt collar, and the hand
-holding the bottle was lifted higher and higher and trembled with the
-effort. The bottle was emptying perceptibly and rising still higher
-and his head tilting yet further back. “Why is it so long?” thought
-Pierre. It seemed to him that more than half an hour had elapsed.
-Suddenly Dólokhov made a backward movement with his spine, and his arm
-trembled nervously; this was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip
-as he sat on the sloping ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and
-arm wavered still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch
-the window sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered
-his eyes and thought he would never open them again. Suddenly he was
-aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dólokhov was standing on the
-window sill, with a pale but radiant face.
-
-“It’s empty.”
-
-He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly. Dólokhov
-jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.
-
-“Well done!... Fine fellow!... There’s a bet for you!... Devil take
-you!” came from different sides.
-
-The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the money.
-Dólokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon the
-window sill.
-
-“Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I’ll do the same thing!”
-he suddenly cried. “Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a
-bottle. I’ll do it.... Bring a bottle!”
-
-“Let him do it, let him do it,” said Dólokhov, smiling.
-
-“What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why, you go
-giddy even on a staircase,” exclaimed several voices.
-
-“I’ll drink it! Let’s have a bottle of rum!” shouted Pierre,
-banging the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to
-climb out of the window.
-
-They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone who
-touched him was sent flying.
-
-“No, you’ll never manage him that way,” said Anatole. “Wait a
-bit and I’ll get round him.... Listen! I’ll take your bet tomorrow,
-but now we are all going to ——’s.”
-
-“Come on then,” cried Pierre. “Come on!... And we’ll take Bruin
-with us.”
-
-And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the ground,
-and began dancing round the room with it.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-Prince Vasíli kept the promise he had given to Princess Drubetskáya
-who had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Borís on the evening of
-Anna Pávlovna’s soiree. The matter was mentioned to the Emperor, an
-exception made, and Borís transferred into the regiment of Semënov
-Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no appointment
-to Kutúzov’s staff despite all Anna Mikháylovna’s endeavors and
-entreaties. Soon after Anna Pávlovna’s reception Anna Mikháylovna
-returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich relations, the
-Rostóvs, with whom she stayed when in the town and where her darling
-Bóry, who had only just entered a regiment of the line and was being
-at once transferred to the Guards as a cornet, had been educated from
-childhood and lived for years at a time. The Guards had already left
-Petersburg on the tenth of August, and her son, who had remained in
-Moscow for his equipment, was to join them on the march to Radzivílov.
-
-It was St. Natalia’s day and the name day of two of the Rostóvs—the
-mother and the youngest daughter—both named Nataly. Ever since
-the morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going
-continually, bringing visitors to the Countess Rostóva’s big house on
-the Povarskáya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess herself and
-her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing room with the visitors
-who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one another in
-relays.
-
-The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental type
-of face, evidently worn out with childbearing—she had had twelve.
-A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness, gave her a
-distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna Mikháylovna
-Drubetskáya, who as a member of the household was also seated in the
-drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the visitors. The young
-people were in one of the inner rooms, not considering it necessary to
-take part in receiving the visitors. The count met the guests and saw
-them off, inviting them all to dinner.
-
-“I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher,” or “ma chère”—he
-called everyone without exception and without the slightest variation
-in his tone, “my dear,” whether they were above or below him in
-rank—“I thank you for myself and for our two dear ones whose name
-day we are keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be offended,
-ma chère! On behalf of the whole family I beg you to come, mon cher!”
-These words he repeated to everyone without exception or variation, and
-with the same expression on his full, cheerful, clean-shaven face, the
-same firm pressure of the hand and the same quick, repeated bows. As
-soon as he had seen a visitor off he returned to one of those who were
-still in the drawing room, drew a chair toward him or her, and jauntily
-spreading out his legs and putting his hands on his knees with the air
-of a man who enjoys life and knows how to live, he swayed to and
-fro with dignity, offered surmises about the weather, or touched on
-questions of health, sometimes in Russian and sometimes in very bad but
-self-confident French; then again, like a man weary but unflinching in
-the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see some visitors off and, stroking
-his scanty gray hairs over his bald patch, also asked them to dinner.
-Sometimes on his way back from the anteroom he would pass through the
-conservatory and pantry into the large marble dining hall, where tables
-were being set out for eighty people; and looking at the footmen, who
-were bringing in silver and china, moving tables, and unfolding damask
-table linen, he would call Dmítri Vasílevich, a man of good family and
-the manager of all his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the
-enormous table would say: “Well, Dmítri, you’ll see that things are
-all as they should be? That’s right! The great thing is the serving,
-that’s it.” And with a complacent sigh he would return to the
-drawing room.
-
-“Márya Lvóvna Karágina and her daughter!” announced the
-countess’ gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing
-room. The countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold
-snuffbox with her husband’s portrait on it.
-
-“I’m quite worn out by these callers. However, I’ll see her and
-no more. She is so affected. Ask her in,” she said to the footman in a
-sad voice, as if saying: “Very well, finish me off.”
-
-A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling
-daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.
-
-“Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child ...
-at the Razumóvski’s ball ... and Countess Apráksina ... I was
-so delighted...” came the sounds of animated feminine voices,
-interrupting one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and
-the scraping of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which last
-out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of dresses
-and say, “I am so delighted... Mamma’s health... and Countess
-Apráksina...” and then, again rustling, pass into the anteroom, put
-on cloaks or mantles, and drive away. The conversation was on the chief
-topic of the day: the illness of the wealthy and celebrated beau of
-Catherine’s day, Count Bezúkhov, and about his illegitimate son
-Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at Anna Pávlovna’s
-reception.
-
-“I am so sorry for the poor count,” said the visitor. “He is in
-such bad health, and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill
-him!”
-
-“What is that?” asked the countess as if she did not know what the
-visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of
-Count Bezúkhov’s distress some fifteen times.
-
-“That’s what comes of a modern education,” exclaimed the visitor.
-“It seems that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do
-as he liked, now in Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible
-things that he has been expelled by the police.”
-
-“You don’t say so!” replied the countess.
-
-“He chose his friends badly,” interposed Anna Mikháylovna.
-“Prince Vasíli’s son, he, and a certain Dólokhov have, it is said,
-been up to heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it.
-Dólokhov has been degraded to the ranks and Bezúkhov’s son sent
-back to Moscow. Anatole Kurágin’s father managed somehow to get his
-son’s affair hushed up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg.”
-
-“But what have they been up to?” asked the countess.
-
-“They are regular brigands, especially Dólokhov,” replied the
-visitor. “He is a son of Márya Ivánovna Dólokhova, such a worthy
-woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear somewhere,
-put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some actresses! The
-police tried to interfere, and what did the young men do? They tied
-a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear into the Moyka
-Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the policeman on his
-back!”
-
-“What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!” shouted
-the count, dying with laughter.
-
-“Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?”
-
-Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.
-
-“It was all they could do to rescue the poor man,” continued the
-visitor. “And to think it is Cyril Vladímirovich Bezúkhov’s son
-who amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so
-well educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has
-done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in
-spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite
-declined: I have my daughters to consider.”
-
-“Why do you say this young man is so rich?” asked the countess,
-turning away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of inattention.
-“His children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also is
-illegitimate.”
-
-The visitor made a gesture with her hand.
-
-“I should think he has a score of them.”
-
-Princess Anna Mikháylovna intervened in the conversation, evidently
-wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went on in
-society.
-
-“The fact of the matter is,” said she significantly, and also in a
-half whisper, “everyone knows Count Cyril’s reputation.... He has
-lost count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite.”
-
-“How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!” remarked the
-countess. “I have never seen a handsomer man.”
-
-“He is very much altered now,” said Anna Mikháylovna. “Well, as
-I was saying, Prince Vasíli is the next heir through his wife, but the
-count is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to
-the Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death—and he is
-so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from
-Petersburg—no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune, Pierre
-or Prince Vasíli. Forty thousand serfs and millions of rubles! I know
-it all very well for Prince Vasíli told me himself. Besides, Cyril
-Vladímirovich is my mother’s second cousin. He’s also my Bóry’s
-godfather,” she added, as if she attached no importance at all to the
-fact.
-
-“Prince Vasíli arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on
-some inspection business,” remarked the visitor.
-
-“Yes, but between ourselves,” said the princess, “that is a
-pretext. The fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladímirovich,
-hearing how ill he is.”
-
-“But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke,” said the count;
-and seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to the
-young ladies. “I can just imagine what a funny figure that policeman
-cut!”
-
-And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly form
-again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who always eats
-well and, in particular, drinks well. “So do come and dine with us!”
-he said.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably,
-but not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they
-now rose and took their leave. The visitor’s daughter was already
-smoothing down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when
-suddenly from the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls
-running to the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a girl
-of thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin frock,
-darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room. It was evident
-that she had not intended her flight to bring her so far. Behind her in
-the doorway appeared a student with a crimson coat collar, an officer
-of the Guards, a girl of fifteen, and a plump rosy-faced boy in a short
-jacket.
-
-The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his arms wide
-and threw them round the little girl who had run in.
-
-“Ah, here she is!” he exclaimed laughing. “My pet, whose name day
-it is. My dear pet!”
-
-“Ma chère, there is a time for everything,” said the countess with
-feigned severity. “You spoil her, Ilyá,” she added, turning to her
-husband.
-
-“How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your name
-day,” said the visitor. “What a charming child,” she added,
-addressing the mother.
-
-This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life—with
-childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook her
-bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little legs
-in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers—was just at that
-charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child is not
-yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her flushed
-face in the lace of her mother’s mantilla—not paying the least
-attention to her severe remark—and began to laugh. She laughed, and in
-fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she produced
-from the folds of her frock.
-
-“Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see...” was all Natásha
-managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned against
-her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter that even
-the prim visitor could not help joining in.
-
-“Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you,” said the
-mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and turning
-to the visitor she added: “She is my youngest girl.”
-
-Natásha, raising her face for a moment from her mother’s mantilla,
-glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.
-
-The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it
-necessary to take some part in it.
-
-“Tell me, my dear,” said she to Natásha, “is Mimi a relation of
-yours? A daughter, I suppose?”
-
-Natásha did not like the visitor’s tone of condescension to childish
-things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.
-
-Meanwhile the younger generation: Borís, the officer, Anna
-Mikháylovna’s son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count’s eldest
-son; Sónya, the count’s fifteen-year-old niece, and little Pétya,
-his youngest boy, had all settled down in the drawing room and were
-obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the excitement
-and mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the back rooms,
-from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation had
-been more amusing than the drawing room talk of society scandals, the
-weather, and Countess Apráksina. Now and then they glanced at one
-another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.
-
-The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from childhood,
-were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though not alike. Borís
-was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had regular, delicate
-features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and an open expression.
-Dark hairs were already showing on his upper lip, and his whole face
-expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas blushed when he entered
-the drawing room. He evidently tried to find something to say, but
-failed. Borís on the contrary at once found his footing, and related
-quietly and humorously how he had known that doll Mimi when she was
-still quite a young lady, before her nose was broken; how she had aged
-during the five years he had known her, and how her head had cracked
-right across the skull. Having said this he glanced at Natásha.
-She turned away from him and glanced at her younger brother, who was
-screwing up his eyes and shaking with suppressed laughter, and unable
-to control herself any longer, she jumped up and rushed from the room as
-fast as her nimble little feet would carry her. Borís did not laugh.
-
-“You were meaning to go out, weren’t you, Mamma? Do you want the
-carriage?” he asked his mother with a smile.
-
-“Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready,” she answered,
-returning his smile.
-
-Borís quietly left the room and went in search of Natásha. The plump
-boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been
-disturbed.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting the
-young lady visitor and the countess’ eldest daughter (who was four
-years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up person),
-were Nicholas and Sónya, the niece. Sónya was a slender little
-brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long
-lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a tawny
-tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her slender but
-graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her movements,
-by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain
-coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown
-kitten which promises to become a beautiful little cat. She evidently
-considered it proper to show an interest in the general conversation by
-smiling, but in spite of herself her eyes under their thick long lashes
-watched her cousin who was going to join the army, with such passionate
-girlish adoration that her smile could not for a single instant impose
-upon anyone, and it was clear that the kitten had settled down only to
-spring up with more energy and again play with her cousin as soon as
-they too could, like Natásha and Borís, escape from the drawing room.
-
-“Ah yes, my dear,” said the count, addressing the visitor and
-pointing to Nicholas, “his friend Borís has become an officer, and
-so for friendship’s sake he is leaving the university and me, his
-old father, and entering the military service, my dear. And there was a
-place and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department! Isn’t
-that friendship?” remarked the count in an inquiring tone.
-
-“But they say that war has been declared,” replied the visitor.
-
-“They’ve been saying so a long while,” said the count, “and
-they’ll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My
-dear, there’s friendship for you,” he repeated. “He’s joining
-the hussars.”
-
-The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
-
-“It’s not at all from friendship,” declared Nicholas, flaring
-up and turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. “It is not from
-friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation.”
-
-He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were both
-regarding him with a smile of approbation.
-
-“Schubert, the colonel of the Pávlograd Hussars, is dining with us
-today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him.
-It can’t be helped!” said the count, shrugging his shoulders and
-speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.
-
-“I have already told you, Papa,” said his son, “that if you
-don’t wish to let me go, I’ll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere
-except in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.—I
-don’t know how to hide what I feel.” As he spoke he kept glancing
-with the flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sónya and the young
-lady visitor.
-
-The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any moment
-to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.
-
-“All right, all right!” said the old count. “He always flares up!
-This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he
-rose from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it,” he
-added, not noticing his visitor’s sarcastic smile.
-
-The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karágina turned to
-young Rostóv.
-
-“What a pity you weren’t at the Arkhárovs’ on Thursday. It was so
-dull without you,” said she, giving him a tender smile.
-
-The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish
-smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation
-without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the heart
-of Sónya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of his talk
-he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry glance, and
-hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the artificial smile
-on her lips, she got up and left the room. All Nicholas’ animation
-vanished. He waited for the first pause in the conversation, and then
-with a distressed face left the room to find Sónya.
-
-“How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their
-sleeves!” said Anna Mikháylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went out.
-“Cousinage—dangereux voisinage,” * she added.
-
- * Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
-
-“Yes,” said the countess when the brightness these young people had
-brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question no
-one had put but which was always in her mind, “and how much suffering,
-how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might rejoice in
-them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than the joy. One is
-always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, so dangerous both
-for girls and boys.”
-
-“It all depends on the bringing up,” remarked the visitor.
-
-“Yes, you’re quite right,” continued the countess. “Till now I
-have always, thank God, been my children’s friend and had their full
-confidence,” said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who
-imagine that their children have no secrets from them. “I know I shall
-always be my daughters’ first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with
-his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can’t help it), he
-will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men.”
-
-“Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters,” chimed in the count,
-who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by deciding
-that everything was splendid. “Just fancy: wants to be an hussar.
-What’s one to do, my dear?”
-
-“What a charming creature your younger girl is,” said the visitor;
-“a little volcano!”
-
-“Yes, a regular volcano,” said the count. “Takes after me! And
-what a voice she has; though she’s my daughter, I tell the truth
-when I say she’ll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an
-Italian to give her lessons.”
-
-“Isn’t she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to train
-it at that age.”
-
-“Oh no, not at all too young!” replied the count. “Why, our
-mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen.”
-
-“And she’s in love with Borís already. Just fancy!” said the
-countess with a gentle smile, looking at Borís and went on, evidently
-concerned with a thought that always occupied her: “Now you see if I
-were to be severe with her and to forbid it ... goodness knows what they
-might be up to on the sly” (she meant that they would be kissing),
-“but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come running to
-me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything. Perhaps I
-spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her elder sister I
-was stricter.”
-
-“Yes, I was brought up quite differently,” remarked the handsome
-elder daughter, Countess Véra, with a smile.
-
-But the smile did not enhance Véra’s beauty as smiles generally do;
-on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant,
-expression. Véra was good-looking, not at all stupid, quick at
-learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what she said
-was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone—the visitors
-and countess alike—turned to look at her as if wondering why she had
-said it, and they all felt awkward.
-
-“People are always too clever with their eldest children and try to
-make something exceptional of them,” said the visitor.
-
-“What’s the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too
-clever with Véra,” said the count. “Well, what of that? She’s
-turned out splendidly all the same,” he added, winking at Véra.
-
-The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner.
-
-“What manners! I thought they would never go,” said the countess,
-when she had seen her guests out.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-When Natásha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the
-conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation
-in the drawing room, waiting for Borís to come out. She was already
-growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not coming
-at once, when she heard the young man’s discreet steps approaching
-neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natásha dashed swiftly among the
-flower tubs and hid there.
-
-Borís paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a little
-dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror examined
-his handsome face. Natásha, very still, peered out from her ambush,
-waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while before the
-glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natásha was about to
-call him but changed her mind. “Let him look for me,” thought she.
-Hardly had Borís gone than Sónya, flushed, in tears, and muttering
-angrily, came in at the other door. Natásha checked her first impulse
-to run out to her, and remained in her hiding place, watching—as
-under an invisible cap—to see what went on in the world. She was
-experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sónya, muttering to herself,
-kept looking round toward the drawing room door. It opened and Nicholas
-came in.
-
-“Sónya, what is the matter with you? How can you?” said he, running
-up to her.
-
-“It’s nothing, nothing; leave me alone!” sobbed Sónya.
-
-“Ah, I know what it is.”
-
-“Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!”
-
-“Só-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like that,
-for a mere fancy?” said Nicholas taking her hand.
-
-Sónya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natásha, not stirring
-and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with sparkling eyes.
-“What will happen now?” thought she.
-
-“Sónya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are
-everything!” said Nicholas. “And I will prove it to you.”
-
-“I don’t like you to talk like that.”
-
-“Well, then, I won’t; only forgive me, Sónya!” He drew her to him
-and kissed her.
-
-“Oh, how nice,” thought Natásha; and when Sónya and Nicholas had
-gone out of the conservatory she followed and called Borís to her.
-
-“Borís, come here,” said she with a sly and significant look. “I
-have something to tell you. Here, here!” and she led him into the
-conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.
-
-Borís followed her, smiling.
-
-“What is the something?” asked he.
-
-She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had thrown
-down on one of the tubs, picked it up.
-
-“Kiss the doll,” said she.
-
-Borís looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not
-reply.
-
-“Don’t you want to? Well, then, come here,” said she, and
-went further in among the plants and threw down the doll. “Closer,
-closer!” she whispered.
-
-She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and
-fear appeared on her flushed face.
-
-“And me? Would you like to kiss me?” she whispered almost inaudibly,
-glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying from
-excitement.
-
-Borís blushed.
-
-“How funny you are!” he said, bending down to her and blushing still
-more, but he waited and did nothing.
-
-Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him so
-that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and, tossing
-back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.
-
-Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of the tubs
-and stood, hanging her head.
-
-“Natásha,” he said, “you know that I love you, but....”
-
-“You are in love with me?” Natásha broke in.
-
-“Yes, I am, but please don’t let us do like that.... In another four
-years ... then I will ask for your hand.”
-
-Natásha considered.
-
-“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she counted on her slender
-little fingers. “All right! Then it’s settled?”
-
-A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
-
-“Settled!” replied Borís.
-
-“Forever?” said the little girl. “Till death itself?”
-
-She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the adjoining
-sitting room.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she gave
-orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to
-dinner all who came “to congratulate.” The countess wished to have
-a tête-à-tête talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna
-Mikháylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from
-Petersburg. Anna Mikháylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face,
-drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.
-
-“With you I will be quite frank,” said Anna Mikháylovna. “There
-are not many left of us old friends! That’s why I so value your
-friendship.”
-
-Anna Mikháylovna looked at Véra and paused. The countess pressed her
-friend’s hand.
-
-“Véra,” she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a
-favorite, “how is it you have so little tact? Don’t you see you are
-not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or...”
-
-The handsome Véra smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all hurt.
-
-“If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone,” she replied
-as she rose to go to her own room.
-
-But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting,
-one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. Sónya was
-sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the
-first he had ever written. Borís and Natásha were at the other window
-and ceased talking when Véra entered. Sónya and Natásha looked at
-Véra with guilty, happy faces.
-
-It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; but
-apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Véra.
-
-“How often have I asked you not to take my things?” she said. “You
-have a room of your own,” and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.
-
-“In a minute, in a minute,” he said, dipping his pen.
-
-“You always manage to do things at the wrong time,” continued Véra.
-“You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt ashamed
-of you.”
-
-Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no one
-replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered in the
-room with the inkstand in her hand.
-
-“And at your age what secrets can there be between Natásha and
-Borís, or between you two? It’s all nonsense!”
-
-“Now, Véra, what does it matter to you?” said Natásha in defense,
-speaking very gently.
-
-She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to
-everyone.
-
-“Very silly,” said Véra. “I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!”
-
-“All have secrets of their own,” answered Natásha, getting warmer.
-“We don’t interfere with you and Berg.”
-
-“I should think not,” said Véra, “because there can never be
-anything wrong in my behavior. But I’ll just tell Mamma how you are
-behaving with Borís.”
-
-“Natálya Ilyníchna behaves very well to me,” remarked Borís. “I
-have nothing to complain of.”
-
-“Don’t, Borís! You are such a diplomat that it is really
-tiresome,” said Natásha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly.
-(She used the word “diplomat,” which was just then much in vogue
-among the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) “Why
-does she bother me?” And she added, turning to Véra, “You’ll
-never understand it, because you’ve never loved anyone. You have no
-heart! You are a Madame de Genlis and nothing more” (this nickname,
-bestowed on Véra by Nicholas, was considered very stinging), “and
-your greatest pleasure is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with
-Berg as much as you please,” she finished quickly.
-
-“I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors...”
-
-“Well, now you’ve done what you wanted,” put in Nicholas—“said
-unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let’s go to the
-nursery.”
-
-All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.
-
-“The unpleasant things were said to me,” remarked Véra, “I said
-none to anyone.”
-
-“Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!” shouted laughing voices
-through the door.
-
-The handsome Véra, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant
-effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been
-said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf.
-Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to become still colder and
-calmer.
-
-
-In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.
-
-“Ah, my dear,” said the countess, “my life is not all roses
-either. Don’t I know that at the rate we are living our means won’t
-last long? It’s all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the
-country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows what
-besides! But don’t let’s talk about me; tell me how you managed
-everything. I often wonder at you, Annette—how at your age you
-can rush off alone in a carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those
-ministers and great people, and know how to deal with them all! It’s
-quite astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn’t possibly
-do it.”
-
-“Ah, my love,” answered Anna Mikháylovna, “God grant you never
-know what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you love
-to distraction! One learns many things then,” she added with a certain
-pride. “That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of those
-big people I write a note: ‘Princess So-and-So desires an interview
-with So and-So,’ and then I take a cab and go myself two, three, or
-four times—till I get what I want. I don’t mind what they think of
-me.”
-
-“Well, and to whom did you apply about Bóry?” asked the countess.
-“You see yours is already an officer in the Guards, while my Nicholas
-is going as a cadet. There’s no one to interest himself for him. To
-whom did you apply?”
-
-“To Prince Vasíli. He was so kind. He at once agreed to everything,
-and put the matter before the Emperor,” said Princess Anna
-Mikháylovna enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she
-had endured to gain her end.
-
-“Has Prince Vasíli aged much?” asked the countess. “I have not
-seen him since we acted together at the Rumyántsovs’ theatricals. I
-expect he has forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days,” said
-the countess, with a smile.
-
-“He is just the same as ever,” replied Anna Mikháylovna,
-“overflowing with amiability. His position has not turned his head
-at all. He said to me, ‘I am sorry I can do so little for you, dear
-Princess. I am at your command.’ Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very
-kind relation. But, Nataly, you know my love for my son: I would do
-anything for his happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way that my
-position is now a terrible one,” continued Anna Mikháylovna, sadly,
-dropping her voice. “My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and makes no
-progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a penny and don’t
-know how to equip Borís.” She took out her handkerchief and began to
-cry. “I need five hundred rubles, and have only one twenty-five-ruble
-note. I am in such a state.... My only hope now is in Count Cyril
-Vladímirovich Bezúkhov. If he will not assist his godson—you know
-he is Bóry’s godfather—and allow him something for his maintenance,
-all my trouble will have been thrown away.... I shall not be able to
-equip him.”
-
-The countess’ eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.
-
-“I often think, though, perhaps it’s a sin,” said the princess,
-“that here lives Count Cyril Vladímirovich Bezúkhov so rich, all
-alone... that tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It’s a
-burden to him, and Bóry’s life is only just beginning....”
-
-“Surely he will leave something to Borís,” said the countess.
-
-“Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish.
-Still, I will take Borís and go to see him at once, and I shall speak
-to him straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it’s
-really all the same to me when my son’s fate is at stake.” The
-princess rose. “It’s now two o’clock and you dine at four. There
-will just be time.”
-
-And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the most of
-time, Anna Mikháylovna sent someone to call her son, and went into the
-anteroom with him.
-
-“Good-by, my dear,” said she to the countess who saw her to the
-door, and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, “Wish me
-good luck.”
-
-“Are you going to Count Cyril Vladímirovich, my dear?” said the
-count coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added:
-“If he is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the
-house, you know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite him, my
-dear. We will see how Tarás distinguishes himself today. He says Count
-Orlóv never gave such a dinner as ours will be!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-“My dear Borís,” said Princess Anna Mikháylovna to her son as
-Countess Rostóva’s carriage in which they were seated drove over the
-straw covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril
-Vladímirovich Bezúkhov’s house. “My dear Borís,” said the
-mother, drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying
-it timidly and tenderly on her son’s arm, “be affectionate and
-attentive to him. Count Cyril Vladímirovich is your godfather after
-all, and your future depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice
-to him, as you so well know how to be.”
-
-“If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of
-it...” answered her son coldly. “But I have promised and will do it
-for your sake.”
-
-Although the hall porter saw someone’s carriage standing at the
-entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to
-be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the
-rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady’s old
-cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses, and,
-hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency was worse
-today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.
-
-“We may as well go back,” said the son in French.
-
-“My dear!” exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand
-on his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.
-
-Borís said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without taking
-off his cloak.
-
-“My friend,” said Anna Mikháylovna in gentle tones, addressing
-the hall porter, “I know Count Cyril Vladímirovich is very ill...
-that’s why I have come... I am a relation. I shall not disturb him,
-my friend... I only need see Prince Vasíli Sergéevich: he is staying
-here, is he not? Please announce me.”
-
-The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and turned
-away.
-
-“Princess Drubetskáya to see Prince Vasíli Sergéevich,” he called
-to a footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat,
-who ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.
-
-The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a large
-Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes briskly
-ascended the carpeted stairs.
-
-“My dear,” she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a
-touch, “you promised me!”
-
-The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.
-
-They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to the
-apartments assigned to Prince Vasíli.
-
-Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall, were
-about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as they
-entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and Prince Vasíli
-came out—wearing a velvet coat with a single star on his breast,
-as was his custom when at home—taking leave of a good-looking,
-dark-haired man. This was the celebrated Petersburg doctor, Lorrain.
-
-“Then it is certain?” said the prince.
-
-“Prince, humanum est errare, * but...” replied the doctor,
-swallowing his r’s, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French
-accent.
-
- * To err is human.
-
-“Very well, very well...”
-
-Seeing Anna Mikháylovna and her son, Prince Vasíli dismissed the
-doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of
-inquiry. The son noticed that an expression of profound sorrow suddenly
-clouded his mother’s face, and he smiled slightly.
-
-“Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again! And how is our
-dear invalid?” said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive look
-fixed on her.
-
-Prince Vasíli stared at her and at Borís questioningly and perplexed.
-Borís bowed politely. Prince Vasíli without acknowledging the bow
-turned to Anna Mikháylovna, answering her query by a movement of the
-head and lips indicating very little hope for the patient.
-
-“Is it possible?” exclaimed Anna Mikháylovna. “Oh, how awful!
-It is terrible to think.... This is my son,” she added, indicating
-Borís. “He wanted to thank you himself.”
-
-Borís bowed again politely.
-
-“Believe me, Prince, a mother’s heart will never forget what you
-have done for us.”
-
-“I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna
-Mikháylovna,” said Prince Vasíli, arranging his lace frill, and in
-tone and manner, here in Moscow to Anna Mikháylovna whom he had placed
-under an obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than he
-had done in Petersburg at Anna Schérer’s reception.
-
-“Try to serve well and show yourself worthy,” added he, addressing
-Borís with severity. “I am glad.... Are you here on leave?” he went
-on in his usual tone of indifference.
-
-“I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency,”
-replied Borís, betraying neither annoyance at the prince’s brusque
-manner nor a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so quietly
-and respectfully that the prince gave him a searching glance.
-
-“Are you living with your mother?”
-
-“I am living at Countess Rostóva’s,” replied Borís, again
-adding, “your excellency.”
-
-“That is, with Ilyá Rostóv who married Nataly Shinshiná,” said
-Anna Mikháylovna.
-
-“I know, I know,” answered Prince Vasíli in his monotonous voice.
-“I never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that
-unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler too,
-I am told.”
-
-“But a very kind man, Prince,” said Anna Mikháylovna with a
-pathetic smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostóv deserved this
-censure, but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. “What
-do the doctors say?” asked the princess after a pause, her worn face
-again expressing deep sorrow.
-
-“They give little hope,” replied the prince.
-
-“And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me
-and Borís. He is his godson,” she added, her tone suggesting that
-this fact ought to give Prince Vasíli much satisfaction.
-
-Prince Vasíli became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikháylovna saw that
-he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezúkhov’s fortune,
-and hastened to reassure him.
-
-“If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle,”
-said she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern, “I
-know his character: noble, upright ... but you see he has no one with
-him except the young princesses.... They are still young....” She bent
-her head and continued in a whisper: “Has he performed his final duty,
-Prince? How priceless are those last moments! It can make things no
-worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if he is so ill.
-We women, Prince,” and she smiled tenderly, “always know how to say
-these things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it may be for
-me. I am used to suffering.”
-
-Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he had done
-at Anna Pávlovna’s, that it would be difficult to get rid of Anna
-Mikháylovna.
-
-“Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna
-Mikháylovna?” said he. “Let us wait until evening. The doctors are
-expecting a crisis.”
-
-“But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the
-welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a
-Christian...”
-
-A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses, the
-count’s niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of her
-body was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince Vasíli
-turned to her.
-
-“Well, how is he?”
-
-“Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise...” said the
-princess, looking at Anna Mikháylovna as at a stranger.
-
-“Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you,” said Anna Mikháylovna with a
-happy smile, ambling lightly up to the count’s niece. “I have come,
-and am at your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you
-have gone through,” and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.
-
-The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room as
-Anna Mikháylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position she
-had conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasíli to
-take a seat beside her.
-
-“Borís,” she said to her son with a smile, “I shall go in to see
-the count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile
-and don’t forget to give him the Rostóvs’ invitation. They ask him
-to dinner. I suppose he won’t go?” she continued, turning to the
-prince.
-
-“On the contrary,” replied the prince, who had plainly become
-depressed, “I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young
-man.... Here he is, and the count has not once asked for him.”
-
-He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Borís down one flight of
-stairs and up another, to Pierre’s rooms.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in
-Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and
-sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostóv’s was true.
-Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now been
-for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his father’s
-house. Though he expected that the story of his escapade would be
-already known in Moscow and that the ladies about his father—who were
-never favorably disposed toward him—would have used it to turn the
-count against him, he nevertheless on the day of his arrival went to
-his father’s part of the house. Entering the drawing room, where the
-princesses spent most of their time, he greeted the ladies, two of whom
-were sitting at embroidery frames while a third read aloud. It was the
-eldest who was reading—the one who had met Anna Mikháylovna. The
-two younger ones were embroidering: both were rosy and pretty and they
-differed only in that one had a little mole on her lip which made her
-much prettier. Pierre was received as if he were a corpse or a leper.
-The eldest princess paused in her reading and silently stared at him
-with frightened eyes; the second assumed precisely the same expression;
-while the youngest, the one with the mole, who was of a cheerful and
-lively disposition, bent over her frame to hide a smile probably evoked
-by the amusing scene she foresaw. She drew her wool down through the
-canvas and, scarcely able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if trying
-to make out the pattern.
-
-“How do you do, cousin?” said Pierre. “You don’t recognize
-me?”
-
-“I recognize you only too well, too well.”
-
-“How is the count? Can I see him?” asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual,
-but unabashed.
-
-“The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently you
-have done your best to increase his mental sufferings.”
-
-“Can I see the count?” Pierre again asked.
-
-“Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see
-him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle’s beef tea is ready—it is
-almost time,” she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were
-busy, and busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he,
-Pierre, was only busy causing him annoyance.
-
-Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed and
-said: “Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can see
-him.”
-
-And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of the
-sister with the mole.
-
-Next day Prince Vasíli had arrived and settled in the count’s house.
-He sent for Pierre and said to him: “My dear fellow, if you are going
-to behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very badly; that
-is all I have to say to you. The count is very, very ill, and you must
-not see him at all.”
-
-Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole time in
-his rooms upstairs.
-
-When Borís appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his room,
-stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at the wall,
-as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and glaring savagely
-over his spectacles, and then again resuming his walk, muttering
-indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating.
-
-“England is done for,” said he, scowling and pointing his finger
-at someone unseen. “Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the
-rights of man, is sentenced to...” But before Pierre—who at that
-moment imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just
-effected the dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured
-London—could pronounce Pitt’s sentence, he saw a well-built and
-handsome young officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left
-Moscow when Borís was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten him,
-but in his usual impulsive and hearty way he took Borís by the hand
-with a friendly smile.
-
-“Do you remember me?” asked Borís quietly with a pleasant smile.
-“I have come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not
-well.”
-
-“Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him,”
-answered Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.
-
-Borís felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider
-it necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least
-embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face.
-
-“Count Rostóv asks you to come to dinner today,” said he, after a
-considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.
-
-“Ah, Count Rostóv!” exclaimed Pierre joyfully. “Then you are his
-son, Ilyá? Only fancy, I didn’t know you at first. Do you remember
-how we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It’s such an
-age...”
-
-“You are mistaken,” said Borís deliberately, with a bold and
-slightly sarcastic smile. “I am Borís, son of Princess Anna
-Mikháylovna Drubetskáya. Rostóv, the father, is Ilyá, and his son is
-Nicholas. I never knew any Madame Jacquot.”
-
-Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.
-
-“Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I’ve mixed everything up. One
-has so many relatives in Moscow! So you are Borís? Of course. Well, now
-we know where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne expedition?
-The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon gets across the
-Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible. If only Villeneuve
-doesn’t make a mess of things!”
-
-Borís knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read the
-papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve’s name.
-
-“We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal
-than with politics,” said he in his quiet ironical tone. “I know
-nothing about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy
-with gossip,” he continued. “Just now they are talking about you and
-your father.”
-
-Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his companion’s
-sake that the latter might say something he would afterwards regret.
-But Borís spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly, looking straight into
-Pierre’s eyes.
-
-“Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip,” Borís went on.
-“Everybody is wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune,
-though he may perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will...”
-
-“Yes, it is all very horrid,” interrupted Pierre, “very horrid.”
-
-Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say
-something disconcerting to himself.
-
-“And it must seem to you,” said Borís flushing slightly, but not
-changing his tone or attitude, “it must seem to you that everyone is
-trying to get something out of the rich man?”
-
-“So it does,” thought Pierre.
-
-“But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are
-quite mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are
-very poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that
-your father is rich, I don’t regard myself as a relation of his, and
-neither I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him.”
-
-For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he jumped
-up from the sofa, seized Borís under the elbow in his quick, clumsy
-way, and, blushing far more than Borís, began to speak with a feeling
-of mingled shame and vexation.
-
-“Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I know
-very well...”
-
-But Borís again interrupted him.
-
-“I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You
-must excuse me,” said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being put
-at ease by him, “but I hope I have not offended you. I always make it
-a rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you come to
-dinner at the Rostóvs’?”
-
-And Borís, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and
-extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it,
-became quite pleasant again.
-
-“No, but I say,” said Pierre, calming down, “you are a wonderful
-fellow! What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you
-don’t know me. We have not met for such a long time... not since we
-were children. You might think that I... I understand, quite understand.
-I could not have done it myself, I should not have had the courage, but
-it’s splendid. I am very glad to have made your acquaintance. It’s
-queer,” he added after a pause, “that you should have suspected
-me!” He began to laugh. “Well, what of it! I hope we’ll get better
-acquainted,” and he pressed Borís’ hand. “Do you know, I have not
-once been in to see the count. He has not sent for me.... I am sorry for
-him as a man, but what can one do?”
-
-“And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?” asked
-Borís with a smile.
-
-Pierre saw that Borís wished to change the subject, and being of the
-same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the
-Boulogne expedition.
-
-A footman came in to summon Borís—the princess was going. Pierre, in
-order to make Borís’ better acquaintance, promised to come to dinner,
-and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his spectacles
-into Borís’ eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing up and
-down the room for a long time, no longer piercing an imaginary foe with
-his imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance of that pleasant,
-intelligent, and resolute young man.
-
-As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a lonely
-life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for this young man and made up
-his mind that they would be friends.
-
-Prince Vasíli saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief to her eyes
-and her face was tearful.
-
-“It is dreadful, dreadful!” she was saying, “but cost me what it
-may I shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. He must not be
-left like this. Every moment is precious. I can’t think why his nieces
-put it off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare him!...
-Adieu, Prince! May God support you...”
-
-“Adieu, ma bonne,” answered Prince Vasíli turning away from her.
-
-“Oh, he is in a dreadful state,” said the mother to her son when
-they were in the carriage. “He hardly recognizes anybody.”
-
-“I don’t understand, Mamma—what is his attitude to Pierre?”
-asked the son.
-
-“The will will show that, my dear; our fate also depends on it.”
-
-“But why do you expect that he will leave us anything?”
-
-“Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!”
-
-“Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma...”
-
-“Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!” exclaimed the mother.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-After Anna Mikháylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count Cyril
-Vladímirovich Bezúkhov, Countess Rostóva sat for a long time all
-alone applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang.
-
-“What is the matter with you, my dear?” she said crossly to the maid
-who kept her waiting some minutes. “Don’t you wish to serve me? Then
-I’ll find you another place.”
-
-The countess was upset by her friend’s sorrow and humiliating poverty,
-and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with her always
-found expression in calling her maid “my dear” and speaking to her
-with exaggerated politeness.
-
-“I am very sorry, ma’am,” answered the maid.
-
-“Ask the count to come to me.”
-
-The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look as
-usual.
-
-“Well, little countess? What a sauté of game au madère we are to
-have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Tarás were
-not ill-spent. He is worth it!”
-
-He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands ruffling
-his gray hair.
-
-“What are your commands, little countess?”
-
-“You see, my dear... What’s that mess?” she said, pointing to his
-waistcoat. “It’s the sauté, most likely,” she added with a smile.
-“Well, you see, Count, I want some money.”
-
-Her face became sad.
-
-“Oh, little countess!” ... and the count began bustling to get out
-his pocketbook.
-
-“I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles,” and taking
-out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband’s waistcoat.
-
-“Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who’s there?” he called out
-in a tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call will
-rush to obey the summons. “Send Dmítri to me!”
-
-Dmítri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the count’s
-house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the room.
-
-“This is what I want, my dear fellow,” said the count to the
-deferential young man who had entered. “Bring me...” he reflected
-a moment, “yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don’t
-bring me such tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean ones
-for the countess.”
-
-“Yes, Dmítri, clean ones, please,” said the countess, sighing
-deeply.
-
-“When would you like them, your excellency?” asked Dmítri. “Allow
-me to inform you... But, don’t be uneasy,” he added, noticing that
-the count was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always
-a sign of approaching anger. “I was forgetting... Do you wish it
-brought at once?”
-
-“Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess.”
-
-“What a treasure that Dmítri is,” added the count with a smile when
-the young man had departed. “There is never any ‘impossible’ with
-him. That’s a thing I hate! Everything is possible.”
-
-“Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world,”
-said the countess. “But I am in great need of this sum.”
-
-“You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift,” said the
-count, and having kissed his wife’s hand he went back to his study.
-
-When Anna Mikháylovna returned from Count Bezúkhov’s the money, all
-in clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the countess’
-little table, and Anna Mikháylovna noticed that something was agitating
-her.
-
-“Well, my dear?” asked the countess.
-
-“Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is so
-ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word...”
-
-“Annette, for heaven’s sake don’t refuse me,” the countess
-began, with a blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified,
-elderly face, and she took the money from under the handkerchief.
-
-Anna Mikháylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be
-ready to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.
-
-“This is for Borís from me, for his outfit.”
-
-Anna Mikháylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess
-wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were
-kindhearted, and because they—friends from childhood—had to think
-about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....
-But those tears were pleasant to them both.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-Countess Rostóva, with her daughters and a large number of guests, was
-already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen into
-his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes. From
-time to time he went out to ask: “Hasn’t she come yet?” They
-were expecting Márya Dmítrievna Akhrosímova, known in society as le
-terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but for
-common sense and frank plainness of speech. Márya Dmítrievna was known
-to the Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and Petersburg, and both
-cities wondered at her, laughed privately at her rudenesses, and told
-good stories about her, while none the less all without exception
-respected and feared her.
-
-In the count’s room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked
-of the war that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the
-recruiting. None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew
-it had appeared. The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were
-smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his head
-first to one side and then to the other watched the smokers with evident
-pleasure and listened to the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he
-egged on against each other.
-
-One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and wrinkled
-face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a most fashionable
-young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as if quite at home and,
-having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his mouth, was inhaling the
-smoke spasmodically and screwing up his eyes. This was an old bachelor,
-Shinshín, a cousin of the countess’, a man with “a sharp tongue”
-as they said in Moscow society. He seemed to be condescending to
-his companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer of the Guards,
-irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held his pipe in the
-middle of his mouth and with red lips gently inhaled the smoke, letting
-it escape from his handsome mouth in rings. This was Lieutenant Berg, an
-officer in the Semënov regiment with whom Borís was to travel to join
-the army, and about whom Natásha had teased her elder sister Véra,
-speaking of Berg as her “intended.” The count sat between them and
-listened attentively. His favorite occupation when not playing boston, a
-card game he was very fond of, was that of listener, especially when he
-succeeded in setting two loquacious talkers at one another.
-
-“Well, then, old chap, mon très honorable Alphonse Kárlovich,”
-said Shinshín, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary Russian
-expressions with the choicest French phrases—which was a peculiarity
-of his speech. “Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur l’état; *
-you want to make something out of your company?”
-
- * You expect to make an income out of the government.
-
-“No, Peter Nikoláevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry
-the advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own
-position now, Peter Nikoláevich...”
-
-Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His
-conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain calm
-and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no direct bearing
-on himself. He could remain silent for hours without being at all put
-out of countenance himself or making others uncomfortable, but as
-soon as the conversation concerned himself he would begin to talk
-circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.
-
-“Consider my position, Peter Nikoláevich. Were I in the cavalry I
-should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even
-with the rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and
-thirty,” said he, looking at Shinshín and the count with a joyful,
-pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must
-always be the chief desire of everyone else.
-
-“Besides that, Peter Nikoláevich, by exchanging into the Guards
-I shall be in a more prominent position,” continued Berg, “and
-vacancies occur much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think
-what can be done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to
-put a little aside and to send something to my father,” he went on,
-emitting a smoke ring.
-
-“La balance y est... * A German knows how to skin a flint, as the
-proverb says,” remarked Shinshín, moving his pipe to the other side
-of his mouth and winking at the count.
-
- * So that squares matters.
-
-The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that Shinshín
-was talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or indifference,
-continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards he had already
-gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps; how in wartime
-the company commander might get killed and he, as senior in the company,
-might easily succeed to the post; how popular he was with everyone in
-the regiment, and how satisfied his father was with him. Berg evidently
-enjoyed narrating all this, and did not seem to suspect that others,
-too, might have their own interests. But all he said was so prettily
-sedate, and the naïveté of his youthful egotism was so obvious, that
-he disarmed his hearers.
-
-“Well, my boy, you’ll get along wherever you go—foot or
-horse—that I’ll warrant,” said Shinshín, patting him on the
-shoulder and taking his feet off the sofa.
-
-Berg smiled joyously. The count, followed by his guests, went into the
-drawing room.
-
-It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled guests,
-expecting the summons to zakúska, * avoid engaging in any long
-conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in order
-to show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The host and
-hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at one another,
-and the visitors try to guess from these glances who, or what, they are
-waiting for—some important relation who has not yet arrived, or a dish
-that is not yet ready.
-
- * Hors d’oeuvres.
-
-Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in the
-middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come across,
-blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make him talk,
-but he went on naïvely looking around through his spectacles as if in
-search of somebody and answered all her questions in monosyllables. He
-was in the way and was the only one who did not notice the fact. Most of
-the guests, knowing of the affair with the bear, looked with curiosity
-at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering how such a clumsy, modest
-fellow could have played such a prank on a policeman.
-
-“You have only lately arrived?” the countess asked him.
-
-“Oui, madame,” replied he, looking around him.
-
-“You have not yet seen my husband?”
-
-“Non, madame.” He smiled quite inappropriately.
-
-“You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it’s very
-interesting.”
-
-“Very interesting.”
-
-The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikháylovna. The latter
-understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and
-sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he
-answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other
-guests were all conversing with one another. “The Razumóvskis... It
-was charming... You are very kind... Countess Apráksina...” was heard
-on all sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.
-
-“Márya Dmítrievna?” came her voice from there.
-
-“Herself,” came the answer in a rough voice, and Márya Dmítrievna
-entered the room.
-
-All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very
-oldest rose. Márya Dmítrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout,
-holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood
-surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if
-rolling them up. Márya Dmítrievna always spoke in Russian.
-
-“Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to her
-children,” she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned all
-others. “Well, you old sinner,” she went on, turning to the count
-who was kissing her hand, “you’re feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay?
-Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old man? Just
-see how these nestlings are growing up,” and she pointed to the girls.
-“You must look for husbands for them whether you like it or not....”
-
-“Well,” said she, “how’s my Cossack?” (Márya Dmítrievna
-always called Natásha a Cossack) and she stroked the child’s arm as
-she came up fearless and gay to kiss her hand. “I know she’s a scamp
-of a girl, but I like her.”
-
-She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge reticule and,
-having given them to the rosy Natásha, who beamed with the pleasure
-of her saint’s-day fete, turned away at once and addressed herself to
-Pierre.
-
-“Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit,” said she, assuming a soft high
-tone of voice. “Come here, my friend...” and she ominously tucked
-up her sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a
-childlike way through his spectacles.
-
-“Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell
-your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it’s my
-evident duty.” She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to
-follow, for this was clearly only a prelude.
-
-“A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed
-and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame,
-sir, for shame! It would be better if you went to the war.”
-
-She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly keep
-from laughing.
-
-“Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?” said Márya
-Dmítrievna.
-
-The count went in first with Márya Dmítrievna, the countess followed
-on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them because
-Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna Mikháylovna
-with Shinshín. Berg gave his arm to Véra. The smiling Julie Karágina
-went in with Nicholas. After them other couples followed, filling the
-whole dining hall, and last of all the children, tutors, and governesses
-followed singly. The footmen began moving about, chairs scraped, the
-band struck up in the gallery, and the guests settled down in their
-places. Then the strains of the count’s household band were replaced
-by the clatter of knives and forks, the voices of visitors, and the
-soft steps of the footmen. At one end of the table sat the countess with
-Márya Dmítrievna on her right and Anna Mikháylovna on her left, the
-other lady visitors were farther down. At the other end sat the count,
-with the hussar colonel on his left and Shinshín and the other male
-visitors on his right. Midway down the long table on one side sat the
-grown-up young people: Véra beside Berg, and Pierre beside Borís; and
-on the other side, the children, tutors, and governesses. From behind
-the crystal decanters and fruit vases, the count kept glancing at his
-wife and her tall cap with its light-blue ribbons, and busily filled
-his neighbors’ glasses, not neglecting his own. The countess in turn,
-without omitting her duties as hostess, threw significant glances from
-behind the pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed
-by their redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the
-ladies’ end an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the
-men’s end the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the
-colonel of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so
-much that the count held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg
-with tender smiles was saying to Véra that love is not an earthly but
-a heavenly feeling. Borís was telling his new friend Pierre who the
-guests were and exchanging glances with Natásha, who was sitting
-opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a
-great deal. Of the two soups he chose turtle with savory patties and
-went on to the game without omitting a single dish or one of the wines.
-These latter the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in a
-napkin, from behind the next man’s shoulders and whispered: “Dry
-Madeira”... “Hungarian”... or “Rhine wine” as the case might
-be. Of the four crystal glasses engraved with the count’s monogram
-that stood before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and drank
-with enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the other
-guests. Natásha, who sat opposite, was looking at Borís as girls of
-thirteen look at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed for
-the first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that funny
-lively little girl’s look made him inclined to laugh without knowing
-why.
-
-Nicholas sat at some distance from Sónya, beside Julie Karágina, to
-whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sónya wore
-a company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now she turned
-pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what Nicholas
-and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept looking round
-uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might be put upon the
-children. The German tutor was trying to remember all the dishes, wines,
-and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full description of the dinner
-to his people in Germany; and he felt greatly offended when the butler
-with a bottle wrapped in a napkin passed him by. He frowned, trying to
-appear as if he did not want any of that wine, but was mortified because
-no one would understand that it was not to quench his thirst or from
-greediness that he wanted it, but simply from a conscientious desire for
-knowledge.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-At the men’s end of the table the talk grew more and more animated.
-The colonel told them that the declaration of war had already appeared
-in Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself seen, had that day
-been forwarded by courier to the commander in chief.
-
-“And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?” remarked
-Shinshín. “He has stopped Austria’s cackle and I fear it will be
-our turn next.”
-
-The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted to
-the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshín’s remark.
-
-“It is for the reasson, my goot sir,” said he, speaking with a
-German accent, “for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He
-declares in ze manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze danger
-vreatening Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as vell
-as ze sanctity of its alliances...” he spoke this last word with
-particular emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter.
-
-Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he
-repeated from the opening words of the manifesto:
-
-... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor’s sole and absolute
-aim—to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations—has now decided
-him to despatch part of the army abroad and to create a new condition
-for the attainment of that purpose.
-
-“Zat, my dear sir, is vy...” he concluded, drinking a tumbler of
-wine with dignity and looking to the count for approval.
-
-“Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:* ‘Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but
-turn spindles at home!’?” said Shinshín, puckering his brows and
-smiling. “Cela nous convient à merveille.*(2) Suvórov now—he knew
-what he was about; yet they beat him à plate couture,*(3) and where
-are we to find Suvórovs now? Je vous demande un peu,” *(4) said he,
-continually changing from French to Russian.
-
- *Do you know the proverb?
-
- *(2) That suits us down to the ground.
-
- *(3) Hollow.
-
- *(4) I just ask you that.
-
-“Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!” said the colonel,
-thumping the table; “and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen all vill
-pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible”... he dwelt
-particularly on the word possible... “as po-o-ossible,” he ended,
-again turning to the count. “Zat is how ve old hussars look at it, and
-zere’s an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a young hussar,
-how do you judge of it?” he added, addressing Nicholas, who when he
-heard that the war was being discussed had turned from his partner with
-eyes and ears intent on the colonel.
-
-“I am quite of your opinion,” replied Nicholas, flaming up, turning
-his plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as much decision
-and desperation as though he were at that moment facing some great
-danger. “I am convinced that we Russians must die or conquer,” he
-concluded, conscious—as were others—after the words were uttered
-that his remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for the occasion and
-were therefore awkward.
-
-“What you said just now was splendid!” said his partner Julie.
-
-Sónya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them and
-down to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.
-
-Pierre listened to the colonel’s speech and nodded approvingly.
-
-“That’s fine,” said he.
-
-“The young man’s a real hussar!” shouted the colonel, again
-thumping the table.
-
-“What are you making such a noise about over there?” Márya
-Dmítrievna’s deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the
-table. “What are you thumping the table for?” she demanded of the
-hussar, “and why are you exciting yourself? Do you think the French
-are here?”
-
-“I am speaking ze truce,” replied the hussar with a smile.
-
-“It’s all about the war,” the count shouted down the table. “You
-know my son’s going, Márya Dmítrievna? My son is going.”
-
-“I have four sons in the army but still I don’t fret. It is all
-in God’s hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a
-battle,” replied Márya Dmítrievna’s deep voice, which easily
-carried the whole length of the table.
-
-“That’s true!”
-
-Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies’ at the one end
-and the men’s at the other.
-
-“You won’t ask,” Natásha’s little brother was saying; “I know
-you won’t ask!”
-
-“I will,” replied Natásha.
-
-Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She half
-rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to what
-was coming, and turning to her mother:
-
-“Mamma!” rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice,
-audible the whole length of the table.
-
-“What is it?” asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her
-daughter’s face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her
-sternly with a threatening and forbidding movement of her head.
-
-The conversation was hushed.
-
-“Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?” and Natásha’s voice
-sounded still more firm and resolute.
-
-The countess tried to frown, but could not. Márya Dmítrievna shook her
-fat finger.
-
-“Cossack!” she said threateningly.
-
-Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at the
-elders.
-
-“You had better take care!” said the countess.
-
-“Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?” Natásha again cried
-boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken in
-good part.
-
-Sónya and fat little Pétya doubled up with laughter.
-
-“You see! I have asked,” whispered Natásha to her little brother
-and to Pierre, glancing at him again.
-
-“Ice pudding, but you won’t get any,” said Márya Dmítrievna.
-
-Natásha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even
-Márya Dmítrievna.
-
-“Márya Dmítrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don’t like ice
-cream.”
-
-“Carrot ices.”
-
-“No! What kind, Márya Dmítrievna? What kind?” she almost screamed;
-“I want to know!”
-
-Márya Dmítrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the
-guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Márya Dmítrievna’s answer
-but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who had
-dared to treat Márya Dmítrievna in this fashion.
-
-Natásha only desisted when she had been told that there would be
-pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band
-again struck up, the count and countess kissed, and the guests, leaving
-their seats, went up to “congratulate” the countess, and reached
-across the table to clink glasses with the count, with the children, and
-with one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs scraped, and
-in the same order in which they had entered but with redder faces, the
-guests returned to the drawing room and to the count’s study.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the
-count’s visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms,
-some in the sitting room, some in the library.
-
-The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty from
-dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at everything.
-The young people, at the countess’ instigation, gathered round the
-clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played first. After she
-had played a little air with variations on the harp, she joined the
-other young ladies in begging Natásha and Nicholas, who were noted for
-their musical talent, to sing something. Natásha, who was treated as
-though she were grown up, was evidently very proud of this but at the
-same time felt shy.
-
-“What shall we sing?” she said.
-
-“‘The Brook,’” suggested Nicholas.
-
-“Well, then, let’s be quick. Borís, come here,” said Natásha.
-“But where is Sónya?”
-
-She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room ran to
-look for her.
-
-Running into Sónya’s room and not finding her there, Natásha ran to
-the nursery, but Sónya was not there either. Natásha concluded that
-she must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage was
-the place of mourning for the younger female generation in the Rostóv
-household. And there in fact was Sónya lying face downward on Nurse’s
-dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy pink
-dress under her, hiding her face with her slender fingers, and sobbing
-so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook. Natásha’s
-face, which had been so radiantly happy all that saint’s day, suddenly
-changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed down her broad
-neck and the corners of her mouth drooped.
-
-“Sónya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!” And
-Natásha’s large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she
-began to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sónya was
-crying. Sónya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and
-hid her face still deeper in the bed. Natásha wept, sitting on the
-blue-striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort Sónya
-sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining.
-
-“Nicholas is going away in a week’s time, his... papers... have
-come... he told me himself... but still I should not cry,” and she
-showed a paper she held in her hand—with the verses Nicholas had
-written, “still, I should not cry, but you can’t... no one can
-understand... what a soul he has!”
-
-And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.
-
-“It’s all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and
-Borís also,” she went on, gaining a little strength; “he is nice...
-there are no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin...
-one would have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it
-can’t be done. And besides, if she tells Mamma” (Sónya looked upon
-the countess as her mother and called her so) “that I am spoiling
-Nicholas’ career and am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God
-is my witness,” and she made the sign of the cross, “I love her so
-much, and all of you, only Véra... And what for? What have I done
-to her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice
-everything, only I have nothing....”
-
-Sónya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in
-the feather bed. Natásha began consoling her, but her face showed that
-she understood all the gravity of her friend’s trouble.
-
-“Sónya,” she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true
-reason of her friend’s sorrow, “I’m sure Véra has said something
-to you since dinner? Hasn’t she?”
-
-“Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some others,
-and she found them on my table and said she’d show them to Mamma, and
-that I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him to marry
-me, but that he’ll marry Julie. You see how he’s been with her all
-day... Natásha, what have I done to deserve it?...”
-
-And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natásha lifted
-her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began comforting
-her.
-
-“Sónya, don’t believe her, darling! Don’t believe her! Do you
-remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting
-room after supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don’t
-quite remember how, but don’t you remember that it could all be
-arranged and how nice it all was? There’s Uncle Shinshín’s brother
-has married his first cousin. And we are only second cousins, you know.
-And Borís says it is quite possible. You know I have told him all about
-it. And he is so clever and so good!” said Natásha. “Don’t
-you cry, Sónya, dear love, darling Sónya!” and she kissed her and
-laughed. “Véra’s spiteful; never mind her! And all will come right
-and she won’t say anything to Mamma. Nicholas will tell her himself,
-and he doesn’t care at all for Julie.”
-
-Natásha kissed her on the hair.
-
-Sónya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it
-seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin
-playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.
-
-“Do you think so?... Really? Truly?” she said, quickly smoothing her
-frock and hair.
-
-“Really, truly!” answered Natásha, pushing in a crisp lock that had
-strayed from under her friend’s plaits.
-
-Both laughed.
-
-“Well, let’s go and sing ‘The Brook.’”
-
-“Come along!”
-
-“Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!” said
-Natásha, stopping suddenly. “I feel so happy!”
-
-And she set off at a run along the passage.
-
-Sónya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the
-verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran
-after Natásha down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face
-and light, joyous steps. At the visitors’ request the young people
-sang the quartette, “The Brook,” with which everyone was delighted.
-Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:
-
- At nighttime in the moon’s fair glow
- How sweet, as fancies wander free,
- To feel that in this world there’s one
- Who still is thinking but of thee!
-
- That while her fingers touch the harp
- Wafting sweet music o’er the lea,
- It is for thee thus swells her heart,
- Sighing its message out to thee...
-
- A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,
- But oh! till then I cannot live!...
-
-He had not finished the last verse before the young people began to
-get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and the
-coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.
-
-
-Pierre was sitting in the drawing room where Shinshín had engaged him,
-as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political conversation in
-which several others joined but which bored Pierre. When the music began
-Natásha came in and walking straight up to Pierre said, laughing and
-blushing:
-
-“Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers.”
-
-“I am afraid of mixing the figures,” Pierre replied; “but if you
-will be my teacher...” And lowering his big arm he offered it to the
-slender little girl.
-
-While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning up,
-Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natásha was perfectly happy;
-she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She was
-sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a grown-up lady.
-She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had given her to hold.
-Assuming quite the pose of a society woman (heaven knows when and where
-she had learned it) she talked with her partner, fanning herself and
-smiling over the fan.
-
-“Dear, dear! Just look at her!” exclaimed the countess as she
-crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natásha.
-
-Natásha blushed and laughed.
-
-“Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be surprised
-at?”
-
-
-In the midst of the third écossaise there was a clatter of chairs being
-pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Márya Dmítrievna
-had been playing cards with the majority of the more distinguished and
-older visitors. They now, stretching themselves after sitting so long,
-and replacing their purses and pocketbooks, entered the ballroom. First
-came Márya Dmítrievna and the count, both with merry countenances. The
-count, with playful ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his
-bent arm to Márya Dmítrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of debonair
-gallantry lit up his face and as soon as the last figure of the
-écossaise was ended, he clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted
-up to their gallery, addressing the first violin:
-
-“Semën! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?”
-
-This was the count’s favorite dance, which he had danced in his youth.
-(Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the anglaise.)
-
-“Look at Papa!” shouted Natásha to the whole company, and quite
-forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her
-curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her laughter.
-
-And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure at the
-jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout partner,
-Márya Dmítrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened his
-shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot, and, by
-a smile that broadened his round face more and more, prepared the
-onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the provocatively gay
-strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling those of a merry peasant
-dance) began to sound, all the doorways of the ballroom were suddenly
-filled by the domestic serfs—the men on one side and the women on
-the other—who with beaming faces had come to see their master making
-merry.
-
-“Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!” loudly remarked
-the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.
-
-The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did not
-want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her powerful arms
-hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the countess), and only her
-stern but handsome face really joined in the dance. What was expressed
-by the whole of the count’s plump figure, in Márya Dmítrievna found
-expression only in her more and more beaming face and quivering nose.
-But if the count, getting more and more into the swing of it, charmed
-the spectators by the unexpectedness of his adroit maneuvers and
-the agility with which he capered about on his light feet, Márya
-Dmítrievna produced no less impression by slight exertions—the least
-effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms when turning, or stamp
-her foot—which everyone appreciated in view of her size and habitual
-severity. The dance grew livelier and livelier. The other couples could
-not attract a moment’s attention to their own evolutions and did not
-even try to do so. All were watching the count and Márya Dmítrievna.
-Natásha kept pulling everyone by sleeve or dress, urging them to
-“look at Papa!” though as it was they never took their eyes off the
-couple. In the intervals of the dance the count, breathing deeply, waved
-and shouted to the musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster;
-lightly, more lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying
-round Márya Dmítrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until,
-turning his partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas,
-raising his soft foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling
-and making a wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and
-laughter led by Natásha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily
-and wiping their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.
-
-“That’s how we used to dance in our time, ma chère,” said the
-count.
-
-“That was a Daniel Cooper!” exclaimed Márya Dmítrievna, tucking up
-her sleeves and puffing heavily.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-While in the Rostóvs’ ballroom the sixth anglaise was being danced,
-to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while tired
-footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezúkhov had a
-sixth stroke. The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a mute
-confession, communion was administered to the dying man, preparations
-made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house there was the bustle
-and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside the house, beyond
-the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid whenever a carriage drove up,
-waited in expectation of an important order for an expensive funeral.
-The Military Governor of Moscow, who had been assiduous in sending
-aides-de-camp to inquire after the count’s health, came himself
-that evening to bid a last farewell to the celebrated grandee of
-Catherine’s court, Count Bezúkhov.
-
-The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up
-respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an
-hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging their
-bows and trying to escape as quickly as possible from the glances fixed
-on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince
-Vasíli, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days,
-escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times in
-low tones.
-
-When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasíli sat down all alone
-on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the other,
-leaning his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his hand. After
-sitting so for a while he rose, and, looking about him with frightened
-eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the long corridor leading
-to the back of the house, to the room of the eldest princess.
-
-Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous
-whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying man’s
-room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or expectancy at
-his door, which creaked slightly when opened.
-
-“The limits of human life ... are fixed and may not be
-o’erpassed,” said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat
-beside him and was listening naïvely to his words.
-
-“I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?” asked the
-lady, adding the priest’s clerical title, as if she had no opinion of
-her own on the subject.
-
-“Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament,” replied the priest, passing
-his hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his
-bald head.
-
-“Who was that? The Military Governor himself?” was being asked at
-the other side of the room. “How young-looking he is!”
-
-“Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes
-anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction.”
-
-“I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times.”
-
-The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes red
-from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a
-graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a
-table.
-
-“Beautiful,” said the doctor in answer to a remark about the
-weather. “The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow
-one feels as if one were in the country.”
-
-“Yes, indeed,” replied the princess with a sigh. “So he may have
-something to drink?”
-
-Lorrain considered.
-
-“Has he taken his medicine?”
-
-“Yes.”
-
-The doctor glanced at his watch.
-
-“Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar,”
-and he indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch.
-
-“Dere has neffer been a gase,” a German doctor was saying to an
-aide-de-camp, “dat one liffs after de sird stroke.”
-
-“And what a well-preserved man he was!” remarked the aide-de-camp.
-“And who will inherit his wealth?” he added in a whisper.
-
-“It von’t go begging,” replied the German with a smile.
-
-Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as the second
-princess went in with the drink she had prepared according to
-Lorrain’s instructions. The German doctor went up to Lorrain.
-
-“Do you think he can last till morning?” asked the German,
-addressing Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly.
-
-Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger before
-his nose.
-
-“Tonight, not later,” said he in a low voice, and he moved away
-with a decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to
-understand and state the patient’s condition.
-
-Meanwhile Prince Vasíli had opened the door into the princess’ room.
-
-In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning before
-the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt pastilles.
-The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture, whatnots,
-cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white feather bed was
-just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to bark.
-
-“Ah, is it you, cousin?”
-
-She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely smooth
-that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and covered with
-varnish.
-
-“Has anything happened?” she asked. “I am so terrified.”
-
-“No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about business,
-Catiche,” * muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on the chair
-she had just vacated. “You have made the place warm, I must say,” he
-remarked. “Well, sit down: let’s have a talk.”
-
- *Catherine.
-
-“I thought perhaps something had happened,” she said with her
-unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the
-prince, she prepared to listen.
-
-“I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can’t.”
-
-“Well, my dear?” said Prince Vasíli, taking her hand and bending it
-downwards as was his habit.
-
-It was plain that this “well?” referred to much that they both
-understood without naming.
-
-The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for her
-legs, looked directly at Prince Vasíli with no sign of emotion in her
-prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up at the icons
-with a sigh. This might have been taken as an expression of sorrow
-and devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting before long. Prince
-Vasíli understood it as an expression of weariness.
-
-“And I?” he said; “do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn
-out as a post horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a
-very serious talk.”
-
-Prince Vasíli said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously,
-now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant
-expression which was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His eyes
-too seemed strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly and at the
-next glanced round in alarm.
-
-The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony
-hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasíli’s eyes evidently
-resolved not to be the first to break silence, if she had to wait till
-morning.
-
-“Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semënovna,”
-continued Prince Vasíli, returning to his theme, apparently not
-without an inner struggle; “at such a moment as this one must think
-of everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love you
-all, like children of my own, as you know.”
-
-The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the same
-dull expression.
-
-“And then of course my family has also to be considered,” Prince
-Vasíli went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at
-her. “You know, Catiche, that we—you three sisters, Mámontov, and
-my wife—are the count’s only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard
-it is for you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for
-me; but, my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for
-anything. Do you know I have sent for Pierre? The count,” pointing to
-his portrait, “definitely demanded that he should be called.”
-
-Prince Vasíli looked questioningly at the princess, but could not make
-out whether she was considering what he had just said or whether she was
-simply looking at him.
-
-“There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin,” she
-replied, “and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow
-his noble soul peacefully to leave this...”
-
-“Yes, yes, of course,” interrupted Prince Vasíli impatiently,
-rubbing his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little
-table that he had pushed away. “But... in short, the fact is... you
-know yourself that last winter the count made a will by which he left
-all his property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre.”
-
-“He has made wills enough!” quietly remarked the princess. “But he
-cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate.”
-
-“But, my dear,” said Prince Vasíli suddenly, clutching the little
-table and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: “what if
-a letter has been written to the Emperor in which the count asks for
-Pierre’s legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of the
-count’s services, his request would be granted?...”
-
-The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about the
-subject under discussion than those they are talking with.
-
-“I can tell you more,” continued Prince Vasíli, seizing her hand,
-“that letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew
-of it. The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not, then
-as soon as all is over,” and Prince Vasíli sighed to intimate what he
-meant by the words all is over, “and the count’s papers are opened,
-the will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and the petition
-will certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything as the legitimate
-son.”
-
-“And our share?” asked the princess smiling ironically, as if
-anything might happen, only not that.
-
-“But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be the
-legal heir to everything and you won’t get anything. You must know,
-my dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether they have
-been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been overlooked, you
-ought to know where they are, and must find them, because...”
-
-“What next?” the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and not
-changing the expression of her eyes. “I am a woman, and you think we
-are all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot inherit...
-un bâtard!”* she added, as if supposing that this translation of the
-word would effectively prove to Prince Vasíli the invalidity of his
-contention.
-
- * A bastard.
-
-“Well, really, Catiche! Can’t you understand! You are so
-intelligent, how is it you don’t see that if the count has written a
-letter to the Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate, it
-follows that Pierre will not be Pierre but will become Count Bezúkhov,
-and will then inherit everything under the will? And if the will and
-letter are not destroyed, then you will have nothing but the consolation
-of having been dutiful et tout ce qui s’ensuit!* That’s certain.”
-
- * And all that follows therefrom.
-
-“I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid;
-and you, mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool,” said the
-princess with the expression women assume when they suppose they are
-saying something witty and stinging.
-
-“My dear Princess Catherine Semënovna,” began Prince Vasíli
-impatiently, “I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about
-your interests as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I
-tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and the
-will in Pierre’s favor are among the count’s papers, then, my dear
-girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you don’t believe me,
-then believe an expert. I have just been talking to Dmítri Onúfrich”
-(the family solicitor) “and he says the same.”
-
-At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess’ ideas;
-her thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her voice
-when she began to speak passed through such transitions as she herself
-evidently did not expect.
-
-“That would be a fine thing!” said she. “I never wanted anything
-and I don’t now.”
-
-She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.
-
-“And this is gratitude—this is recognition for those who have
-sacrificed everything for his sake!” she cried. “It’s splendid!
-Fine! I don’t want anything, Prince.”
-
-“Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters...”
-replied Prince Vasíli.
-
-But the princess did not listen to him.
-
-“Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could expect
-nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and ingratitude—the
-blackest ingratitude—in this house...”
-
-“Do you or do you not know where that will is?” insisted Prince
-Vasíli, his cheeks twitching more than ever.
-
-“Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and
-sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has
-been intriguing!”
-
-The princess wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand. She
-had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole human race.
-She gave her companion an angry glance.
-
-“There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it was
-all done casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was afterwards
-forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to ease his
-last moments by not letting him commit this injustice, and not to let
-him die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who...”
-
-“Who sacrificed everything for him,” chimed in the princess, who
-would again have risen had not the prince still held her fast, “though
-he never could appreciate it. No, mon cousin,” she added with a sigh,
-“I shall always remember that in this world one must expect no reward,
-that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this world one
-has to be cunning and cruel.”
-
-“Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart.”
-
-“No, I have a wicked heart.”
-
-“I know your heart,” repeated the prince. “I value your friendship
-and wish you to have as good an opinion of me. Don’t upset yourself,
-and let us talk sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or be it
-but an hour.... Tell me all you know about the will, and above all where
-it is. You must know. We will take it at once and show it to the
-count. He has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it.
-You understand that my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his
-wishes; that is my only reason for being here. I came simply to help him
-and you.”
-
-“Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing—I know!” cried
-the princess.
-
-“That’s not the point, my dear.”
-
-“It’s that protégé of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskáya,
-that Anna Mikháylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the
-infamous, vile woman!”
-
-“Do not let us lose any time...”
-
-“Ah, don’t talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here and
-told the count such vile, disgraceful things about us, especially about
-Sophie—I can’t repeat them—that it made the count quite ill and he
-would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was then he wrote this
-vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was invalid.”
-
-“We’ve got to it at last—why did you not tell me about it
-sooner?”
-
-“It’s in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow,”
-said the princess, ignoring his question. “Now I know! Yes; if I have
-a sin, a great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!” almost shrieked
-the princess, now quite changed. “And what does she come worming
-herself in here for? But I will give her a piece of my mind. The time
-will come!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII
-
-While these conversations were going on in the reception room and the
-princess’ room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent for)
-and Anna Mikháylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him) was
-driving into the court of Count Bezúkhov’s house. As the wheels
-rolled softly over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikháylovna,
-having turned with words of comfort to her companion, realized that
-he was asleep in his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre
-followed Anna Mikháylovna out of the carriage, and only then began
-to think of the interview with his dying father which awaited him. He
-noticed that they had not come to the front entrance but to the back
-door. While he was getting down from the carriage steps two men, who
-looked like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and hid in the
-shadow of the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed several other
-men of the same kind hiding in the shadow of the house on both sides.
-But neither Anna Mikháylovna nor the footman nor the coachman, who
-could not help seeing these people, took any notice of them. “It seems
-to be all right,” Pierre concluded, and followed Anna Mikháylovna.
-She hurriedly ascended the narrow dimly lit stone staircase, calling to
-Pierre, who was lagging behind, to follow. Though he did not see why it
-was necessary for him to go to the count at all, still less why he had
-to go by the back stairs, yet judging by Anna Mikháylovna’s air
-of assurance and haste, Pierre concluded that it was all absolutely
-necessary. Halfway up the stairs they were almost knocked over by
-some men who, carrying pails, came running downstairs, their boots
-clattering. These men pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna
-Mikháylovna pass and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them
-there.
-
-“Is this the way to the princesses’ apartments?” asked Anna
-Mikháylovna of one of them.
-
-“Yes,” replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were
-now permissible; “the door to the left, ma’am.”
-
-“Perhaps the count did not ask for me,” said Pierre when he reached
-the landing. “I’d better go to my own room.”
-
-Anna Mikháylovna paused and waited for him to come up.
-
-“Ah, my friend!” she said, touching his arm as she had done her
-son’s when speaking to him that afternoon, “believe me I suffer no
-less than you do, but be a man!”
-
-“But really, hadn’t I better go away?” he asked, looking kindly at
-her over his spectacles.
-
-“Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done you.
-Think that he is your father ... perhaps in the agony of death.” She
-sighed. “I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust yourself to
-me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests.”
-
-Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this had
-to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikháylovna who was
-already opening a door.
-
-This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the
-princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been
-in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of
-these rooms. Anna Mikháylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past
-with a decanter on a tray as “my dear” and “my sweet,” asked
-about the princess’ health and then led Pierre along a stone passage.
-The first door on the left led into the princesses’ apartments. The
-maid with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything
-in the house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna
-Mikháylovna in passing instinctively glanced into the room, where
-Prince Vasíli and the eldest princess were sitting close together
-talking. Seeing them pass, Prince Vasíli drew back with obvious
-impatience, while the princess jumped up and with a gesture of
-desperation slammed the door with all her might.
-
-This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear depicted on
-Prince Vasíli’s face so out of keeping with his dignity that Pierre
-stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his guide. Anna
-Mikháylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly and sighed, as
-if to say that this was no more than she had expected.
-
-“Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests,” said she in
-reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.
-
-Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what
-“watching over his interests” meant, but he decided that all these
-things had to be. From the passage they went into a large, dimly
-lit room adjoining the count’s reception room. It was one of those
-sumptuous but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front
-approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and water
-had been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a censer
-and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them. They
-went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian
-windows opening into the conservatory, with its large bust and full
-length portrait of Catherine the Great. The same people were still
-sitting here in almost the same positions as before, whispering to one
-another. All became silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn Anna
-Mikháylovna as she entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre who,
-hanging his head, meekly followed her.
-
-Anna Mikháylovna’s face expressed a consciousness that the decisive
-moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg lady she now,
-keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even more boldly than
-that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her the person the
-dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured. Casting a rapid
-glance at all those in the room and noticing the count’s confessor
-there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble, not exactly bowing yet
-seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and respectfully received the blessing
-first of one and then of another priest.
-
-“God be thanked that you are in time,” said she to one of the
-priests; “all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young
-man is the count’s son,” she added more softly. “What a terrible
-moment!”
-
-Having said this she went up to the doctor.
-
-“Dear doctor,” said she, “this young man is the count’s son. Is
-there any hope?”
-
-The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his
-shoulders. Anna Mikháylovna with just the same movement raised her
-shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved away
-from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful and
-tenderly sad voice, she said:
-
-“Trust in His mercy!” and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit
-and wait for her, she went silently toward the door that everyone was
-watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind it.
-
-Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly, moved
-toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikháylovna had
-disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned to him
-with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed that they
-whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him with a kind
-of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had never before
-received was shown him. A strange lady, the one who had been talking to
-the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an aide-de-camp picked up
-and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the doctors became respectfully
-silent as he passed by, and moved to make way for him. At first Pierre
-wished to take another seat so as not to trouble the lady, and also to
-pick up the glove himself and to pass round the doctors who were not
-even in his way; but all at once he felt that this would not do, and
-that tonight he was a person obliged to perform some sort of awful
-rite which everyone expected of him, and that he was therefore bound
-to accept their services. He took the glove in silence from the
-aide-de-camp, and sat down in the lady’s chair, placing his huge hands
-symmetrically on his knees in the naïve attitude of an Egyptian statue,
-and decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in
-order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on his
-own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the will of
-those who were guiding him.
-
-Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasíli with head erect
-majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three
-stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the morning;
-his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and noticed
-Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never used to do),
-and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain whether it was firmly
-fixed on.
-
-“Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is
-well!” and he turned to go.
-
-But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: “How is...” and hesitated,
-not knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man “the
-count,” yet ashamed to call him “father.”
-
-“He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my
-friend...”
-
-Pierre’s mind was in such a confused state that the word “stroke”
-suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasíli
-in perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of
-illness. Prince Vasíli said something to Lorrain in passing and went
-through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his
-whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him, and
-the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the door.
-Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about, and
-at last Anna Mikháylovna, still with the same expression, pale but
-resolute in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly
-on the arm said:
-
-“The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be
-administered. Come.”
-
-Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed
-that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all
-followed him in, as if there were now no further need for permission to
-enter that room.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII
-
-Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its
-walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the
-columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side and
-on the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly illuminated
-with red light like a Russian church during evening service. Under
-the gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in that chair
-on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed, Pierre
-saw—covered to the waist by a bright green quilt—the familiar,
-majestic figure of his father, Count Bezúkhov, with that gray mane of
-hair above his broad forehead which reminded one of a lion, and the deep
-characteristically noble wrinkles of his handsome, ruddy face. He lay
-just under the icons; his large thick hands outside the quilt. Into the
-right hand, which was lying palm downwards, a wax taper had been thrust
-between forefinger and thumb, and an old servant, bending over from
-behind the chair, held it in position. By the chair stood the priests,
-their long hair falling over their magnificent glittering vestments,
-with lighted tapers in their hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the
-service. A little behind them stood the two younger princesses holding
-handkerchiefs to their eyes, and just in front of them their eldest
-sister, Catiche, with a vicious and determined look steadily fixed on
-the icons, as though declaring to all that she could not answer for
-herself should she glance round. Anna Mikháylovna, with a meek,
-sorrowful, and all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door
-near the strange lady. Prince Vasíli in front of the door, near the
-invalid chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm on
-the carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose,
-and was crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes upward
-each time he touched his forehead. His face wore a calm look of piety
-and resignation to the will of God. “If you do not understand these
-sentiments,” he seemed to be saying, “so much the worse for you!”
-
-Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants;
-the men and women had separated as in church. All were silently crossing
-themselves, and the reading of the church service, the subdued chanting
-of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and the shuffling of
-feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna Mikháylovna, with
-an air of importance that showed that she felt she quite knew what she
-was about, went across the room to where Pierre was standing and gave
-him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by observing those around him,
-began crossing himself with the hand that held the taper.
-
-Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the mole,
-watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and remained
-with it hidden for awhile; then looking up and seeing Pierre she
-again began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look at him
-without laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be out of
-temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In the midst
-of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased, they whispered
-to one another, and the old servant who was holding the count’s hand
-got up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikháylovna stepped
-forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to Lorrain from
-behind her back. The French doctor held no taper; he was leaning
-against one of the columns in a respectful attitude implying that he,
-a foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith, understood the full
-importance of the rite now being performed and even approved of it. He
-now approached the sick man with the noiseless step of one in full vigor
-of life, with his delicate white fingers raised from the green quilt the
-hand that was free, and turning sideways felt the pulse and reflected
-a moment. The sick man was given something to drink, there was a
-stir around him, then the people resumed their places and the service
-continued. During this interval Pierre noticed that Prince Vasíli
-left the chair on which he had been leaning, and—with an air
-which intimated that he knew what he was about and if others did not
-understand him it was so much the worse for them—did not go up to the
-dying man, but passed by him, joined the eldest princess, and moved
-with her to the side of the room where stood the high bedstead with its
-silken hangings. On leaving the bed both Prince Vasíli and the princess
-passed out by a back door, but returned to their places one after the
-other before the service was concluded. Pierre paid no more attention
-to this occurrence than to the rest of what went on, having made up his
-mind once for all that what he saw happening around him that evening was
-in some way essential.
-
-The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest was
-heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received the
-sacrament. The dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as before. Around
-him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and whispers, among which
-Anna Mikháylovna’s was the most distinct.
-
-Pierre heard her say:
-
-“Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be
-impossible...”
-
-The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and servants
-that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face with its gray
-mane—which, though he saw other faces as well, he had not lost sight
-of for a single moment during the whole service. He judged by the
-cautious movements of those who crowded round the invalid chair that
-they had lifted the dying man and were moving him.
-
-“Catch hold of my arm or you’ll drop him!” he heard one of the
-servants say in a frightened whisper. “Catch hold from underneath.
-Here!” exclaimed different voices; and the heavy breathing of the
-bearers and the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried, as if the
-weight they were carrying were too much for them.
-
-As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikháylovna, passed the young man
-he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the dying
-man’s high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders, raised by
-those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his gray, curly,
-leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow and cheekbones,
-its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic expression, was
-not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the same as Pierre
-remembered it three months before, when the count had sent him to
-Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly with the uneven
-movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze fixed itself upon
-nothing.
-
-After a few minutes’ bustle beside the high bedstead, those who had
-carried the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikháylovna touched Pierre’s
-hand and said, “Come.” Pierre went with her to the bed on which the
-sick man had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the ceremony
-just completed. He lay with his head propped high on the pillows. His
-hands were symmetrically placed on the green silk quilt, the palms
-downward. When Pierre came up the count was gazing straight at him, but
-with a look the significance of which could not be understood by mortal
-man. Either this look meant nothing but that as long as one has eyes
-they must look somewhere, or it meant too much. Pierre hesitated,
-not knowing what to do, and glanced inquiringly at his guide. Anna
-Mikháylovna made a hurried sign with her eyes, glancing at the sick
-man’s hand and moving her lips as if to send it a kiss. Pierre,
-carefully stretching his neck so as not to touch the quilt, followed her
-suggestion and pressed his lips to the large boned, fleshy hand. Neither
-the hand nor a single muscle of the count’s face stirred. Once more
-Pierre looked questioningly at Anna Mikháylovna to see what he was to
-do next. Anna Mikháylovna with her eyes indicated a chair that stood
-beside the bed. Pierre obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were
-doing right. Anna Mikháylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell
-into the naïvely symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently
-distressed that his stout and clumsy body took up so much room and doing
-his utmost to look as small as possible. He looked at the count, who
-still gazed at the spot where Pierre’s face had been before he sat
-down. Anna Mikháylovna indicated by her attitude her consciousness of
-the pathetic importance of these last moments of meeting between the
-father and son. This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre seemed an
-hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count’s face began
-to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth was drawn to one
-side (only now did Pierre realize how near death his father was), and
-from that distorted mouth issued an indistinct, hoarse sound. Anna
-Mikháylovna looked attentively at the sick man’s eyes, trying to
-guess what he wanted; she pointed first to Pierre, then to some drink,
-then named Prince Vasíli in an inquiring whisper, then pointed to the
-quilt. The eyes and face of the sick man showed impatience. He made an
-effort to look at the servant who stood constantly at the head of the
-bed.
-
-“Wants to turn on the other side,” whispered the servant, and got up
-to turn the count’s heavy body toward the wall.
-
-Pierre rose to help him.
-
-While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back
-helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward. Whether he
-noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded that lifeless arm,
-or whether some other thought flitted across his dying brain, at any
-rate he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre’s terror-stricken
-face, and again at the arm, and on his face a feeble, piteous smile
-appeared, quite out of keeping with his features, that seemed to deride
-his own helplessness. At sight of this smile Pierre felt an unexpected
-quivering in his breast and a tickling in his nose, and tears dimmed his
-eyes. The sick man was turned on to his side with his face to the wall.
-He sighed.
-
-“He is dozing,” said Anna Mikháylovna, observing that one of the
-princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. “Let us go.”
-
-Pierre went out.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV
-
-There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasíli and the
-eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of Catherine the
-Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre and his companion
-they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the princess hide
-something as she whispered:
-
-“I can’t bear the sight of that woman.”
-
-“Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room,” said Prince
-Vasíli to Anna Mikháylovna. “Go and take something, my poor Anna
-Mikháylovna, or you will not hold out.”
-
-To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic squeeze
-below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikháylovna into the small
-drawing room.
-
-“There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup
-of this delicious Russian tea,” Lorrain was saying with an air of
-restrained animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese
-handleless cup before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid
-in the small circular room. Around the table all who were at Count
-Bezúkhov’s house that night had gathered to fortify themselves.
-Pierre well remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors
-and little tables. During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not
-know how to dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the ladies
-who, as they passed through in their ball dresses with diamonds and
-pearls on their bare shoulders, looked at themselves in the brilliantly
-lighted mirrors which repeated their reflections several times. Now
-this same room was dimly lighted by two candles. On one small table tea
-things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in the middle of the
-night a motley throng of people sat there, not merrymaking, but somberly
-whispering, and betraying by every word and movement that they none
-of them forgot what was happening and what was about to happen in the
-bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though he would very much have
-liked to. He looked inquiringly at his monitress and saw that she was
-again going on tiptoe to the reception room where they had left Prince
-Vasíli and the eldest princess. Pierre concluded that this also was
-essential, and after a short interval followed her. Anna Mikháylovna
-was standing beside the princess, and they were both speaking in excited
-whispers.
-
-“Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not
-necessary,” said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the
-same state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room.
-
-“But, my dear princess,” answered Anna Mikháylovna blandly but
-impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other
-from passing, “won’t this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment
-when he needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul is
-already prepared...”
-
-Prince Vasíli was seated in an easy chair in his familiar attitude,
-with one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which were so
-flabby that they looked heavier below, were twitching violently; but
-he wore the air of a man little concerned in what the two ladies were
-saying.
-
-“Come, my dear Anna Mikháylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases. You
-know how fond the count is of her.”
-
-“I don’t even know what is in this paper,” said the younger of
-the two ladies, addressing Prince Vasíli and pointing to an inlaid
-portfolio she held in her hand. “All I know is that his real will is
-in his writing table, and this is a paper he has forgotten....”
-
-She tried to pass Anna Mikháylovna, but the latter sprang so as to bar
-her path.
-
-“I know, my dear, kind princess,” said Anna Mikháylovna, seizing
-the portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily.
-“Dear princess, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je vous
-en conjure...”
-
-The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the
-portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if
-the princess did speak, her words would not be flattering to Anna
-Mikháylovna. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost none
-of its honeyed firmness and softness.
-
-“Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place in a
-family consultation; is it not so, Prince?”
-
-“Why don’t you speak, cousin?” suddenly shrieked the princess so
-loud that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled. “Why
-do you remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to
-interfere, making a scene on the very threshold of a dying man’s room?
-Intriguer!” she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the
-portfolio.
-
-But Anna Mikháylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold on the
-portfolio, and changed her grip.
-
-Prince Vasíli rose. “Oh!” said he with reproach and surprise,
-“this is absurd! Come, let go I tell you.”
-
-The princess let go.
-
-“And you too!”
-
-But Anna Mikháylovna did not obey him.
-
-“Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will go
-and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?”
-
-“But, Prince,” said Anna Mikháylovna, “after such a solemn
-sacrament, allow him a moment’s peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your
-opinion,” said she, turning to the young man who, having come quite
-close, was gazing with astonishment at the angry face of the princess
-which had lost all dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of Prince
-Vasíli.
-
-“Remember that you will answer for the consequences,” said Prince
-Vasíli severely. “You don’t know what you are doing.”
-
-“Vile woman!” shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna
-Mikháylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.
-
-Prince Vasíli bent his head and spread out his hands.
-
-At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so long
-and which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and banged
-against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed out
-wringing her hands.
-
-“What are you doing!” she cried vehemently. “He is dying and you
-leave me alone with him!”
-
-Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikháylovna, stooping, quickly
-caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom. The eldest
-princess and Prince Vasíli, recovering themselves, followed her. A few
-minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard face, again
-biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression showed an
-irrepressible hatred.
-
-“Yes, now you may be glad!” said she; “this is what you have
-been waiting for.” And bursting into tears she hid her face in her
-handkerchief and rushed from the room.
-
-Prince Vasíli came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre was
-sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand. Pierre
-noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as if in an
-ague.
-
-“Ah, my friend!” said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there was
-in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in it
-before. “How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I am
-near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all! Death is
-awful...” and he burst into tears.
-
-Anna Mikháylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow, quiet
-steps.
-
-“Pierre!” she said.
-
-Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his
-forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:
-
-“He is no more....”
-
-Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.
-
-“Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as
-tears.”
-
-She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one could
-see his face. Anna Mikháylovna left him, and when she returned he was
-fast asleep with his head on his arm.
-
-In the morning Anna Mikháylovna said to Pierre:
-
-“Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you.
-But God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in command
-of an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I know you
-well enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but it imposes
-duties on you, and you must be a man.”
-
-Pierre was silent.
-
-“Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not been
-there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle promised
-me only the day before yesterday not to forget Borís. But he had
-no time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your father’s
-wish?”
-
-Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in
-silence at Princess Anna Mikháylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna
-Mikháylovna returned to the Rostóvs’ and went to bed. On waking in
-the morning she told the Rostóvs and all her acquaintances the details
-of Count Bezúkhov’s death. She said the count had died as she would
-herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but edifying. As
-to the last meeting between father and son, it was so touching that she
-could not think of it without tears, and did not know which had behaved
-better during those awful moments—the father who so remembered
-everything and everybody at last and had spoken such pathetic words to
-the son, or Pierre, whom it had been pitiful to see, so stricken was he
-with grief, though he tried hard to hide it in order not to sadden his
-dying father. “It is painful, but it does one good. It uplifts the
-soul to see such men as the old count and his worthy son,” said she.
-Of the behavior of the eldest princess and Prince Vasíli she spoke
-disapprovingly, but in whispers and as a great secret.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXV
-
-At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andréevich Bolkónski’s estate, the
-arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but
-this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the old
-prince’s household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andréevich
-(nicknamed in society, “the King of Prussia”) ever since the Emperor
-Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously
-with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle
-Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the
-capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that
-anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from Moscow to
-Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He used to
-say that there are only two sources of human vice—idleness and
-superstition, and only two virtues—activity and intelligence. He
-himself undertook his daughter’s education, and to develop these two
-cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry
-till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time was
-occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs, solving
-problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, working
-in the garden, or superintending the building that was always going on
-at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition facilitating activity,
-regularity in his household was carried to the highest point of
-exactitude. He always came to table under precisely the same conditions,
-and not only at the same hour but at the same minute. With those about
-him, from his daughter to his serfs, the prince was sharp and invariably
-exacting, so that without being a hardhearted man he inspired such fear
-and respect as few hardhearted men would have aroused. Although he was
-in retirement and had now no influence in political affairs, every high
-official appointed to the province in which the prince’s estate lay
-considered it his duty to visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber
-just as the architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince
-appeared punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this
-antechamber experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when
-the enormously high study door opened and showed the figure of a rather
-small old man, with powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray
-eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his shrewd,
-youthfully glittering eyes.
-
-On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive, Princess
-Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed for the
-morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and repeating a
-silent prayer. Every morning she came in like that, and every morning
-prayed that the daily interview might pass off well.
-
-An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose
-quietly and said in a whisper: “Please walk in.”
-
-Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess timidly
-opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused at the
-entrance. The prince was working at the lathe and after glancing round
-continued his work.
-
-The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use.
-The large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted
-bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while
-standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with
-tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around—all indicated
-continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of the small foot
-shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and the firm pressure
-of the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince still possessed the
-tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age. After a few more turns
-of the lathe he removed his foot from the pedal, wiped his chisel,
-dropped it into a leather pouch attached to the lathe, and, approaching
-the table, summoned his daughter. He never gave his children a blessing,
-so he simply held out his bristly cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding
-her tenderly and attentively, said severely:
-
-“Quite well? All right then, sit down.” He took the exercise book
-containing lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a chair
-with his foot.
-
-“For tomorrow!” said he, quickly finding the page and making a
-scratch from one paragraph to another with his hard nail.
-
-The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.
-
-“Wait a bit, here’s a letter for you,” said the old man suddenly,
-taking a letter addressed in a woman’s hand from a bag hanging above
-the table, onto which he threw it.
-
-At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on the
-princess’ face. She took it quickly and bent her head over it.
-
-“From Héloïse?” asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his
-still sound, yellowish teeth.
-
-“Yes, it’s from Julie,” replied the princess with a timid glance
-and a timid smile.
-
-“I’ll let two more letters pass, but the third I’ll read,” said
-the prince sternly; “I’m afraid you write much nonsense. I’ll read
-the third!”
-
-“Read this if you like, Father,” said the princess, blushing still
-more and holding out the letter.
-
-“The third, I said the third!” cried the prince abruptly, pushing
-the letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward him
-the exercise book containing geometrical figures.
-
-“Well, madam,” he began, stooping over the book close to his
-daughter and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat,
-so that she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of
-old age and tobacco, which she had known so long. “Now, madam, these
-triangles are equal; please note that the angle ABC...”
-
-The princess looked in a scared way at her father’s eyes glittering
-close to her; the red patches on her face came and went, and it was
-plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened that her
-fear would prevent her understanding any of her father’s further
-explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was the
-teacher’s fault or the pupil’s, this same thing happened every day:
-the princess’ eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear
-anything, but was only conscious of her stern father’s withered face
-close to her, of his breath and the smell of him, and could think only
-of how to get away quickly to her own room to make out the problem in
-peace. The old man was beside himself: moved the chair on which he was
-sitting noisily backward and forward, made efforts to control himself
-and not become vehement, but almost always did become vehement, scolded,
-and sometimes flung the exercise book away.
-
-The princess gave a wrong answer.
-
-“Well now, isn’t she a fool!” shouted the prince, pushing the book
-aside and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up and
-down, lightly touched his daughter’s hair and sat down again.
-
-He drew up his chair, and continued to explain.
-
-“This won’t do, Princess; it won’t do,” said he, when Princess
-Mary, having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day’s
-lesson, was about to leave: “Mathematics are most important, madam!
-I don’t want to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and
-you’ll like it,” and he patted her cheek. “It will drive all the
-nonsense out of your head.”
-
-She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an uncut
-book from the high desk.
-
-“Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Héloïse has
-sent you. Religious! I don’t interfere with anyone’s belief... I
-have looked at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go.”
-
-He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her.
-
-Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared expression that
-rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly face yet plainer. She
-sat down at her writing table, on which stood miniature portraits and
-which was littered with books and papers. The princess was as untidy as
-her father was tidy. She put down the geometry book and eagerly broke
-the seal of her letter. It was from her most intimate friend from
-childhood; that same Julie Karágina who had been at the Rostóvs’
-name-day party.
-
-Julie wrote in French:
-
-Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a thing is
-separation! Though I tell myself that half my life and half my happiness
-are wrapped up in you, and that in spite of the distance separating us
-our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, my heart rebels against
-fate and in spite of the pleasures and distractions around me I cannot
-overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in my heart ever since
-we parted. Why are we not together as we were last summer, in your big
-study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa? Why cannot I now, as
-three months ago, draw fresh moral strength from your look, so gentle,
-calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so well and seem to see before me
-as I write?
-
-Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the mirror
-which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful figure and
-thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular hopelessness
-at her reflection in the glass. “She flatters me,” thought the
-princess, turning away and continuing to read. But Julie did not flatter
-her friend, the princess’ eyes—large, deep and luminous (it seemed
-as if at times there radiated from them shafts of warm light)—were
-so beautiful that very often in spite of the plainness of her face
-they gave her an attraction more powerful than that of beauty. But the
-princess never saw the beautiful expression of her own eyes—the look
-they had when she was not thinking of herself. As with everyone, her
-face assumed a forced unnatural expression as soon as she looked in a
-glass. She went on reading:
-
-All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is already
-abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on their march
-to the frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg and it is thought
-intends to expose his precious person to the chances of war. God grant
-that the Corsican monster who is destroying the peace of Europe may
-be overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the Almighty, in His
-goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing of my brothers, this
-war has deprived me of one of the associations nearest my heart. I mean
-young Nicholas Rostóv, who with his enthusiasm could not bear to remain
-inactive and has left the university to join the army. I will confess to
-you, dear Mary, that in spite of his extreme youth his departure for
-the army was a great grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you
-last summer, is so noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which
-one seldom finds nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly,
-he is so frank and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that
-my relations with him, transient as they were, have been one of the
-sweetest comforts to my poor heart, which has already suffered so much.
-Someday I will tell you about our parting and all that was said then.
-That is still too fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know
-these poignant joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are
-generally the stronger! I know very well that Count Nicholas is too
-young ever to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship,
-this poetic and pure intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of
-this! The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of
-old Count Bezúkhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! The three princesses
-have received very little, Prince Vasíli nothing, and it is Monsieur
-Pierre who has inherited all the property and has besides been
-recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezúkhov and
-possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince
-Vasíli played a very despicable part in this affair and that he
-returned to Petersburg quite crestfallen.
-
-I confess I understand very little about all these matters of wills and
-inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom we all used
-to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count Bezúkhov and the
-owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I am much amused to
-watch the change in the tone and manners of the mammas burdened by
-marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies themselves, toward
-him, though, between you and me, he always seemed to me a poor sort
-of fellow. As for the past two years people have amused themselves
-by finding husbands for me (most of whom I don’t even know), the
-matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as the future Countess
-Bezúkhova. But you will understand that I have no desire for the post.
-À propos of marriages: do you know that a while ago that universal
-auntie Anna Mikháylovna told me, under the seal of strict secrecy, of
-a plan of marriage for you. It is neither more nor less than with Prince
-Vasíli’s son Anatole, whom they wish to reform by marrying him to
-someone rich and distinguée, and it is on you that his relations’
-choice has fallen. I don’t know what you will think of it, but
-I consider it my duty to let you know of it. He is said to be very
-handsome and a terrible scapegrace. That is all I have been able to find
-out about him.
-
-But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper, and
-Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apráksins’. Read the
-mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here. Though
-there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to grasp, it
-is an admirable book which calms and elevates the soul. Adieu! Give
-my respects to monsieur your father and my compliments to Mademoiselle
-Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.
-
-JULIE
-
-P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little wife.
-
-The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her luminous
-eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then she suddenly
-rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She took a sheet of
-paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is the reply she wrote,
-also in French:
-
-Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has given me great
-delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which
-you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual effect
-on you. You complain of our separation. What then should I say, if I
-dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me? Ah, if
-we had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why do you
-suppose that I should look severely on your affection for that young
-man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I understand such
-feelings in others, and if never having felt them I cannot approve of
-them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me that Christian
-love, love of one’s neighbor, love of one’s enemy, is worthier,
-sweeter, and better than the feelings which the beautiful eyes of a
-young man can inspire in a romantic and loving young girl like yourself.
-
-The news of Count Bezúkhov’s death reached us before your letter
-and my father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last
-representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own
-turn now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as late as
-possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!
-
-I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He always
-seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the quality I value
-most in people. As to his inheritance and the part played by Prince
-Vasíli, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear friend, our divine
-Saviour’s words, that it is easier for a camel to go through the
-eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, are
-terribly true. I pity Prince Vasíli but am still more sorry for Pierre.
-So young, and burdened with such riches—to what temptations he will be
-exposed! If I were asked what I desire most on earth, it would be to be
-poorer than the poorest beggar. A thousand thanks, dear friend, for the
-volume you have sent me and which has such success in Moscow. Yet since
-you tell me that among some good things it contains others which our
-weak human understanding cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to
-spend time in reading what is unintelligible and can therefore bear
-no fruit. I never could understand the fondness some people have for
-confusing their minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken
-their doubts and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for
-exaggeration quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read
-the Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries
-they contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the
-terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this flesh
-which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us
-rather confine ourselves to studying those sublime rules which our
-divine Saviour has left for our guidance here below. Let us try to
-conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less
-we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God, who
-rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we seek
-to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner will
-He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.
-
-My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me that he
-has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince Vasíli. In
-regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you, dear sweet
-friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution to which we must
-conform. However painful it may be to me, should the Almighty lay
-the duties of wife and mother upon me I shall try to perform them as
-faithfully as I can, without disquieting myself by examining my feelings
-toward him whom He may give me for husband.
-
-I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy arrival
-at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief one,
-however, for he will leave us again to take part in this unhappy war
-into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only where you
-are—at the heart of affairs and of the world—is the talk all of
-war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature—which townsfolk
-consider characteristic of the country—rumors of war are heard
-and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and
-countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day
-before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I witnessed a
-heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts enrolled from our
-people and starting to join the army. You should have seen the state of
-the mothers, wives, and children of the men who were going and should
-have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind has forgotten the
-laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of
-injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing
-one another.
-
-Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most Holy
-Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!
-
-MARY
-
-“Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already dispatched
-mine. I have written to my poor mother,” said the smiling Mademoiselle
-Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and with guttural r’s.
-She brought into Princess Mary’s strenuous, mournful, and gloomy
-world a quite different atmosphere, careless, lighthearted, and
-self-satisfied.
-
-“Princess, I must warn you,” she added, lowering her voice and
-evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with
-exaggerated grasseyement, “the prince has been scolding Michael
-Ivánovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared.”
-
-“Ah, dear friend,” replied Princess Mary, “I have asked you never
-to warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge
-him and would not have others do so.”
-
-The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five minutes
-late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the sitting
-room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o’clock, as the
-day was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played the
-clavichord.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI
-
-The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the snoring of
-the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side of the house
-through the closed doors came the sound of difficult passages—twenty
-times repeated—of a sonata by Dussek.
-
-Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to the
-porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little wife to
-alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old Tíkhon, wearing
-a wig, put his head out of the door of the antechamber, reported in
-a whisper that the prince was sleeping, and hastily closed the door.
-Tíkhon knew that neither the son’s arrival nor any other unusual
-event must be allowed to disturb the appointed order of the day. Prince
-Andrew apparently knew this as well as Tíkhon; he looked at his watch
-as if to ascertain whether his father’s habits had changed since he
-was at home last, and, having assured himself that they had not, he
-turned to his wife.
-
-“He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary’s
-room,” he said.
-
-The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes
-and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak just as
-merrily and prettily as ever.
-
-“Why, this is a palace!” she said to her husband, looking around
-with the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball.
-“Let’s come, quick, quick!” And with a glance round, she smiled at
-Tíkhon, at her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them.
-
-“Is that Mary practicing? Let’s go quietly and take her by
-surprise.”
-
-Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.
-
-“You’ve grown older, Tíkhon,” he said in passing to the old man,
-who kissed his hand.
-
-Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord
-came, the pretty, fair-haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
-rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.
-
-“Ah! what joy for the princess!” exclaimed she: “At last! I must
-let her know.”
-
-“No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne,” said
-the little princess, kissing her. “I know you already through my
-sister-in-law’s friendship for you. She was not expecting us?”
-
-They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the sound
-of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped and
-made a grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant.
-
-The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the
-middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary’s heavy tread and the
-sound of kissing. When Prince Andrew went in the two princesses, who
-had only met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in
-each other’s arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they
-happened to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her
-hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready to
-cry or to laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as
-lovers of music do when they hear a false note. The two women let go
-of one another, and then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each
-other’s hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and again began
-kissing each other on the face, and then to Prince Andrew’s surprise
-both began to cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle Bourienne also began to
-cry. Prince Andrew evidently felt ill at ease, but to the two women
-it seemed quite natural that they should cry, and apparently it never
-entered their heads that it could have been otherwise at this meeting.
-
-“Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!...” they suddenly exclaimed, and then
-laughed. “I dreamed last night...”—“You were not expecting
-us?...” “Ah! Mary, you have got thinner?...” “And you have grown
-stouter!...”
-
-“I knew the princess at once,” put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.
-
-“And I had no idea!...” exclaimed Princess Mary. “Ah, Andrew, I
-did not see you.”
-
-Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another, and
-he told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess Mary had
-turned toward her brother, and through her tears the loving, warm,
-gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful at that moment,
-rested on Prince Andrew’s face.
-
-The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip
-continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary
-and drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of
-glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they had
-had on the Spásski Hill which might have been serious for her in her
-condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had left
-all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would have
-to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that Kitty
-Odýntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor for Mary,
-a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess Mary was
-still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful eyes were full
-of love and sadness. It was plain that she was following a train of
-thought independent of her sister-in-law’s words. In the midst of a
-description of the last Petersburg fete she addressed her brother:
-
-“So you are really going to the war, Andrew?” she said sighing.
-
-Lise sighed too.
-
-“Yes, and even tomorrow,” replied her brother.
-
-“He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had
-promotion...”
-
-Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of
-thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her figure.
-
-“Is it certain?” she said.
-
-The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said: “Yes,
-quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful...”
-
-Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law’s
-and unexpectedly again began to cry.
-
-“She needs rest,” said Prince Andrew with a frown. “Don’t you,
-Lise? Take her to your room and I’ll go to Father. How is he? Just the
-same?”
-
-“Yes, just the same. Though I don’t know what your opinion will
-be,” answered the princess joyfully.
-
-“And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the
-lathe?” asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile which
-showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he was
-aware of his weaknesses.
-
-“The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and
-my geometry lessons,” said Princess Mary gleefully, as if her lessons
-in geometry were among the greatest delights of her life.
-
-When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the old
-prince to get up, Tíkhon came to call the young prince to his father.
-The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor of his
-son’s arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments while
-he dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in old-fashioned
-style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and when Prince Andrew
-entered his father’s dressing room (not with the contemptuous look and
-manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the animated face with which
-he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting on a large leather-covered
-chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, entrusting his head to Tíkhon.
-
-“Ah! here’s the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?” said the
-old man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tíkhon
-was holding fast to plait, would allow.
-
-“You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like
-this he’ll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?” And he
-held out his cheek.
-
-The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He
-used to say that a nap “after dinner was silver—before dinner,
-golden.”) He cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his
-thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father on
-the spot indicated to him. He made no reply on his father’s favorite
-topic—making fun of the military men of the day, and more particularly
-of Bonaparte.
-
-“Yes, Father, I have come to you and brought my wife who is
-pregnant,” said Prince Andrew, following every movement of his
-father’s face with an eager and respectful look. “How is your
-health?”
-
-“Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy from
-morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well.”
-
-“Thank God,” said his son smiling.
-
-“God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on,” he continued,
-returning to his hobby; “tell me how the Germans have taught you to
-fight Bonaparte by this new science you call ‘strategy.’”
-
-Prince Andrew smiled.
-
-“Give me time to collect my wits, Father,” said he, with a smile
-that showed that his father’s foibles did not prevent his son from
-loving and honoring him. “Why, I have not yet had time to settle
-down!”
-
-“Nonsense, nonsense!” cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to
-see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand. “The
-house for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her there and
-show her over, and they’ll talk nineteen to the dozen. That’s
-their woman’s way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About
-Mikhelson’s army I understand—Tolstóy ‘s too... a simultaneous
-expedition.... But what’s the southern army to do? Prussia is
-neutral... I know that. What about Austria?” said he, rising from his
-chair and pacing up and down the room followed by Tíkhon, who ran after
-him, handing him different articles of clothing. “What of Sweden? How
-will they cross Pomerania?”
-
-Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began—at first
-reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from habit
-changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on—to explain
-the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained how an army,
-ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as to bring her out
-of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part of that army was
-to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how two hundred and twenty
-thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand Russians, were to operate in
-Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty thousand Russians and as many English
-were to land at Naples, and how a total force of five hundred thousand
-men was to attack the French from different sides. The old prince did
-not evince the least interest during this explanation, but as if he were
-not listening to it continued to dress while walking about, and three
-times unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: “The
-white one, the white one!”
-
-This meant that Tíkhon was not handing him the waistcoat he wanted.
-Another time he interrupted, saying:
-
-“And will she soon be confined?” and shaking his head reproachfully
-said: “That’s bad! Go on, go on.”
-
-The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his
-description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old age:
-“Malbrook s’en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra.” *
-
- * “Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he’ll
- return.”
-
-
-His son only smiled.
-
-“I don’t say it’s a plan I approve of,” said the son; “I am
-only telling you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his plan by now,
-not worse than this one.”
-
-“Well, you’ve told me nothing new,” and the old man repeated,
-meditatively and rapidly:
-
-“Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVII
-
-At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, entered the
-dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle
-Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, who by
-a strange caprice of his employer’s was admitted to table though the
-position of that insignificant individual was such as could certainly
-not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who generally kept
-very strictly to social distinctions and rarely admitted even important
-government officials to his table, had unexpectedly selected Michael
-Ivánovich (who always went into a corner to blow his nose on his
-checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory that all men are equals,
-and had more than once impressed on his daughter that Michael Ivánovich
-was “not a whit worse than you or I.” At dinner the prince usually
-spoke to the taciturn Michael Ivánovich more often than to anyone else.
-
-In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was
-exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen—one
-behind each chair—stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head
-butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making
-signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the door
-by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at a large
-gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of the Princes
-Bolkónski, opposite which hung another such frame with a badly painted
-portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to the estate)
-of a ruling prince, in a crown—an alleged descendant of Rúrik and
-ancestor of the Bolkónskis. Prince Andrew, looking again at that
-genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a man laughs who looks at
-a portrait so characteristic of the original as to be amusing.
-
-“How thoroughly like him that is!” he said to Princess Mary, who had
-come up to him.
-
-Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not understand
-what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired her with
-reverence and was beyond question.
-
-“Everyone has his Achilles’ heel,” continued Prince Andrew.
-“Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!”
-
-Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her brother’s
-criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were heard
-coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily as was
-his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of his manners
-with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the great clock
-struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from the drawing
-room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes from under
-their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and rested on
-the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar enters, the
-sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired in all around
-him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly on the back of
-her neck.
-
-“I’m glad, glad, to see you,” he said, looking attentively into
-her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. “Sit down,
-sit down! Sit down, Michael Ivánovich!”
-
-He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman moved
-the chair for her.
-
-“Ho, ho!” said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded figure.
-“You’ve been in a hurry. That’s bad!”
-
-He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips only
-and not with his eyes.
-
-“You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible,” he
-said.
-
-The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She was
-silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father, and
-she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual acquaintances, and
-she became still more animated and chattered away giving him greetings
-from various people and retelling the town gossip.
-
-“Countess Apráksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has
-cried her eyes out,” she said, growing more and more lively.
-
-As she became animated the prince looked at her more and more sternly,
-and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had formed a
-definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed Michael Ivánovich.
-
-“Well, Michael Ivánovich, our Bonaparte will be having a bad time
-of it. Prince Andrew” (he always spoke thus of his son) “has been
-telling me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I
-never thought much of him.”
-
-Michael Ivánovich did not at all know when “you and I” had said
-such things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as
-a peg on which to hang the prince’s favorite topic, he looked
-inquiringly at the young prince, wondering what would follow.
-
-“He is a great tactician!” said the prince to his son, pointing to
-the architect.
-
-And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and the
-generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced not
-only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know the
-A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant
-little Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer any
-Potëmkins or Suvórovs left to oppose him; but he was also convinced
-that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no real war,
-but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day were playing,
-pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily bore with his
-father’s ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and listened to him
-with evident pleasure.
-
-“The past always seems good,” said he, “but did not Suvórov
-himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not know
-how to escape?”
-
-“Who told you that? Who?” cried the prince. “Suvórov!” And he
-jerked away his plate, which Tíkhon briskly caught. “Suvórov!...
-Consider, Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvórov; Moreau!...
-Moreau would have been a prisoner if Suvórov had had a free hand; but
-he had the Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have
-puzzled the devil himself! When you get there you’ll find out what
-those Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvórov couldn’t manage them so
-what chance has Michael Kutúzov? No, my dear boy,” he continued,
-“you and your generals won’t get on against Buonaparte; you’ll
-have to call in the French, so that birds of a feather may fight
-together. The German, Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America, to
-fetch the Frenchman, Moreau,” he said, alluding to the invitation made
-that year to Moreau to enter the Russian service.... “Wonderful!...
-Were the Potëmkins, Suvórovs, and Orlóvs Germans? No, lad, either you
-fellows have all lost your wits, or I have outlived mine. May God help
-you, but we’ll see what will happen. Buonaparte has become a great
-commander among them! Hm!...”
-
-“I don’t at all say that all the plans are good,” said Prince
-Andrew, “I am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You
-may laugh as much as you like, but all the same Bonaparte is a great
-general!”
-
-“Michael Ivánovich!” cried the old prince to the architect who,
-busy with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: “Didn’t
-I tell you Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he says the same
-thing.”
-
-“To be sure, your excellency,” replied the architect.
-
-The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.
-
-“Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got
-splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only
-idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began everybody
-has beaten the Germans. They beat no one—except one another. He made
-his reputation fighting them.”
-
-And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according to
-him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His
-son made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were
-presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion. He
-listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how this
-old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could know and
-discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European military and
-political events.
-
-“You think I’m an old man and don’t understand the present state
-of affairs?” concluded his father. “But it troubles me. I don’t
-sleep at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours shown
-his skill?” he concluded.
-
-“That would take too long to tell,” answered the son.
-
-“Well, then go off to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne,
-here’s another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours,” he
-exclaimed in excellent French.
-
-“You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!”
-
-“Dieu sait quand reviendra.” hummed the prince out of tune and, with
-a laugh still more so, he quitted the table.
-
-The little princess during the whole discussion and the rest of
-the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look now at her
-father-in-law and now at Princess Mary. When they left the table she
-took her sister-in-law’s arm and drew her into another room.
-
-“What a clever man your father is,” said she; “perhaps that is why
-I am afraid of him.”
-
-“Oh, he is so kind!” answered Princess Mary.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVIII
-
-Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, not altering
-his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little princess was in
-her sister-in-law’s room. Prince Andrew in a traveling coat without
-epaulettes had been packing with his valet in the rooms assigned to him.
-After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing the trunks put in, he
-ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those things he always kept
-with him remained in his room; a small box, a large canteen fitted
-with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a saber—a present from
-his father who had brought it from the siege of Ochákov. All these
-traveling effects of Prince Andrew’s were in very good order: new,
-clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with tapes.
-
-When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men capable
-of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At such moments
-one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince Andrew’s face
-looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind him he paced
-briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking straight before him
-and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear going to the war, or was
-he sad at leaving his wife?—perhaps both, but evidently he did not
-wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing footsteps in the passage he
-hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped at a table as if tying the
-cover of the small box, and assumed his usual tranquil and impenetrable
-expression. It was the heavy tread of Princess Mary that he heard.
-
-“I hear you have given orders to harness,” she cried, panting (she
-had apparently been running), “and I did so wish to have another talk
-with you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You are not
-angry with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrúsha,” she added,
-as if to explain such a question.
-
-She smiled as she uttered his pet name, “Andrúsha.” It was
-obviously strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be
-Andrúsha—the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in
-childhood.
-
-“And where is Lise?” he asked, answering her question only by a
-smile.
-
-“She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room.
-Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have,” said she, sitting
-down on the sofa, facing her brother. “She is quite a child: such a
-dear, merry child. I have grown so fond of her.”
-
-Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical and
-contemptuous look that showed itself on his face.
-
-“One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from them,
-Andrew? Don’t forget that she has grown up and been educated in
-society, and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter into
-everyone’s situation. Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner. * Think
-what it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to,
-to be parted from her husband and be left alone in the country, in her
-condition! It’s very hard.”
-
- * To understand all is to forgive all.
-
-Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at those we
-think we thoroughly understand.
-
-“You live in the country and don’t think the life terrible,” he
-replied.
-
-“I... that’s different. Why speak of me? I don’t want any other
-life, and can’t, for I know no other. But think, Andrew: for a young
-society woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her
-life, all alone—for Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what
-poor resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best society.
-There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne....”
-
-“I don’t like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all,” said Prince
-Andrew.
-
-“No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she’s much to be
-pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don’t need her,
-and she’s even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am
-even more so. I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She and
-Michael Ivánovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle and
-kind, because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne says:
-‘We don’t love people so much for the good they have done us, as
-for the good we have done them.’ Father took her when she was homeless
-after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father
-likes her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads
-splendidly.”
-
-“To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father’s character sometimes
-makes things trying for you, doesn’t it?” Prince Andrew asked
-suddenly.
-
-Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this question.
-
-“For me? For me?... Trying for me!...” said she.
-
-“He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he’s getting
-very trying,” said Prince Andrew, apparently speaking lightly of their
-father in order to puzzle or test his sister.
-
-“You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a kind of
-intellectual pride,” said the princess, following the train of her own
-thoughts rather than the trend of the conversation—“and that’s a
-great sin. How can one judge Father? But even if one might, what feeling
-except veneration could such a man as my father evoke? And I am so
-contented and happy with him. I only wish you were all as happy as I
-am.”
-
-Her brother shook his head incredulously.
-
-“The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the truth,
-Andrew... is Father’s way of treating religious subjects. I don’t
-understand how a man of his immense intellect can fail to see what is
-as clear as day, and can go so far astray. That is the only thing
-that makes me unhappy. But even in this I can see lately a shade of
-improvement. His satire has been less bitter of late, and there was a
-monk he received and had a long talk with.”
-
-“Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting your
-powder,” said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly.
-
-“Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear me.
-Andrew...” she said timidly after a moment’s silence, “I have a
-great favor to ask of you.”
-
-“What is it, dear?”
-
-“No—promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble
-and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise,
-Andrúsha!...” said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet
-taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were
-the subject of her request and must not be shown before the request was
-granted.
-
-She looked timidly at her brother.
-
-“Even if it were a great deal of trouble...” answered Prince Andrew,
-as if guessing what it was about.
-
-“Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as
-you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father’s father, our
-grandfather, wore it in all his wars.” (She still did not take out
-what she was holding in her reticule.) “So you promise?”
-
-“Of course. What is it?”
-
-“Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise me you will
-never take it off. Do you promise?”
-
-“If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won’t break my neck...
-To please you...” said Prince Andrew. But immediately, noticing
-the pained expression his joke had brought to his sister’s face, he
-repented and added: “I am glad; really, dear, I am very glad.”
-
-“Against your will He will save and have mercy on you and bring you
-to Himself, for in Him alone is truth and peace,” said she in a voice
-trembling with emotion, solemnly holding up in both hands before her
-brother a small, oval, antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour in a gold
-setting, on a finely wrought silver chain.
-
-She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrew.
-
-“Please, Andrew, for my sake!...”
-
-Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes lit
-up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her brother
-would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. Andrew understood,
-crossed himself and kissed the icon. There was a look of tenderness, for
-he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.
-
-“Thank you, my dear.” She kissed him on the forehead and sat down
-again on the sofa. They were silent for a while.
-
-“As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as you always
-used to be. Don’t judge Lise harshly,” she began. “She is so
-sweet, so good-natured, and her position now is a very hard one.”
-
-“I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Másha, or blamed
-her. Why do you say all this to me?”
-
-Red patches appeared on Princess Mary’s face and she was silent as if
-she felt guilty.
-
-“I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to. And
-I am sorry for that,” he went on.
-
-The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried to
-say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the little
-princess had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her forebodings
-about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had complained of her
-fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After crying she had fallen
-asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his sister.
-
-“Know this, Másha: I can’t reproach, have not reproached, and never
-shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach myself
-with anything in regard to her; and that always will be so in whatever
-circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the truth... if
-you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No! But why this
-is so I don’t know...”
-
-As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed
-her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and
-unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over
-her head toward the darkness of the open doorway.
-
-“Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or—go and wake and I’ll
-come in a moment. Petrúshka!” he called to his valet: “Come here,
-take these away. Put this on the seat and this to the right.”
-
-Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said:
-“Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him
-to give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have been
-answered.”
-
-“Well, maybe!” said Prince Andrew. “Go, Másha; I’ll come
-immediately.”
-
-On the way to his sister’s room, in the passage which connected one
-wing with the other, Prince Andrew met Mademoiselle Bourienne smiling
-sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic and
-artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages.
-
-“Oh! I thought you were in your room,” she said, for some reason
-blushing and dropping her eyes.
-
-Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression of anger suddenly
-came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at her forehead
-and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt that the
-Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he reached his
-sister’s room his wife was already awake and her merry voice, hurrying
-one word after another, came through the open door. She was speaking as
-usual in French, and as if after long self-restraint she wished to make
-up for lost time.
-
-“No, but imagine the old Countess Zúbova, with false curls and her
-mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old age....
-Ha, ha, ha! Mary!”
-
-This very sentence about Countess Zúbova and this same laugh Prince
-Andrew had already heard from his wife in the presence of others some
-five times. He entered the room softly. The little princess, plump and
-rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work in her hands, talking
-incessantly, repeating Petersburg reminiscences and even phrases. Prince
-Andrew came up, stroked her hair, and asked if she felt rested after
-their journey. She answered him and continued her chatter.
-
-The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn
-night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole.
-Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense
-house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The
-domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to
-the young prince. The members of the household were all gathered in the
-reception hall: Michael Ivánovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess
-Mary, and the little princess. Prince Andrew had been called to his
-father’s study as the latter wished to say good-by to him alone. All
-were waiting for them to come out.
-
-When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in his old-age
-spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but his
-son, sat at the table writing. He glanced round.
-
-“Going?” And he went on writing.
-
-“I’ve come to say good-by.”
-
-“Kiss me here,” and he touched his cheek: “Thanks, thanks!”
-
-“What do you thank me for?”
-
-“For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman’s apron strings.
-The Service before everything. Thanks, thanks!” And he went on
-writing, so that his quill spluttered and squeaked. “If you have
-anything to say, say it. These two things can be done together,” he
-added.
-
-“About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on your
-hands....”
-
-“Why talk nonsense? Say what you want.”
-
-“When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an accoucheur.... Let
-him be here....”
-
-The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed his
-stern eyes on his son.
-
-“I know that no one can help if nature does not do her work,” said
-Prince Andrew, evidently confused. “I know that out of a million
-cases only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been
-telling her things. She has had a dream and is frightened.”
-
-“Hm... Hm...” muttered the old prince to himself, finishing what he
-was writing. “I’ll do it.”
-
-He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his son began to
-laugh.
-
-“It’s a bad business, eh?”
-
-“What is bad, Father?”
-
-“The wife!” said the old prince, briefly and significantly.
-
-“I don’t understand!” said Prince Andrew.
-
-“No, it can’t be helped, lad,” said the prince. “They’re
-all like that; one can’t unmarry. Don’t be afraid; I won’t tell
-anyone, but you know it yourself.”
-
-He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it, looked
-straight into his son’s face with keen eyes which seemed to see
-through him, and again laughed his frigid laugh.
-
-The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him. The
-old man continued to fold and seal his letter, snatching up and throwing
-down the wax, the seal, and the paper, with his accustomed rapidity.
-
-“What’s to be done? She’s pretty! I will do everything. Make your
-mind easy,” said he in abrupt sentences while sealing his letter.
-
-Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his father
-understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his son.
-
-“Listen!” said he; “don’t worry about your wife: what can be
-done shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilariónovich. *
-I have written that he should make use of you in proper places and not
-keep you long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember
-and like him. Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all
-right—serve him. Nicholas Bolkónski’s son need not serve under
-anyone if he is in disfavor. Now come here.”
-
- *Kutúzov.
-
-He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his son
-was accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised the
-lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled with his
-bold, tall, close handwriting.
-
-“I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs;
-hand them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond
-and a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of
-Suvórov’s wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for
-you to read when I am gone. You will find them useful.”
-
-Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long time
-yet. He felt that he must not say it.
-
-“I will do it all, Father,” he said.
-
-“Well, now, good-by!” He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced
-him. “Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt me,
-your old father...” he paused unexpectedly, and then in a querulous
-voice suddenly shrieked: “but if I hear that you have not behaved like
-a son of Nicholas Bolkónski, I shall be ashamed!”
-
-“You need not have said that to me, Father,” said the son with a
-smile.
-
-The old man was silent.
-
-“I also wanted to ask you,” continued Prince Andrew, “if I’m
-killed and if I have a son, do not let him be taken away from you—as I
-said yesterday... let him grow up with you.... Please.”
-
-“Not let the wife have him?” said the old man, and laughed.
-
-They stood silent, facing one another. The old man’s sharp eyes were
-fixed straight on his son’s. Something twitched in the lower part of
-the old prince’s face.
-
-“We’ve said good-by. Go!” he suddenly shouted in a loud, angry
-voice, opening his door.
-
-“What is it? What?” asked both princesses when they saw for a moment
-at the door Prince Andrew and the figure of the old man in a white
-dressing gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.
-
-Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.
-
-“Well!” he said, turning to his wife.
-
-And this “Well!” sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying: “Now
-go through your performance.”
-
-“Andrew, already!” said the little princess, turning pale and
-looking with dismay at her husband.
-
-He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder.
-
-He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her face,
-and carefully placed her in an easy chair.
-
-“Adieu, Mary,” said he gently to his sister, taking her by the hand
-and kissing her, and then he left the room with rapid steps.
-
-The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle Bourienne chafing
-her temples. Princess Mary, supporting her sister-in-law, still looked
-with her beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through which Prince
-Andrew had gone and made the sign of the cross in his direction. From
-the study, like pistol shots, came the frequent sound of the old man
-angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince Andrew gone when the study
-door opened quickly and the stern figure of the old man in the white
-dressing gown looked out.
-
-“Gone? That’s all right!” said he; and looking angrily at the
-unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed
-the door.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK TWO: 1805
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and towns of
-the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly arriving from
-Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and burdening the
-inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the headquarters of
-the commander in chief, Kutúzov.
-
-On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just reached
-Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be inspected
-by the commander in chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance of the
-locality and surroundings—fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled roofs,
-and hills in the distance—and despite the fact that the inhabitants
-(who gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not Russians, the
-regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment preparing for
-an inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.
-
-On the evening of the last day’s march an order had been received that
-the commander in chief would inspect the regiment on the march. Though
-the words of the order were not clear to the regimental commander, and
-the question arose whether the troops were to be in marching order or
-not, it was decided at a consultation between the battalion commanders
-to present the regiment in parade order, on the principle that it is
-always better to “bow too low than not bow low enough.” So the
-soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending and cleaning all
-night long without closing their eyes, while the adjutants and
-company commanders calculated and reckoned, and by morning the
-regiment—instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it had been on
-its last march the day before—presented a well-ordered array of two
-thousand men each of whom knew his place and his duty, had every button
-and every strap in place, and shone with cleanliness. And not only
-externally was all in order, but had it pleased the commander in chief
-to look under the uniforms he would have found on every man a clean
-shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number of articles, “awl,
-soap, and all,” as the soldiers say. There was only one circumstance
-concerning which no one could be at ease. It was the state of the
-soldiers’ boots. More than half the men’s boots were in holes. But
-this defect was not due to any fault of the regimental commander, for
-in spite of repeated demands boots had not been issued by the Austrian
-commissariat, and the regiment had marched some seven hundred miles.
-
-The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and
-thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider from
-chest to back than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new uniform
-showing the creases where it had been folded and thick gold epaulettes
-which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive shoulders. He
-had the air of a man happily performing one of the most solemn duties of
-his life. He walked about in front of the line and at every step pulled
-himself up, slightly arching his back. It was plain that the commander
-admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and that his whole mind was
-engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to indicate that, besides military
-matters, social interests and the fair sex occupied no small part of his
-thoughts.
-
-“Well, Michael Mítrich, sir?” he said, addressing one of the
-battalion commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain that
-they both felt happy). “We had our hands full last night. However, I
-think the regiment is not a bad one, eh?”
-
-The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed.
-
-“It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsarítsin
-Meadow.”
-
-“What?” asked the commander.
-
-At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had been
-posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an aide-de-camp
-followed by a Cossack.
-
-The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been
-clearly worded the day before, namely, that the commander in chief
-wished to see the regiment just in the state in which it had been on
-the march: in their greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation
-whatever.
-
-A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutúzov the day
-before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army of
-the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutúzov, not considering this
-junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of his view,
-to show the Austrian general the wretched state in which the troops
-arrived from Russia. With this object he intended to meet the regiment;
-so the worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the commander
-in chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know these
-circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that the
-men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and that the
-commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On hearing this the
-regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged his shoulders, and
-spread out his arms with a choleric gesture.
-
-“A fine mess we’ve made of it!” he remarked.
-
-“There now! Didn’t I tell you, Michael Mítrich, that if it was said
-‘on the march’ it meant in greatcoats?” said he reproachfully to
-the battalion commander. “Oh, my God!” he added, stepping resolutely
-forward. “Company commanders!” he shouted in a voice accustomed to
-command. “Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?” he asked
-the aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently relating to the
-personage he was referring to.
-
-“In an hour’s time, I should say.”
-
-“Shall we have time to change clothes?”
-
-“I don’t know, General....”
-
-The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered the
-soldiers to change into their greatcoats. The company commanders ran off
-to their companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the greatcoats
-were not in very good condition), and instantly the squares that had up
-to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and stretch and
-hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were running to and fro, throwing
-up their knapsacks with a jerk of their shoulders and pulling the straps
-over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and drawing the sleeves on
-with upraised arms.
-
-In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares had become gray
-instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his jerky steps
-to the front of the regiment and examined it from a distance.
-
-“Whatever is this? This!” he shouted and stood still. “Commander
-of the third company!”
-
-“Commander of the third company wanted by the general!... commander to
-the general... third company to the commander.” The words passed along
-the lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing officer.
-
-When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their destination in
-a cry of: “The general to the third company,” the missing officer
-appeared from behind his company and, though he was a middle-aged man
-and not in the habit of running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on his
-toes toward the general. The captain’s face showed the uneasiness of
-a schoolboy who is told to repeat a lesson he has not learned. Spots
-appeared on his nose, the redness of which was evidently due to
-intemperance, and his mouth twitched nervously. The general looked the
-captain up and down as he came up panting, slackening his pace as he
-approached.
-
-“You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What is this?”
-shouted the regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and pointing
-at a soldier in the ranks of the third company in a greatcoat of bluish
-cloth, which contrasted with the others. “What have you been after?
-The commander in chief is expected and you leave your place? Eh? I’ll
-teach you to dress the men in fancy coats for a parade.... Eh...?”
-
-The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on his superior,
-pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to his cap, as if in this
-pressure lay his only hope of salvation.
-
-“Well, why don’t you speak? Whom have you got there dressed up as a
-Hungarian?” said the commander with an austere gibe.
-
-“Your excellency...”
-
-“Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your
-excellency?... nobody knows.”
-
-“Your excellency, it’s the officer Dólokhov, who has been reduced
-to the ranks,” said the captain softly.
-
-“Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier?
-If a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the
-others.”
-
-“Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march.”
-
-“Gave him leave? Leave? That’s just like you young men,” said the
-regimental commander cooling down a little. “Leave indeed.... One says
-a word to you and you... What?” he added with renewed irritation, “I
-beg you to dress your men decently.”
-
-And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his jerky
-steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display of
-anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further excuse for
-wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished badge, at another
-because his line was not straight, he reached the third company.
-
-“H-o-o-w are you standing? Where’s your leg? Your leg?” shouted
-the commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there were
-still five men between him and Dólokhov with his bluish-gray uniform.
-
-Dólokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with his
-clear, insolent eyes in the general’s face.
-
-“Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his coat...
-the ras...” he did not finish.
-
-“General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure...”
-Dólokhov hurriedly interrupted.
-
-“No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!”
-
-“Not bound to endure insults,” Dólokhov concluded in loud, ringing
-tones.
-
-The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became silent,
-angrily pulling down his tight scarf.
-
-“I request you to have the goodness to change your coat,” he said as
-he turned away.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-“He’s coming!” shouted the signaler at that moment.
-
-The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the stirrup
-with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle, righted himself,
-drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute countenance, opening
-his mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment fluttered like a bird
-preening its plumage and became motionless.
-
-“Att-ention!” shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking
-voice which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment, and
-welcome for the approaching chief.
-
-Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a high,
-light blue Viennese calèche, slightly creaking on its springs and drawn
-by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the calèche galloped the suite
-and a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutúzov sat an Austrian general, in
-a white uniform that looked strange among the Russian black ones. The
-calèche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutúzov and the Austrian
-general were talking in low voices and Kutúzov smiled slightly as
-treading heavily he stepped down from the carriage just as if those two
-thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the regimental commander did
-not exist.
-
-The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as with a
-jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence the
-feeble voice of the commander in chief was heard. The regiment roared,
-“Health to your ex... len... len... lency!” and again all became
-silent. At first Kutúzov stood still while the regiment moved; then he
-and the general in white, accompanied by the suite, walked between the
-ranks.
-
-From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief and
-devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and from
-the way he walked through the ranks behind the generals, bending forward
-and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and from the way he
-darted forward at every word or gesture of the commander in chief,
-it was evident that he performed his duty as a subordinate with even
-greater zeal than his duty as a commander. Thanks to the strictness and
-assiduity of its commander the regiment, in comparison with others that
-had reached Braunau at the same time, was in splendid condition. There
-were only 217 sick and stragglers. Everything was in good order except
-the boots.
-
-Kutúzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few
-friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war, sometimes
-also to the soldiers. Looking at their boots he several times shook his
-head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian general with an expression
-which seemed to say that he was not blaming anyone, but could not help
-noticing what a bad state of things it was. The regimental commander
-ran forward on each such occasion, fearing to miss a single word of the
-commander in chief’s regarding the regiment. Behind Kutúzov, at a
-distance that allowed every softly spoken word to be heard, followed
-some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen talked among themselves
-and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the commander in chief walked
-a handsome adjutant. This was Prince Bolkónski. Beside him was his
-comrade Nesvítski, a tall staff officer, extremely stout, with a
-kindly, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes. Nesvítski could hardly
-keep from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar officer who walked
-beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and without a smile or a
-change in the expression of his fixed eyes, watched the regimental
-commander’s back and mimicked his every movement. Each time the
-commander started and bent forward, the hussar started and bent forward
-in exactly the same manner. Nesvítski laughed and nudged the others to
-make them look at the wag.
-
-Kutúzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which were
-starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the
-third company he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected this,
-involuntarily came closer to him.
-
-“Ah, Timókhin!” said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had
-been reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat.
-
-One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself
-more than Timókhin had done when he was reprimanded by the regimental
-commander, but now that the commander in chief addressed him he drew
-himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not have sustained
-it had the commander in chief continued to look at him, and so Kutúzov,
-who evidently understood his case and wished him nothing but good,
-quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile flitting over his
-scarred and puffy face.
-
-“Another Ismail comrade,” said he. “A brave officer! Are you
-satisfied with him?” he asked the regimental commander.
-
-And the latter—unconscious that he was being reflected in the hussar
-officer as in a looking glass—started, moved forward, and answered:
-“Highly satisfied, your excellency!”
-
-“We all have our weaknesses,” said Kutúzov smiling and walking away
-from him. “He used to have a predilection for Bacchus.”
-
-The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this and did
-not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of the red-nosed
-captain and his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his expression and pose
-with such exactitude that Nesvítski could not help laughing. Kutúzov
-turned round. The officer evidently had complete control of his face,
-and while Kutúzov was turning managed to make a grimace and then assume
-a most serious, deferential, and innocent expression.
-
-The third company was the last, and Kutúzov pondered, apparently trying
-to recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from among the
-suite and said in French:
-
-“You told me to remind you of the officer Dólokhov, reduced to the
-ranks in this regiment.”
-
-“Where is Dólokhov?” asked Kutúzov.
-
-Dólokhov, who had already changed into a soldier’s gray greatcoat,
-did not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired
-soldier, with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks, went
-up to the commander in chief, and presented arms.
-
-“Have you a complaint to make?” Kutúzov asked with a slight frown.
-
-“This is Dólokhov,” said Prince Andrew.
-
-“Ah!” said Kutúzov. “I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your
-duty. The Emperor is gracious, and I shan’t forget you if you deserve
-well.”
-
-The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just as boldly as
-they had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by their expression
-to tear open the veil of convention that separates a commander in chief
-so widely from a private.
-
-“One thing I ask of your excellency,” Dólokhov said in his firm,
-ringing, deliberate voice. “I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault
-and prove my devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!”
-
-Kutúzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had
-turned from Captain Timókhin again flitted over his face. He turned
-away with a grimace as if to say that everything Dólokhov had said to
-him and everything he could say had long been known to him, that he was
-weary of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away and
-went to the carriage.
-
-The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their appointed
-quarters near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and clothes and
-to rest after their hard marches.
-
-“You won’t bear me a grudge, Prokhór Ignátych?” said the
-regimental commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its
-quarters and riding up to Captain Timókhin who was walking in front.
-(The regimental commander’s face now that the inspection was happily
-over beamed with irrepressible delight.) “It’s in the Emperor’s
-service... it can’t be helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on
-parade... I am the first to apologize, you know me!... He was very
-pleased!” And he held out his hand to the captain.
-
-“Don’t mention it, General, as if I’d be so bold!” replied the
-captain, his nose growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where
-two front teeth were missing that had been knocked out by the butt end
-of a gun at Ismail.
-
-“And tell Mr. Dólokhov that I won’t forget him—he may be quite
-easy. And tell me, please—I’ve been meaning to ask—how is he
-behaving himself, and in general...”
-
-“As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your excellency;
-but his character...” said Timókhin.
-
-“And what about his character?” asked the regimental commander.
-
-“It’s different on different days,” answered the captain. “One
-day he is sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he’s
-a wild beast.... In Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew.”
-
-“Oh, well, well!” remarked the regimental commander. “Still, one
-must have pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important
-connections... Well, then, you just...”
-
-“I will, your excellency,” said Timókhin, showing by his smile that
-he understood his commander’s wish.
-
-“Well, of course, of course!”
-
-The regimental commander sought out Dólokhov in the ranks and, reining
-in his horse, said to him:
-
-“After the next affair... epaulettes.”
-
-Dólokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the mocking
-smile on his lips change.
-
-“Well, that’s all right,” continued the regimental commander. “A
-cup of vodka for the men from me,” he added so that the soldiers
-could hear. “I thank you all! God be praised!” and he rode past that
-company and overtook the next one.
-
-“Well, he’s really a good fellow, one can serve under him,” said
-Timókhin to the subaltern beside him.
-
-“In a word, a hearty one...” said the subaltern, laughing (the
-regimental commander was nicknamed King of Hearts).
-
-The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected the
-soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The soldiers’ voices could be
-heard on every side.
-
-“And they said Kutúzov was blind of one eye?”
-
-“And so he is! Quite blind!”
-
-“No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands...
-he noticed everything...”
-
-“When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I...”
-
-“And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were
-smeared with chalk—as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as
-they do the guns.”
-
-“I say, Fédeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You
-were near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau.”
-
-“Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn’t
-know! The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are
-putting them down. When they’ve been put down, the war with Buonaparte
-will begin. And he says Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you’re a fool.
-You’d better listen more carefully!”
-
-“What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is
-turning into the village already... they will have their buckwheat
-cooked before we reach our quarters.”
-
-“Give me a biscuit, you devil!”
-
-“And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That’s just it, friend! Ah,
-well, never mind, here you are.”
-
-“They might call a halt here or we’ll have to do another four miles
-without eating.”
-
-“Wasn’t it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just sit still
-and are drawn along.”
-
-“And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There they all
-seemed to be Poles—all under the Russian crown—but here they’re
-all regular Germans.”
-
-“Singers to the front” came the captain’s order.
-
-And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A
-drummer, their leader, turned round facing the singers, and flourishing
-his arm, began a long-drawn-out soldiers’ song, commencing with the
-words: “Morning dawned, the sun was rising,” and concluding: “On
-then, brothers, on to glory, led by Father Kámenski.” This song had
-been composed in the Turkish campaign and now being sung in Austria, the
-only change being that the words “Father Kámenski” were replaced by
-“Father Kutúzov.”
-
-Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms
-as if flinging something to the ground, the drummer—a lean, handsome
-soldier of forty—looked sternly at the singers and screwed up his
-eyes. Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on him,
-he raised both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but precious
-object above his head and, holding it there for some seconds, suddenly
-flung it down and began:
-
-“Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!”
-
-“Oh, my bower new...!” chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet
-player, in spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the front
-and, walking backwards before the company, jerked his shoulders and
-flourished his castanets as if threatening someone. The soldiers,
-swinging their arms and keeping time spontaneously, marched with long
-steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the creaking of springs,
-and the tramp of horses’ hoofs were heard. Kutúzov and his suite were
-returning to the town. The commander in chief made a sign that the
-men should continue to march at ease, and he and all his suite showed
-pleasure at the sound of the singing and the sight of the dancing
-soldier and the gay and smartly marching men. In the second file
-from the right flank, beside which the carriage passed the company,
-a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted notice. It was Dólokhov
-marching with particular grace and boldness in time to the song and
-looking at those driving past as if he pitied all who were not at that
-moment marching with the company. The hussar cornet of Kutúzov’s
-suite who had mimicked the regimental commander, fell back from the
-carriage and rode up to Dólokhov.
-
-Hussar cornet Zherkóv had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to
-the wild set led by Dólokhov. Zherkóv had met Dólokhov abroad as a
-private and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutúzov had
-spoken to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the cordiality of
-an old friend.
-
-“My dear fellow, how are you?” said he through the singing, making
-his horse keep pace with the company.
-
-“How am I?” Dólokhov answered coldly. “I am as you see.”
-
-The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy
-gaiety with which Zherkóv spoke, and to the intentional coldness of
-Dólokhov’s reply.
-
-“And how do you get on with the officers?” inquired Zherkóv.
-
-“All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto the
-staff?”
-
-“I was attached; I’m on duty.”
-
-Both were silent.
-
-“She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve,” went the
-song, arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness.
-Their conversation would probably have been different but for the effect
-of that song.
-
-“Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?” asked Dólokhov.
-
-“The devil only knows! They say so.”
-
-“I’m glad,” answered Dólokhov briefly and clearly, as the song
-demanded.
-
-“I say, come round some evening and we’ll have a game of faro!”
-said Zherkóv.
-
-“Why, have you too much money?”
-
-“Do come.”
-
-“I can’t. I’ve sworn not to. I won’t drink and won’t play till
-I get reinstated.”
-
-“Well, that’s only till the first engagement.”
-
-“We shall see.”
-
-They were again silent.
-
-“Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the
-staff...”
-
-Dólokhov smiled. “Don’t trouble. If I want anything, I won’t
-beg—I’ll take it!”
-
-“Well, never mind; I only...”
-
-“And I only...”
-
-“Good-by.”
-
-“Good health...”
-
- “It’s a long, long way.
- To my native land...”
-
-
-Zherkóv touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly from
-foot to foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down, galloped
-past the company, and overtook the carriage, still keeping time to the
-song.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-On returning from the review, Kutúzov took the Austrian general into
-his private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers
-relating to the condition of the troops on their arrival, and the
-letters that had come from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in command of
-the advanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkónski came into the room with the
-required papers. Kutúzov and the Austrian member of the Hofkriegsrath
-were sitting at the table on which a plan was spread out.
-
-“Ah!...” said Kutúzov glancing at Bolkónski as if by this
-exclamation he was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with the
-conversation in French.
-
-“All I can say, General,” said he with a pleasant elegance
-of expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to each
-deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutúzov himself listened
-with pleasure to his own voice. “All I can say, General, is that if
-the matter depended on my personal wishes, the will of His Majesty the
-Emperor Francis would have been fulfilled long ago. I should long
-ago have joined the archduke. And believe me on my honour that to me
-personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme command
-of the army into the hands of a better informed and more skillful
-general—of whom Austria has so many—and to lay down all this heavy
-responsibility. But circumstances are sometimes too strong for us,
-General.”
-
-And Kutúzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, “You are quite at
-liberty not to believe me and I don’t even care whether you do or
-not, but you have no grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole
-point.”
-
-The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to reply
-in the same tone.
-
-“On the contrary,” he said, in a querulous and angry tone that
-contrasted with his flattering words, “on the contrary, your
-excellency’s participation in the common action is highly valued by
-His Majesty; but we think the present delay is depriving the splendid
-Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they have been
-accustomed to win in their battles,” he concluded his evidently
-prearranged sentence.
-
-Kutúzov bowed with the same smile.
-
-“But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with which
-His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine that the
-Austrian troops, under the direction of so skillful a leader as General
-Mack, have by now already gained a decisive victory and no longer need
-our aid,” said Kutúzov.
-
-The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an Austrian
-defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the unfavorable rumors
-that were afloat, and so Kutúzov’s suggestion of an Austrian victory
-sounded much like irony. But Kutúzov went on blandly smiling with the
-same expression, which seemed to say that he had a right to suppose
-so. And, in fact, the last letter he had received from Mack’s army
-informed him of a victory and stated strategically the position of the
-army was very favorable.
-
-“Give me that letter,” said Kutúzov turning to Prince Andrew.
-“Please have a look at it”—and Kutúzov with an ironical smile
-about the corners of his mouth read to the Austrian general the
-following passage, in German, from the Archduke Ferdinand’s letter:
-
-We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men with
-which to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech. Also,
-as we are masters of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage of
-commanding both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not
-cross the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line
-of communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his
-intention should he try to direct his whole force against our faithful
-ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the Imperial
-Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in conjunction with
-it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the fate he deserves.
-
-Kutúzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at the
-member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.
-
-“But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect
-the worst,” said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have done
-with jests and to come to business. He involuntarily looked round at the
-aide-de-camp.
-
-“Excuse me, General,” interrupted Kutúzov, also turning to Prince
-Andrew. “Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlóvski all the
-reports from our scouts. Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and
-here is one from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are
-these,” he said, handing him several papers, “make a neat memorandum
-in French out of all this, showing all the news we have had of the
-movements of the Austrian army, and then give it to his excellency.”
-
-Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from the
-first not only what had been said but also what Kutúzov would have
-liked to tell him. He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both,
-stepped softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room.
-
-Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia, he
-had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his face,
-in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of his former
-affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man who has time
-to think of the impression he makes on others, but is occupied with
-agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed more satisfaction
-with himself and those around him, his smile and glance were brighter
-and more attractive.
-
-Kutúzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very kindly,
-promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the other adjutants,
-and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more serious commissions.
-From Vienna Kutúzov wrote to his old comrade, Prince Andrew’s father.
-
-Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his industry,
-firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to have such a
-subordinate by me.
-
-On Kutúzov’s staff, among his fellow officers and in the army
-generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two
-quite opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be
-different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great things
-of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with them Prince
-Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority, disliked him and
-considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But among these people
-Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that they respected and even
-feared him.
-
-Coming out of Kutúzov’s room into the waiting room with the papers in
-his hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp on duty,
-Kozlóvski, who was sitting at the window with a book.
-
-“Well, Prince?” asked Kozlóvski.
-
-“I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why we are not
-advancing.”
-
-“And why is it?”
-
-Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.
-
-“Any news from Mack?”
-
-“No.”
-
-“If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come.”
-
-“Probably,” said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door.
-
-But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the
-order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head,
-who had evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door.
-Prince Andrew stopped short.
-
-“Commander in Chief Kutúzov?” said the newly arrived general
-speaking quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and
-advancing straight toward the inner door.
-
-“The commander in chief is engaged,” said Kozlóvski, going
-hurriedly up to the unknown general and blocking his way to the door.
-“Whom shall I announce?”
-
-The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlóvski, who was
-rather short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.
-
-“The commander in chief is engaged,” repeated Kozlóvski calmly.
-
-The general’s face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He took
-out a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out the
-leaf, gave it to Kozlóvski, stepped quickly to the window, and threw
-himself into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if asking, “Why
-do they look at me?” Then he lifted his head, stretched his neck as
-if he intended to say something, but immediately, with affected
-indifference, began to hum to himself, producing a queer sound which
-immediately broke off. The door of the private room opened and Kutúzov
-appeared in the doorway. The general with the bandaged head bent forward
-as though running away from some danger, and, making long, quick strides
-with his thin legs, went up to Kutúzov.
-
-“Vous voyez le malheureux Mack,” he uttered in a broken voice.
-
-Kutúzov’s face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly
-immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a wave
-and his forehead became smooth again, he bowed his head respectfully,
-closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before him, and closed
-the door himself behind him.
-
-The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been beaten
-and that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be correct.
-Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various directions with
-orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had hitherto been
-inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy.
-
-Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief interest
-lay in the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack and heard the
-details of his disaster he understood that half the campaign was lost,
-understood all the difficulties of the Russian army’s position, and
-vividly imagined what awaited it and the part he would have to
-play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the thought of the
-humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week’s time he might,
-perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian encounter with the
-French since Suvórov met them. He feared that Bonaparte’s genius
-might outweigh all the courage of the Russian troops, and at the same
-time could not admit the idea of his hero being disgraced.
-
-Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward his
-room to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the corridor
-he met Nesvítski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag Zherkóv;
-they were as usual laughing.
-
-“Why are you so glum?” asked Nesvítski noticing Prince Andrew’s
-pale face and glittering eyes.
-
-“There’s nothing to be gay about,” answered Bolkónski.
-
-Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvítski and Zherkóv, there came toward
-them from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian general
-who on Kutúzov’s staff in charge of the provisioning of the Russian
-army, and the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived the previous
-evening. There was room enough in the wide corridor for the generals to
-pass the three officers quite easily, but Zherkóv, pushing Nesvítski
-aside with his arm, said in a breathless voice,
-
-“They’re coming!... they’re coming!... Stand aside, make way,
-please make way!”
-
-The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid
-embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkóv there suddenly
-appeared a stupid smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.
-
-“Your excellency,” said he in German, stepping forward and
-addressing the Austrian general, “I have the honor to congratulate
-you.”
-
-He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with the
-other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson.
-
-The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing the
-seriousness of his stupid smile, could not but give him a moment’s
-attention. He screwed up his eyes showing that he was listening.
-
-“I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has arrived, quite
-well, only a little bruised just here,” he added, pointing with a
-beaming smile to his head.
-
-The general frowned, turned away, and went on.
-
-“Gott, wie naiv!” * said he angrily, after he had gone a few steps.
-
- * “Good God, what simplicity!”
-
-
-Nesvítski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but
-Bolkónski, turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and
-turned to Zherkóv. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance
-of Mack, the news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the
-Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkóv’s untimely jest.
-
-“If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself,” he said
-sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, “I can’t prevent
-your doing so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in my
-presence, I will teach you to behave yourself.”
-
-Nesvítski and Zherkóv were so surprised by this outburst that they
-gazed at Bolkónski silently with wide-open eyes.
-
-“What’s the matter? I only congratulated them,” said Zherkóv.
-
-“I am not jesting with you; please be silent!” cried Bolkónski,
-and taking Nesvítski’s arm he left Zherkóv, who did not know what to
-say.
-
-“Come, what’s the matter, old fellow?” said Nesvítski trying to
-soothe him.
-
-“What’s the matter?” exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in
-his excitement. “Don’t you understand that either we are officers
-serving our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and
-grieving at the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely
-lackeys who care nothing for their master’s business. Quarante mille
-hommes massacrés et l’armée de nos alliés détruite, et vous
-trouvez là le mot pour rire,” * he said, as if strengthening his
-views by this French sentence. “C’est bien pour un garçon de rien
-comme cet individu dont vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, pas
-pour vous. *(2) Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself in this
-way,” he added in Russian—but pronouncing the word with a French
-accent—having noticed that Zherkóv could still hear him.
-
- * “Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies
- destroyed, and you find that a cause for jesting!”
-
- * (2) “It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow
- of whom you have made a friend, but not for you, not for
- you.”
-
-
-He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he turned
-and went out of the corridor.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-The Pávlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The
-squadron in which Nicholas Rostóv served as a cadet was quartered in
-the German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were
-assigned to cavalry-captain Denísov, the squadron commander, known
-throughout the whole cavalry division as Váska Denísov. Cadet Rostóv,
-ever since he had overtaken the regiment in Poland, had lived with the
-squadron commander.
-
-On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the news
-of Mack’s defeat, the camp life of the officers of this squadron was
-proceeding as usual. Denísov, who had been losing at cards all night,
-had not yet come home when Rostóv rode back early in the morning from
-a foraging expedition. Rostóv in his cadet uniform, with a jerk to his
-horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg over the saddle with a supple
-youthful movement, stood for a moment in the stirrup as if loathe to
-part from his horse, and at last sprang down and called to his orderly.
-
-“Ah, Bondarénko, dear friend!” said he to the hussar who rushed up
-headlong to the horse. “Walk him up and down, my dear fellow,” he
-continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted young
-people show to everyone when they are happy.
-
-“Yes, your excellency,” answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his
-head.
-
-“Mind, walk him up and down well!”
-
-Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarénko had already
-thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse’s head. It was
-evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that it paid to
-serve him. Rostóv patted the horse’s neck and then his flank, and
-lingered for a moment.
-
-“Splendid! What a horse he will be!” he thought with a smile, and
-holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the
-porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork in
-hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his face
-immediately brightened on seeing Rostóv. “Schön gut Morgen! Schön
-gut Morgen!” * he said winking with a merry smile, evidently pleased
-to greet the young man.
-
- * “A very good morning! A very good morning!”
-
-
-“Schon fleissig?” * said Rostóv with the same gay brotherly smile
-which did not leave his eager face. “Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch Russen!
-Kaiser Alexander hoch!” *(2) said he, quoting words often repeated by
-the German landlord.
-
- * “Busy already?”
-
- * (2) “Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians!
- Hurrah for Emperor Alexander!”
-
-
-The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled off his cap, and
-waving it above his head cried:
-
-“Und die ganze Welt hoch!” *
-
- * “And hurrah for the whole world!”
-
-
-Rostóv waved his cap above his head like the German and cried laughing,
-“Und vivat die ganze Welt!” Though neither the German cleaning his
-cowshed nor Rostóv back with his platoon from foraging for hay had any
-reason for rejoicing, they looked at each other with joyful delight and
-brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of their mutual affection,
-and parted smiling, the German returning to his cowshed and Rostóv
-going to the cottage he occupied with Denísov.
-
-“What about your master?” he asked Lavrúshka, Denísov’s orderly,
-whom all the regiment knew for a rogue.
-
-“Hasn’t been in since the evening. Must have been losing,”
-answered Lavrúshka. “I know by now, if he wins he comes back early to
-brag about it, but if he stays out till morning it means he’s lost and
-will come back in a rage. Will you have coffee?”
-
-“Yes, bring some.”
-
-Ten minutes later Lavrúshka brought the coffee. “He’s coming!”
-said he. “Now for trouble!” Rostóv looked out of the window and
-saw Denísov coming home. Denísov was a small man with a red face,
-sparkling black eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair. He wore an
-unfastened cloak, wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a crumpled
-shako on the back of his head. He came up to the porch gloomily, hanging
-his head.
-
-“Lavwúska!” he shouted loudly and angrily, “take it off,
-blockhead!”
-
-“Well, I am taking it off,” replied Lavrúshka’s voice.
-
-“Ah, you’re up already,” said Denísov, entering the room.
-
-“Long ago,” answered Rostóv, “I have already been for the hay,
-and have seen Fräulein Mathilde.”
-
-“Weally! And I’ve been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a
-damned fool!” cried Denísov, not pronouncing his r’s. “Such ill
-luck! Such ill luck. As soon as you left, it began and went on. Hullo
-there! Tea!”
-
-Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong
-teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his thick
-tangled black hair.
-
-“And what devil made me go to that wat?” (an officer nicknamed
-“the rat”) he said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both
-hands. “Just fancy, he didn’t let me win a single cahd, not one
-cahd.”
-
-He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in his
-fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while he
-continued to shout.
-
-“He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles it;
-gives the singles and snatches the doubles!”
-
-He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it away.
-Then he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked cheerfully
-with his glittering, black eyes at Rostóv.
-
-“If at least we had some women here; but there’s nothing foh one
-to do but dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who’s
-there?” he said, turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy
-boots and the clinking of spurs that came to a stop, and a respectful
-cough.
-
-“The squadron quartermaster!” said Lavrúshka.
-
-Denísov’s face puckered still more.
-
-“Wetched!” he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in it.
-“Wostóv, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove the
-purse undah the pillow,” he said, and went out to the quartermaster.
-
-Rostóv took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new coins
-in separate piles, began counting them.
-
-“Ah! Telyánin! How d’ye do? They plucked me last night,” came
-Denísov’s voice from the next room.
-
-“Where? At Bykov’s, at the rat’s... I knew it,” replied a piping
-voice, and Lieutenant Telyánin, a small officer of the same squadron,
-entered the room.
-
-Rostóv thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little hand
-which was offered him. Telyánin for some reason had been transferred
-from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very well in the
-regiment but was not liked; Rostóv especially detested him and was
-unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to the man.
-
-“Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?” he asked. (Rook
-was a young horse Telyánin had sold to Rostóv.)
-
-The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in the
-face; his eyes continually wandered from one object to another.
-
-“I saw you riding this morning...” he added.
-
-“Oh, he’s all right, a good horse,” answered Rostóv, though the
-horse for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half
-that sum. “He’s begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg,” he
-added.
-
-“The hoof’s cracked! That’s nothing. I’ll teach you what to do
-and show you what kind of rivet to use.”
-
-“Yes, please do,” said Rostóv.
-
-“I’ll show you, I’ll show you! It’s not a secret. And it’s a
-horse you’ll thank me for.”
-
-“Then I’ll have it brought round,” said Rostóv wishing to avoid
-Telyánin, and he went out to give the order.
-
-In the passage Denísov, with a pipe, was squatting on the threshold
-facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing Rostóv,
-Denísov screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder with his
-thumb to the room where Telyánin was sitting, he frowned and gave a
-shudder of disgust.
-
-“Ugh! I don’t like that fellow,” he said, regardless of the
-quartermaster’s presence.
-
-Rostóv shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: “Nor do I, but
-what’s one to do?” and, having given his order, he returned to
-Telyánin.
-
-Telyánin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostóv had
-left him, rubbing his small white hands.
-
-“Well there certainly are disgusting people,” thought Rostóv as he
-entered.
-
-“Have you told them to bring the horse?” asked Telyánin, getting up
-and looking carelessly about him.
-
-“I have.”
-
-“Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denísov about
-yesterday’s order. Have you got it, Denísov?”
-
-“Not yet. But where are you off to?”
-
-“I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse,” said
-Telyánin.
-
-They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant
-explained how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters.
-
-When Rostóv went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on the
-table. Denísov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a sheet of
-paper. He looked gloomily in Rostóv’s face and said: “I am witing
-to her.”
-
-He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and,
-evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to
-write, told Rostóv the contents of his letter.
-
-“You see, my fwiend,” he said, “we sleep when we don’t love. We
-are childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God, one
-is pua’ as on the fihst day of cweation... Who’s that now? Send him
-to the devil, I’m busy!” he shouted to Lavrúshka, who went up to
-him not in the least abashed.
-
-“Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It’s the
-quartermaster for the money.”
-
-Denísov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped.
-
-“Wetched business,” he muttered to himself. “How much is left in
-the puhse?” he asked, turning to Rostóv.
-
-“Seven new and three old imperials.”
-
-“Oh, it’s wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you
-sca’cwow? Call the quahtehmasteh,” he shouted to Lavrúshka.
-
-“Please, Denísov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know,”
-said Rostóv, blushing.
-
-“Don’t like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don’t,” growled
-Denísov.
-
-“But if you won’t accept money from me like a comrade, you will
-offend me. Really I have some,” Rostóv repeated.
-
-“No, I tell you.”
-
-And Denísov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.
-
-“Where have you put it, Wostóv?”
-
-“Under the lower pillow.”
-
-“It’s not there.”
-
-Denísov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.
-
-“That’s a miwacle.”
-
-“Wait, haven’t you dropped it?” said Rostóv, picking up the
-pillows one at a time and shaking them.
-
-He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there.
-
-“Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you kept
-it under your head like a treasure,” said Rostóv. “I put it just
-here. Where is it?” he asked, turning to Lavrúshka.
-
-“I haven’t been in the room. It must be where you put it.”
-
-“But it isn’t?...”
-
-“You’re always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget
-it. Feel in your pockets.”
-
-“No, if I hadn’t thought of it being a treasure,” said Rostóv,
-“but I remember putting it there.”
-
-Lavrúshka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and under
-the table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of the
-room. Denísov silently watched Lavrúshka’s movements, and when the
-latter threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found
-Denísov glanced at Rostóv.
-
-“Wostóv, you’ve not been playing schoolboy twicks...”
-
-Rostóv felt Denísov’s gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and
-instantly dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested
-somewhere below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not
-draw breath.
-
-“And there hasn’t been anyone in the room except the lieutenant and
-yourselves. It must be here somewhere,” said Lavrúshka.
-
-“Now then, you devil’s puppet, look alive and hunt for it!”
-shouted Denísov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man with
-a threatening gesture. “If the purse isn’t found I’ll flog you,
-I’ll flog you all.”
-
-Rostóv, his eyes avoiding Denísov, began buttoning his coat, buckled
-on his saber, and put on his cap.
-
-“I must have that purse, I tell you,” shouted Denísov, shaking his
-orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.
-
-“Denísov, let him alone, I know who has taken it,” said Rostóv,
-going toward the door without raising his eyes. Denísov paused, thought
-a moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostóv hinted at, seized
-his arm.
-
-“Nonsense!” he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood
-out like cords. “You are mad, I tell you. I won’t allow it.
-The purse is here! I’ll flay this scoundwel alive, and it will be
-found.”
-
-“I know who has taken it,” repeated Rostóv in an unsteady voice,
-and went to the door.
-
-“And I tell you, don’t you dahe to do it!” shouted Denísov,
-rushing at the cadet to restrain him.
-
-But Rostóv pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though
-Denísov were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his
-face.
-
-“Do you understand what you’re saying?” he said in a trembling
-voice. “There was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it
-is not so, then...”
-
-He could not finish, and ran out of the room.
-
-“Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody,” were the last words
-Rostóv heard.
-
-Rostóv went to Telyánin’s quarters.
-
-“The master is not in, he’s gone to headquarters,” said
-Telyánin’s orderly. “Has something happened?” he added, surprised
-at the cadet’s troubled face.
-
-“No, nothing.”
-
-“You’ve only just missed him,” said the orderly.
-
-The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and
-Rostóv, without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was
-an inn in the village which the officers frequented. Rostóv rode up to
-it and saw Telyánin’s horse at the porch.
-
-In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish of
-sausages and a bottle of wine.
-
-“Ah, you’ve come here too, young man!” he said, smiling and
-raising his eyebrows.
-
-“Yes,” said Rostóv as if it cost him a great deal to utter the
-word; and he sat down at the nearest table.
-
-Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in the
-room. No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of knives
-and the munching of the lieutenant.
-
-When Telyánin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a double
-purse and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white, turned-up
-fingers, drew out a gold imperial, and lifting his eyebrows gave it to
-the waiter.
-
-“Please be quick,” he said.
-
-The coin was a new one. Rostóv rose and went up to Telyánin.
-
-“Allow me to look at your purse,” he said in a low, almost
-inaudible, voice.
-
-With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyánin handed him the
-purse.
-
-“Yes, it’s a nice purse. Yes, yes,” he said, growing suddenly
-pale, and added, “Look at it, young man.”
-
-Rostóv took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in it, and
-looked at Telyánin. The lieutenant was looking about in his usual way
-and suddenly seemed to grow very merry.
-
-“If we get to Vienna I’ll get rid of it there but in these wretched
-little towns there’s nowhere to spend it,” said he. “Well, let me
-have it, young man, I’m going.”
-
-Rostóv did not speak.
-
-“And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite
-decently here,” continued Telyánin. “Now then, let me have it.”
-
-He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostóv let go of
-it. Telyánin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into the
-pocket of his riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his mouth
-slightly open, as if to say, “Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in my
-pocket and that’s quite simple and is no one else’s business.”
-
-“Well, young man?” he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted
-brows he glanced into Rostóv’s eyes.
-
-Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyánin’s eyes to
-Rostóv’s and back, and back again and again in an instant.
-
-“Come here,” said Rostóv, catching hold of Telyánin’s arm and
-almost dragging him to the window. “That money is Denísov’s; you
-took it...” he whispered just above Telyánin’s ear.
-
-“What? What? How dare you? What?” said Telyánin.
-
-But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an entreaty for
-pardon. As soon as Rostóv heard them, an enormous load of doubt
-fell from him. He was glad, and at the same instant began to pity the
-miserable man who stood before him, but the task he had begun had to be
-completed.
-
-“Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine,” muttered
-Telyánin, taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room. “We
-must have an explanation...”
-
-“I know it and shall prove it,” said Rostóv.
-
-“I...”
-
-Every muscle of Telyánin’s pale, terrified face began to quiver, his
-eyes still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not rising
-to Rostóv’s face, and his sobs were audible.
-
-“Count!... Don’t ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money,
-take it...” He threw it on the table. “I have an old father and
-mother!...”
-
-Rostóv took the money, avoiding Telyánin’s eyes, and went out of the
-room without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced his
-steps. “O God,” he said with tears in his eyes, “how could you do
-it?”
-
-“Count...” said Telyánin drawing nearer to him.
-
-“Don’t touch me,” said Rostóv, drawing back. “If you need it,
-take the money,” and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-That same evening there was an animated discussion among the
-squadron’s officers in Denísov’s quarters.
-
-“And I tell you, Rostóv, that you must apologize to the colonel!”
-said a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and
-many wrinkles on his large features, to Rostóv who was crimson with
-excitement.
-
-The staff captain, Kírsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks for
-affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission.
-
-“I will allow no one to call me a liar!” cried Rostóv. “He told
-me I lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me
-on duty every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make
-me apologize, because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it
-beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then...”
-
-“You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen,” interrupted
-the staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache.
-“You tell the colonel in the presence of other officers that an
-officer has stolen...”
-
-“I’m not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of
-other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but I am
-not a diplomatist. That’s why I joined the hussars, thinking that here
-one would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying—so let him
-give me satisfaction...”
-
-“That’s all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that’s not the
-point. Ask Denísov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet to
-demand satisfaction of his regimental commander?”
-
-Denísov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the
-conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered the
-staff captain’s question by a disapproving shake of his head.
-
-“You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other
-officers,” continued the staff captain, “and Bogdánich” (the
-colonel was called Bogdánich) “shuts you up.”
-
-“He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth.”
-
-“Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and must
-apologize.”
-
-“Not on any account!” exclaimed Rostóv.
-
-“I did not expect this of you,” said the staff captain seriously and
-severely. “You don’t wish to apologize, but, man, it’s not only to
-him but to the whole regiment—all of us—you’re to blame all round.
-The case is this: you ought to have thought the matter over and
-taken advice; but no, you go and blurt it all straight out before the
-officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and
-disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because of one
-scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don’t see it like that. And
-Bogdánich was a brick: he told you you were saying what was not true.
-It’s not pleasant, but what’s to be done, my dear fellow? You landed
-yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth the thing over, some
-conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish to make the whole
-affair public. You are offended at being put on duty a bit, but why not
-apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever Bogdánich may
-be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel! You’re quick at
-taking offense, but you don’t mind disgracing the whole regiment!”
-The staff captain’s voice began to tremble. “You have been in the
-regiment next to no time, my lad, you’re here today and tomorrow
-you’ll be appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your fingers when
-it is said ‘There are thieves among the Pávlograd officers!’ But
-it’s not all the same to us! Am I not right, Denísov? It’s not the
-same!”
-
-Denísov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked with
-his glittering black eyes at Rostóv.
-
-“You value your own pride and don’t wish to apologize,” continued
-the staff captain, “but we old fellows, who have grown up in and, God
-willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of the
-regiment, and Bogdánich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old fellow! And
-all this is not right, it’s not right! You may take offense or not but
-I always stick to mother truth. It’s not right!”
-
-And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostóv.
-
-“That’s twue, devil take it!” shouted Denísov, jumping up. “Now
-then, Wostóv, now then!”
-
-Rostóv, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one officer
-and then at the other.
-
-“No, gentlemen, no... you mustn’t think... I quite understand.
-You’re wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of
-the regiment I’d... Ah well, I’ll show that in action, and for me
-the honor of the flag... Well, never mind, it’s true I’m to blame,
-to blame all round. Well, what else do you want?...”
-
-“Come, that’s right, Count!” cried the staff captain, turning
-round and clapping Rostóv on the shoulder with his big hand.
-
-“I tell you,” shouted Denísov, “he’s a fine fellow.”
-
-“That’s better, Count,” said the staff captain, beginning to
-address Rostóv by his title, as if in recognition of his confession.
-“Go and apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!”
-
-“Gentlemen, I’ll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me,”
-said Rostóv in an imploring voice, “but I can’t apologize, by God I
-can’t, do what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little boy
-asking forgiveness?”
-
-Denísov began to laugh.
-
-“It’ll be worse for you. Bogdánich is vindictive and you’ll pay
-for your obstinacy,” said Kírsten.
-
-“No, on my word it’s not obstinacy! I can’t describe the feeling.
-I can’t...”
-
-“Well, it’s as you like,” said the staff captain. “And what has
-become of that scoundrel?” he asked Denísov.
-
-“He has weported himself sick, he’s to be stwuck off the list
-tomowwow,” muttered Denísov.
-
-“It is an illness, there’s no other way of explaining it,” said
-the staff captain.
-
-“Illness or not, he’d better not cwoss my path. I’d kill him!”
-shouted Denísov in a bloodthirsty tone.
-
-Just then Zherkóv entered the room.
-
-“What brings you here?” cried the officers turning to the newcomer.
-
-“We’re to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his
-whole army.”
-
-“It’s not true!”
-
-“I’ve seen him myself!”
-
-“What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?”
-
-“Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how
-did you come here?”
-
-“I’ve been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil,
-Mack. An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on
-Mack’s arrival... What’s the matter, Rostóv? You look as if you’d
-just come out of a hot bath.”
-
-“Oh, my dear fellow, we’re in such a stew here these last two
-days.”
-
-The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by
-Zherkóv. They were under orders to advance next day.
-
-“We’re going into action, gentlemen!”
-
-“Well, thank God! We’ve been sitting here too long!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-Kutúzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges over
-the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October 23 the
-Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the Russian
-baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were defiling
-through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.
-
-It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out
-before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the
-bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain, and
-then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects could
-be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down below,
-the little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed houses, its
-cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed jostling
-masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels, an island,
-and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the confluence of
-the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky left bank of the
-Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic background of green
-treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a convent stood out beyond a
-wild virgin pine forest, and far away on the other side of the Enns the
-enemy’s horse patrols could be discerned.
-
-Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in command of
-the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the country through
-his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvítski, who had been sent to
-the rearguard by the commander in chief, was sitting on the trail of a
-gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied him had handed him a knapsack
-and a flask, and Nesvítski was treating some officers to pies and real
-doppelkümmel. The officers gladly gathered round him, some on their
-knees, some squatting Turkish fashion on the wet grass.
-
-“Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It’s
-a fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?” Nesvítski
-was saying.
-
-“Thank you very much, Prince,” answered one of the officers, pleased
-to be talking to a staff officer of such importance. “It’s a lovely
-place! We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a
-splendid house!”
-
-“Look, Prince,” said another, who would have dearly liked to take
-another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining the
-countryside—“See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look there
-in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging something.
-They’ll ransack that castle,” he remarked with evident approval.
-
-“So they will,” said Nesvítski. “No, but what I should like,”
-added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, “would be
-to slip in over there.”
-
-He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed and
-gleamed.
-
-“That would be fine, gentlemen!”
-
-The officers laughed.
-
-“Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls
-among them. On my word I’d give five years of my life for it!”
-
-“They must be feeling dull, too,” said one of the bolder officers,
-laughing.
-
-Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out something to
-the general, who looked through his field glass.
-
-“Yes, so it is, so it is,” said the general angrily, lowering the
-field glass and shrugging his shoulders, “so it is! They’ll be fired
-on at the crossing. And why are they dawdling there?”
-
-On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and from
-their battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant report of
-a shot, and our troops could be seen hurrying to the crossing.
-
-Nesvítski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.
-
-“Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?” he said.
-
-“It’s a bad business,” said the general without answering him,
-“our men have been wasting time.”
-
-“Hadn’t I better ride over, your excellency?” asked Nesvítski.
-
-“Yes, please do,” answered the general, and he repeated the order
-that had already once been given in detail: “and tell the hussars
-that they are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the
-inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected.”
-
-“Very good,” answered Nesvítski.
-
-He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the knapsack
-and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.
-
-“I’ll really call in on the nuns,” he said to the officers who
-watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the
-hill.
-
-“Now then, let’s see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!”
-said the general, turning to an artillery officer. “Have a little fun
-to pass the time.”
-
-“Crew, to your guns!” commanded the officer.
-
-In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and began
-loading.
-
-“One!” came the command.
-
-Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening
-metallic roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our
-troops below the hill and fell far short of the enemy, a little smoke
-showing the spot where it burst.
-
-The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone got
-up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as plainly
-visible as if but a stone’s throw away, and the movements of the
-approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came fully
-out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the solitary shot
-and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a single joyous and
-spirited impression.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-Two of the enemy’s shots had already flown across the bridge, where
-there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvítski, who had
-alighted from his horse and whose big body was jammed against the
-railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood a few
-steps behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each time Prince
-Nesvítski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed him back again
-and pressed him against the railings, and all he could do was to smile.
-
-“What a fine fellow you are, friend!” said the Cossack to a convoy
-soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were
-crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. “What a fellow!
-You can’t wait a moment! Don’t you see the general wants to pass?”
-
-But the convoyman took no notice of the word “general” and shouted
-at the soldiers who were blocking his way. “Hi there, boys! Keep to
-the left! Wait a bit.” But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder to
-shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a dense
-mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvítski saw the rapid, noisy
-little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying round the piles of
-the bridge chased each other along. Looking on the bridge he saw equally
-uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder straps, covered shakos,
-knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and, under the shakos, faces with
-broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and listless tired expressions, and
-feet that moved through the sticky mud that covered the planks of the
-bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of
-white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with
-a type of face different from that of the men, squeezed his way along;
-sometimes like a chip of wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot,
-an orderly, or a townsman was carried through the waves of infantry;
-and sometimes like a log floating down the river, an officers’ or
-company’s baggage wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on
-all sides, moved across the bridge.
-
-“It’s as if a dam had burst,” said the Cossack hopelessly. “Are
-there many more of you to come?”
-
-“A million all but one!” replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat,
-with a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man.
-
-“If he” (he meant the enemy) “begins popping at the bridge now,”
-said the old soldier dismally to a comrade, “you’ll forget to
-scratch yourself.”
-
-That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a cart.
-
-“Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?” said an
-orderly, running behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it.
-
-And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry soldiers who
-had evidently been drinking.
-
-“And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt
-end of his gun...” a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said
-gaily, with a wide swing of his arm.
-
-“Yes, the ham was just delicious...” answered another with a loud
-laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvítski did not learn who
-had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.
-
-“Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they’ll
-all be killed,” a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.
-
-“As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean,” said a young soldier
-with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, “I felt like
-dying of fright. I did, ‘pon my word, I got that frightened!” said
-he, as if bragging of having been frightened.
-
-That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had gone
-before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a German, and
-seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine brindled cow with
-a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A woman with an unweaned
-baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl with bright red cheeks
-were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently these fugitives were
-allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes of all the soldiers
-turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was passing at foot pace
-all the soldiers’ remarks related to the two young ones. Every face
-bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly thoughts about the
-women.
-
-“Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!”
-
-“Sell me the missis,” said another soldier, addressing the German,
-who, angry and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast
-eyes.
-
-“See how smart she’s made herself! Oh, the devils!”
-
-“There, Fedótov, you should be quartered on them!”
-
-“I have seen as much before now, mate!”
-
-“Where are you going?” asked an infantry officer who was eating an
-apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.
-
-The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand.
-
-“Take it if you like,” said the officer, giving the girl an apple.
-
-The girl smiled and took it. Nesvítski like the rest of the men on the
-bridge did not take his eyes off the women till they had passed. When
-they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers followed, with the same
-kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often happens, the horses of
-a convoy wagon became restive at the end of the bridge, and the whole
-crowd had to wait.
-
-“And why are they stopping? There’s no proper order!” said the
-soldiers. “Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can’t you wait?
-It’ll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here’s an officer jammed
-in too”—different voices were saying in the crowd, as the men looked
-at one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the bridge.
-
-Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvítski
-suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching...
-something big, that splashed into the water.
-
-“Just see where it carries to!” a soldier near by said sternly,
-looking round at the sound.
-
-“Encouraging us to get along quicker,” said another uneasily.
-
-The crowd moved on again. Nesvítski realized that it was a cannon ball.
-
-“Hey, Cossack, my horse!” he said. “Now, then, you there! get out
-of the way! Make way!”
-
-With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting
-continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make way
-for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and those
-nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves pressed still
-harder from behind.
-
-“Nesvítski, Nesvítski! you numskull!” came a hoarse voice from
-behind him.
-
-Nesvítski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but separated
-by the living mass of moving infantry, Váska Denísov, red and shaggy,
-with his cap on the back of his black head and a cloak hanging jauntily
-over his shoulder.
-
-“Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!” shouted Denísov
-evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot
-whites glittering and rolling as he waved his sheathed saber in a small
-bare hand as red as his face.
-
-“Ah, Váska!” joyfully replied Nesvítski. “What’s up with
-you?”
-
-“The squadwon can’t pass,” shouted Váska Denísov, showing his
-white teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which
-twitched its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting
-white foam from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his
-hoofs, and apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider let
-him. “What is this? They’re like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of the
-way!... Let us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart! I’ll hack
-you with my saber!” he shouted, actually drawing his saber from its
-scabbard and flourishing it.
-
-The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and
-Denísov joined Nesvítski.
-
-“How’s it you’re not drunk today?” said Nesvítski when the
-other had ridden up to him.
-
-“They don’t even give one time to dwink!” answered Váska
-Denísov. “They keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they
-mean to fight, let’s fight. But the devil knows what this is.”
-
-“What a dandy you are today!” said Nesvítski, looking at
-Denísov’s new cloak and saddlecloth.
-
-Denísov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that diffused
-a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvítski’s nose.
-
-“Of course. I’m going into action! I’ve shaved, bwushed my teeth,
-and scented myself.”
-
-The imposing figure of Nesvítski followed by his Cossack, and
-the determination of Denísov who flourished his sword and shouted
-frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through
-to the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the
-bridge Nesvítski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the order,
-and having done this he rode back.
-
-Having cleared the way Denísov stopped at the end of the bridge.
-Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the
-ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he watched his squadron draw
-nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping,
-resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in
-front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to emerge
-on his side of it.
-
-The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the
-trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will,
-estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms usually
-encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past them in
-regular order.
-
-“Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!” said one.
-
-“What good are they? They’re led about just for show!” remarked
-another.
-
-“Don’t kick up the dust, you infantry!” jested an hussar whose
-prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.
-
-“I’d like to put you on a two days’ march with a knapsack! Your
-fine cords would soon get a bit rubbed,” said an infantryman, wiping
-the mud off his face with his sleeve. “Perched up there, you’re more
-like a bird than a man.”
-
-“There now, Zíkin, they ought to put you on a horse. You’d look
-fine,” said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent under
-the weight of his knapsack.
-
-“Take a stick between your legs, that’ll suit you for a horse!”
-the hussar shouted back.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing
-together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last
-the baggage wagons had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last
-battalion came onto the bridge. Only Denísov’s squadron of hussars
-remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who could
-be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was not yet visible from
-the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through which the
-river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile away.
-At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of our
-Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the high
-ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These were the
-French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at a trot. All
-the officers and men of Denísov’s squadron, though they tried to talk
-of other things and to look in other directions, thought only of what
-was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking at the patches
-appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the enemy’s troops.
-The weather had cleared again since noon and the sun was descending
-brightly upon the Danube and the dark hills around it. It was calm, and
-at intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of the enemy could be heard
-from the hill. There was no one now between the squadron and the enemy
-except a few scattered skirmishers. An empty space of some seven hundred
-yards was all that separated them. The enemy ceased firing, and that
-stern, threatening, inaccessible, and intangible line which separates
-two hostile armies was all the more clearly felt.
-
-“One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing
-the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And
-what is there? Who is there?—there beyond that field, that tree, that
-roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know. You fear
-and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must
-be crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as you will
-inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of death. But you are
-strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by other such
-excitedly animated and healthy men.” So thinks, or at any rate
-feels, anyone who comes in sight of the enemy, and that feeling gives
-a particular glamour and glad keenness of impression to everything that
-takes place at such moments.
-
-On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon rose,
-and a ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron. The
-officers who had been standing together rode off to their places. The
-hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence fell on the whole
-squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front and at the squadron
-commander, awaiting the word of command. A second and a third cannon
-ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the hussars, but the balls
-with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads of the horsemen and fell
-somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not look round, but at the sound
-of each shot, as at the word of command, the whole squadron with its
-rows of faces so alike yet so different, holding its breath while the
-ball flew past, rose in the stirrups and sank back again. The soldiers
-without turning their heads glanced at one another, curious to see their
-comrades’ impression. Every face, from Denísov’s to that of the
-bugler, showed one common expression of conflict, irritation, and
-excitement, around chin and mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking
-at the soldiers as if threatening to punish them. Cadet Mirónov ducked
-every time a ball flew past. Rostóv on the left flank, mounted on his
-Rook—a handsome horse despite its game leg—had the happy air of a
-schoolboy called up before a large audience for an examination in which
-he feels sure he will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone
-with a clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly
-he sat under fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same
-indication of something new and stern showed round the mouth.
-
-“Who’s that curtseying there? Cadet Miwónov! That’s not wight!
-Look at me,” cried Denísov who, unable to keep still on one spot,
-kept turning his horse in front of the squadron.
-
-The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Váska Denísov, and his whole
-short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in
-which he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually
-did, especially toward evening when he had emptied his second bottle; he
-was only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown back like birds
-when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into the sides of his
-good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling backwards in the
-saddle, he galloped to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in
-a hoarse voice to the men to look to their pistols. He rode up to
-Kírsten. The staff captain on his broad-backed, steady mare came at a
-walk to meet him. His face with its long mustache was serious as always,
-only his eyes were brighter than usual.
-
-“Well, what about it?” said he to Denísov. “It won’t come to a
-fight. You’ll see—we shall retire.”
-
-“The devil only knows what they’re about!” muttered Denísov.
-“Ah, Wostóv,” he cried noticing the cadet’s bright face,
-“you’ve got it at last.”
-
-And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet. Rostóv
-felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the bridge.
-Denísov galloped up to him.
-
-“Your excellency! Let us attack them! I’ll dwive them off.”
-
-“Attack indeed!” said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his
-face as if driving off a troublesome fly. “And why are you stopping
-here? Don’t you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the squadron
-back.”
-
-The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire without
-having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in the front
-line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted the farther side
-of the river.
-
-The two Pávlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up the
-hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdánich Schubert, came
-up to Denísov’s squadron and rode at a footpace not far from Rostóv,
-without taking any notice of him although they were now meeting for the
-first time since their encounter concerning Telyánin. Rostóv, feeling
-that he was at the front and in the power of a man toward whom he now
-admitted that he had been to blame, did not lift his eyes from the
-colonel’s athletic back, his nape covered with light hair, and his red
-neck. It seemed to Rostóv that Bogdánich was only pretending not
-to notice him, and that his whole aim now was to test the cadet’s
-courage, so he drew himself up and looked around him merrily; then it
-seemed to him that Bogdánich rode so near in order to show him his
-courage. Next he thought that his enemy would send the squadron on a
-desperate attack just to punish him—Rostóv. Then he imagined how,
-after the attack, Bogdánich would come up to him as he lay wounded and
-would magnanimously extend the hand of reconciliation.
-
-The high-shouldered figure of Zherkóv, familiar to the Pávlograds as
-he had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel.
-After his dismissal from headquarters Zherkóv had not remained in the
-regiment, saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front when he
-could get more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and had succeeded
-in attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince Bagratión. He now
-came to his former chief with an order from the commander of the rear
-guard.
-
-“Colonel,” he said, addressing Rostóv’s enemy with an air of
-gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades, “there is an order
-to stop and fire the bridge.”
-
-“An order to who?” asked the colonel morosely.
-
-“I don’t myself know ‘to who,’” replied the cornet in a
-serious tone, “but the prince told me to ‘go and tell the colonel
-that the hussars must return quickly and fire the bridge.’”
-
-Zherkóv was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the
-colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout Nesvítski
-came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely carry his
-weight.
-
-“How’s this, Colonel?” he shouted as he approached. “I told you
-to fire the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are all
-beside themselves over there and one can’t make anything out.”
-
-The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to Nesvítski.
-
-“You spoke to me of inflammable material,” said he, “but you said
-nothing about firing it.”
-
-“But, my dear sir,” said Nesvítski as he drew up, taking off his
-cap and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand,
-“wasn’t I telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material
-had been put in position?”
-
-“I am not your ‘dear sir,’ Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell
-me to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders
-strictly to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would it
-burn, I could not know by the holy spirit!”
-
-“Ah, that’s always the way!” said Nesvítski with a wave of the
-hand. “How did you get here?” said he, turning to Zherkóv.
-
-“On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!”
-
-“You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer...” continued the colonel in an
-offended tone.
-
-“Colonel,” interrupted the officer of the suite, “You must be
-quick or the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot.”
-
-The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the stout
-staff officer, and at Zherkóv, and he frowned.
-
-“I will the bridge fire,” he said in a solemn tone as if to announce
-that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would still
-do the right thing.
-
-Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to blame
-for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second
-squadron, that in which Rostóv was serving under Denísov, to return to
-the bridge.
-
-“There, it’s just as I thought,” said Rostóv to himself. “He
-wishes to test me!” His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his
-face. “Let him see whether I am a coward!” he thought.
-
-Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression
-appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostóv watched his enemy,
-the colonel, closely—to find in his face confirmation of his own
-conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostóv, and looked
-as he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came the word
-of command.
-
-“Look sharp! Look sharp!” several voices repeated around him.
-
-Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the
-hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The men
-were crossing themselves. Rostóv no longer looked at the colonel, he
-had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much afraid
-that his heart stood still. His hand trembled as he gave his horse into
-an orderly’s charge, and he felt the blood rush to his heart with
-a thud. Denísov rode past him, leaning back and shouting something.
-Rostóv saw nothing but the hussars running all around him, their spurs
-catching and their sabers clattering.
-
-“Stretchers!” shouted someone behind him.
-
-Rostóv did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,
-trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not
-looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud, stumbled,
-and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.
-
-“At boss zides, Captain,” he heard the voice of the colonel, who,
-having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a
-triumphant, cheerful face.
-
-Rostóv wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy and
-was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the front
-the better. But Bogdánich, without looking at or recognizing Rostóv,
-shouted to him:
-
-“Who’s that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right! Come
-back, Cadet!” he cried angrily; and turning to Denísov, who, showing
-off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:
-
-“Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount,” he said.
-
-“Oh, every bullet has its billet,” answered Váska Denísov, turning
-in his saddle.
-
-
-Meanwhile Nesvítski, Zherkóv, and the officer of the suite were
-standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small
-group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord,
-and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and then at
-what was approaching in the distance from the opposite side—the blue
-uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as artillery.
-
-“Will they burn the bridge or not? Who’ll get there first? Will they
-get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within grapeshot
-range and wipe them out?” These were the questions each man of the
-troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily asked himself
-with a sinking heart—watching the bridge and the hussars in the bright
-evening light and the blue tunics advancing from the other side with
-their bayonets and guns.
-
-“Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!” said Nesvítski; “they are
-within grapeshot range now.”
-
-“He shouldn’t have taken so many men,” said the officer of the
-suite.
-
-“True enough,” answered Nesvítski; “two smart fellows could have
-done the job just as well.”
-
-“Ah, your excellency,” put in Zherkóv, his eyes fixed on the
-hussars, but still with that naïve air that made it impossible to know
-whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. “Ah, your excellency!
-How you look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the
-Vladímir medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, the
-squadron may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon. Our
-Bogdánich knows how things are done.”
-
-“There now!” said the officer of the suite, “that’s
-grapeshot.”
-
-He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being detached
-and hurriedly removed.
-
-On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke
-appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at the
-moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two
-reports one after another, and a third.
-
-“Oh! Oh!” groaned Nesvítski as if in fierce pain, seizing the
-officer of the suite by the arm. “Look! A man has fallen! Fallen,
-fallen!”
-
-“Two, I think.”
-
-“If I were Tsar I would never go to war,” said Nesvítski, turning
-away.
-
-The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue
-uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again
-but at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the
-bridge. But this time Nesvítski could not see what was happening there,
-as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had succeeded in
-setting it on fire and the French batteries were now firing at them, no
-longer to hinder them but because the guns were trained and there was
-someone to fire at.
-
-The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the hussars
-got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot went too
-high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of hussars and
-knocked three of them over.
-
-Rostóv, absorbed by his relations with Bogdánich, had paused on the
-bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he
-had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the
-bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like the
-other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard a
-rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar nearest
-to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostóv ran up to him with
-the others. Again someone shouted, “Stretchers!” Four men seized the
-hussar and began lifting him.
-
-“Oooh! For Christ’s sake let me alone!” cried the wounded man, but
-still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.
-
-Nicholas Rostóv turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed
-into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the
-sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep!
-How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the
-waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the faraway
-blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and
-the pine forests veiled in the mist of their summits... There was peace
-and happiness... “I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I
-were there,” thought Rostóv. “In myself alone and in that sunshine
-there is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering, fear, and
-this uncertainty and hurry... There—they are shouting again, and
-again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it,
-death, is here above me and around... Another instant and I shall never
-again see the sun, this water, that gorge!...”
-
-At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other
-stretchers came into view before Rostóv. And the fear of death and of
-the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one
-feeling of sickening agitation.
-
-“O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect
-me!” Rostóv whispered.
-
-The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their voices
-sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from sight.
-
-“Well, fwiend? So you’ve smelt powdah!” shouted Váska Denísov
-just above his ear.
-
-“It’s all over; but I am a coward—yes, a coward!” thought
-Rostóv, and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting
-one foot, from the orderly and began to mount.
-
-“Was that grapeshot?” he asked Denísov.
-
-“Yes and no mistake!” cried Denísov. “You worked like wegular
-bwicks and it’s nasty work! An attack’s pleasant work! Hacking
-away at the dogs! But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them
-shooting at you like a target.”
-
-And Denísov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostóv, composed
-of the colonel, Nesvítski, Zherkóv, and the officer from the suite.
-
-“Well, it seems that no one has noticed,” thought Rostóv. And this
-was true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation
-which the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced.
-
-“Here’s something for you to report,” said Zherkóv. “See if I
-don’t get promoted to a sublieutenancy.”
-
-“Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!” said the colonel
-triumphantly and gaily.
-
-“And if he asks about the losses?”
-
-“A trifle,” said the colonel in his bass voice: “two hussars
-wounded, and one knocked out,” he added, unable to restrain a happy
-smile, and pronouncing the phrase “knocked out” with ringing
-distinctness.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the command
-of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to it,
-losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of supplies,
-and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything that had
-been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men commanded
-by Kutúzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube, stopping where
-overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions only as far as
-necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its heavy equipment.
-There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and Melk; but despite the
-courage and endurance—acknowledged even by the enemy—with which the
-Russians fought, the only consequence of these actions was a yet more
-rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had escaped capture at Ulm and had
-joined Kutúzov at Braunau now separated from the Russian army, and
-Kutúzov was left with only his own weak and exhausted forces. The
-defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought of. Instead of an
-offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared in accord with the
-modern science of strategics, had been handed to Kutúzov when he was in
-Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the sole and almost unattainable
-aim remaining for him was to effect a junction with the forces that were
-advancing from Russia, without losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm.
-
-On the twenty-eighth of October Kutúzov with his army crossed to the
-left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time
-with the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the
-thirtieth he attacked Mortier’s division, which was on the left bank,
-and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were taken:
-banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time, after a
-fortnight’s retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a fight
-had not only held the field but had repulsed the French. Though the
-troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of their number
-in killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number of sick and
-wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube with a letter
-in which Kutúzov entrusted them to the humanity of the enemy; and
-though the big hospitals and the houses in Krems converted into military
-hospitals could no longer accommodate all the sick and wounded, yet the
-stand made at Krems and the victory over Mortier raised the spirits of
-the army considerably. Throughout the whole army and at headquarters
-most joyful though erroneous rumors were rife of the imaginary approach
-of columns from Russia, of some victory gained by the Austrians, and of
-the retreat of the frightened Bonaparte.
-
-Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the Austrian
-General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse had been
-wounded under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a bullet. As a mark
-of the commander in chief’s special favor he was sent with the news of
-this victory to the Austrian court, now no longer at Vienna (which was
-threatened by the French) but at Brünn. Despite his apparently delicate
-build Prince Andrew could endure physical fatigue far better than many
-very muscular men, and on the night of the battle, having arrived
-at Krems excited but not weary, with dispatches from Dokhtúrov to
-Kutúzov, he was sent immediately with a special dispatch to Brünn.
-To be so sent meant not only a reward but an important step toward
-promotion.
-
-The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow that
-had fallen the previous day—the day of the battle. Reviewing his
-impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself the
-impression his news of a victory would create, or recalling the send-off
-given him by the commander in chief and his fellow officers, Prince
-Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise enjoying the feelings of a
-man who has at length begun to attain a long-desired happiness. As soon
-as he closed his eyes his ears seemed filled with the rattle of the
-wheels and the sensation of victory. Then he began to imagine that
-the Russians were running away and that he himself was killed, but he
-quickly roused himself with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh that
-this was not so but that on the contrary the French had run away. He
-again recalled all the details of the victory and his own calm courage
-during the battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The dark
-starry night was followed by a bright cheerful morning. The snow was
-thawing in the sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides
-of the road were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.
-
-At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded.
-The Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the front
-cart, shouting and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each of
-the long German carts six or more pale, dirty, bandaged men were being
-jolted over the stony road. Some of them were talking (he heard Russian
-words), others were eating bread; the more severely wounded looked
-silently, with the languid interest of sick children, at the envoy
-hurrying past them.
-
-Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier in what
-action they had been wounded. “Day before yesterday, on the Danube,”
-answered the soldier. Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the
-soldier three gold pieces.
-
-“That’s for them all,” he said to the officer who came up.
-
-“Get well soon, lads!” he continued, turning to the soldiers.
-“There’s plenty to do still.”
-
-“What news, sir?” asked the officer, evidently anxious to start a
-conversation.
-
-“Good news!... Go on!” he shouted to the driver, and they galloped
-on.
-
-It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the paved
-streets of Brünn and found himself surrounded by high buildings, the
-lights of shops, houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all that
-atmosphere of a large and active town which is always so attractive to a
-soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and sleepless night,
-Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace felt even more vigorous and
-alert than he had done the day before. Only his eyes gleamed feverishly
-and his thoughts followed one another with extraordinary clearness and
-rapidity. He again vividly recalled the details of the battle, no longer
-dim, but definite and in the concise form in which he imagined himself
-stating them to the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual
-questions that might be put to him and the answers he would give. He
-expected to be at once presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance
-to the palace, however, an official came running out to meet him, and
-learning that he was a special messenger led him to another entrance.
-
-“To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will find
-the adjutant on duty,” said the official. “He will conduct you to
-the Minister of War.”
-
-The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait, and went
-in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and bowing
-with particular courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along a
-corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The
-adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off any
-attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger.
-
-Prince Andrew’s joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he
-approached the door of the minister’s room. He felt offended, and
-without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into
-one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind instantly
-suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to despise
-the adjutant and the minister. “Away from the smell of powder, they
-probably think it easy to gain victories!” he thought. His eyes
-narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with
-peculiarly deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened
-when he saw the minister seated at a large table reading some papers
-and making pencil notes on them, and for the first two or three minutes
-taking no notice of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each side of the
-minister’s bent bald head with its gray temples. He went on reading
-to the end, without raising his eyes at the opening of the door and the
-sound of footsteps.
-
-“Take this and deliver it,” said he to his adjutant, handing him the
-papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger.
-
-Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutúzov’s army
-interested the Minister of War less than any of the other matters he was
-concerned with, or he wanted to give the Russian special messenger that
-impression. “But that is a matter of perfect indifference to me,” he
-thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together, arranged them
-evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual and distinctive
-head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the firm, intelligent
-expression on his face changed in a way evidently deliberate and
-habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial smile (which
-does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man who is
-continually receiving many petitioners one after another.
-
-“From General Field Marshal Kutúzov?” he asked. “I hope it is
-good news? There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was
-high time!”
-
-He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it
-with a mournful expression.
-
-“Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!” he exclaimed in German. “What a
-calamity! What a calamity!”
-
-Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and looked
-at Prince Andrew, evidently considering something.
-
-“Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But Mortier is
-not captured.” Again he pondered. “I am very glad you have brought
-good news, though Schmidt’s death is a heavy price to pay for the
-victory. His Majesty will no doubt wish to see you, but not today. I
-thank you! You must have a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the
-parade. However, I will let you know.”
-
-The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was speaking,
-reappeared.
-
-“Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to
-see you,” he added, bowing his head.
-
-When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest
-and happiness the victory had afforded him had been now left in the
-indifferent hands of the Minister of War and the polite adjutant. The
-whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle seemed
-the memory of a remote event long past.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-Prince Andrew stayed at Brünn with Bilíbin, a Russian acquaintance of
-his in the diplomatic service.
-
-“Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor,”
-said Bilíbin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. “Franz, put the
-prince’s things in my bedroom,” said he to the servant who was
-ushering Bolkónski in. “So you’re a messenger of victory, eh?
-Splendid! And I am sitting here ill, as you see.”
-
-After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat’s
-luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilíbin
-settled down comfortably beside the fire.
-
-After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived of
-all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life, Prince
-Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious surroundings such
-as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides it was pleasant,
-after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not in Russian
-(for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who would, he
-supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the Austrians which was
-then particularly strong.
-
-Bilíbin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle as
-Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in Petersburg, but
-had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with Kutúzov.
-Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising high
-in the military profession, so to an even greater extent Bilíbin gave
-promise of rising in his diplomatic career. He still a young man but
-no longer a young diplomat, as he had entered the service at the age
-of sixteen, had been in Paris and Copenhagen, and now held a rather
-important post in Vienna. Both the foreign minister and our ambassador
-in Vienna knew him and valued him. He was not one of those many
-diplomats who are esteemed because they have certain negative qualities,
-avoid doing certain things, and speak French. He was one of those,
-who, liking work, knew how to do it, and despite his indolence would
-sometimes spend a whole night at his writing table. He worked well
-whatever the import of his work. It was not the question “What for?”
-but the question “How?” that interested him. What the diplomatic
-matter might be he did not care, but it gave him great pleasure to
-prepare a circular, memorandum, or report, skillfully, pointedly, and
-elegantly. Bilíbin’s services were valued not only for what he wrote,
-but also for his skill in dealing and conversing with those in the
-highest spheres.
-
-Bilíbin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be
-made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to say
-something striking and took part in a conversation only when that was
-possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with wittily original,
-finished phrases of general interest. These sayings were prepared in the
-inner laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if intentionally, so
-that insignificant society people might carry them from drawing room to
-drawing room. And, in fact, Bilíbin’s witticisms were hawked about
-in the Viennese drawing rooms and often had an influence on matters
-considered important.
-
-His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which always
-looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one’s fingers after a
-Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the principal play
-of expression on his face. Now his forehead would pucker into deep folds
-and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows would descend and
-deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small, deep-set eyes always
-twinkled and looked out straight.
-
-“Well, now tell me about your exploits,” said he.
-
-Bolkónski, very modestly without once mentioning himself, described the
-engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.
-
-“They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of
-skittles,” said he in conclusion.
-
-Bilíbin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.
-
-“Cependant, mon cher,” he remarked, examining his nails from a
-distance and puckering the skin above his left eye, “malgré la haute
-estime que je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j’avoue que
-votre victoire n’est pas des plus victorieuses.” *
-
- * “But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox
- Russian army, I must say that your victory was not
- particularly victorious.”
-
-
-He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those words in
-Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.
-
-“Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate Mortier
-and his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your fingers!
-Where’s the victory?”
-
-“But seriously,” said Prince Andrew, “we can at any rate say
-without boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm...”
-
-“Why didn’t you capture one, just one, marshal for us?”
-
-“Because not everything happens as one expects or with the smoothness
-of a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at their rear by
-seven in the morning but had not reached it by five in the afternoon.”
-
-“And why didn’t you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have
-been there at seven in the morning,” returned Bilíbin with a smile.
-“You ought to have been there at seven in the morning.”
-
-“Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic
-methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?” retorted Prince Andrew
-in the same tone.
-
-“I know,” interrupted Bilíbin, “you’re thinking it’s very
-easy to take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but
-still why didn’t you capture him? So don’t be surprised if not only
-the Minister of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and
-King Francis is not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor
-secretary of the Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of my
-joy to give my Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to the
-Prater... True, we have no Prater here...”
-
-He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his
-forehead.
-
-“It is now my turn to ask you ‘why?’ mon cher,” said Bolkónski.
-“I confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic
-subtleties here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can’t make it
-out. Mack loses a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke
-Karl give no signs of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutúzov
-alone at last gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the
-invincibility of the French, and the Minister of War does not even care
-to hear the details.”
-
-“That’s just it, my dear fellow. You see it’s hurrah for the Tsar,
-for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but
-what do we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories? Bring
-us nice news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one
-archduke’s as good as another, as you know) and even if it is only
-over a fire brigade of Bonaparte’s, that will be another story and
-we’ll fire off some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done
-on purpose to vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke
-Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its
-defense—as much as to say: ‘Heaven is with us, but heaven help you
-and your capital!’ The one general whom we all loved, Schmidt, you
-expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit
-that more irritating news than yours could not have been conceived.
-It’s as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose
-you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a
-victory, what effect would that have on the general course of events?
-It’s too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French army!”
-
-“What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?”
-
-“Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schönbrunn, and the count,
-our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders.”
-
-After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception, and
-especially after having dined, Bolkónski felt that he could not take in
-the full significance of the words he heard.
-
-“Count Lichtenfels was here this morning,” Bilíbin continued,
-“and showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna
-was fully described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that
-your victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can’t be
-received as a savior.”
-
-“Really I don’t care about that, I don’t care at all,” said
-Prince Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle
-before Krems was really of small importance in view of such events as
-the fall of Austria’s capital. “How is it Vienna was taken? What of
-the bridge and its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard
-reports that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?” he said.
-
-“Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is
-defending us—doing it very badly, I think, but still he is defending
-us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has not yet been
-taken and I hope it will not be, for it is mined and orders have been
-given to blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the
-mountains of Bohemia, and you and your army would have spent a bad
-quarter of an hour between two fires.”
-
-“But still this does not mean that the campaign is over,” said
-Prince Andrew.
-
-“Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they
-daren’t say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign,
-it won’t be your skirmishing at Dürrenstein, or gunpowder at all,
-that will decide the matter, but those who devised it,” said Bilíbin
-quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, and
-pausing. “The only question is what will come of the meeting between
-the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia
-joins the Allies, Austria’s hand will be forced and there will be war.
-If not it is merely a question of settling where the preliminaries of
-the new Campo Formio are to be drawn up.”
-
-“What an extraordinary genius!” Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,
-clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, “and what
-luck the man has!”
-
-“Buonaparte?” said Bilíbin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead
-to indicate that he was about to say something witty. “Buonaparte?”
-he repeated, accentuating the u: “I think, however, now that he lays
-down laws for Austria at Schönbrunn, il faut lui faire grâce de
-l’u! * I shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply
-Bonaparte!”
-
- * “We must let him off the u!”
-
-
-“But joking apart,” said Prince Andrew, “do you really think the
-campaign is over?”
-
-“This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is
-not used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the
-first place because her provinces have been pillaged—they say the Holy
-Russian army loots terribly—her army is destroyed, her capital
-taken, and all this for the beaux yeux * of His Sardinian Majesty. And
-therefore—this is between ourselves—I instinctively feel that we
-are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France and
-projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately.”
-
- * Fine eyes.
-
-“Impossible!” cried Prince Andrew. “That would be too base.”
-
-“If we live we shall see,” replied Bilíbin, his face again becoming
-smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end.
-
-When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in a
-clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows, he
-felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far
-away from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria’s treachery,
-Bonaparte’s new triumph, tomorrow’s levee and parade, and the
-audience with the Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.
-
-He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of musketry
-and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his ears, and now
-again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were descending the hill,
-the French were firing, and he felt his heart palpitating as he rode
-forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily whistling all around,
-and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as he had not done since
-childhood.
-
-He woke up...
-
-“Yes, that all happened!” he said, and, smiling happily to himself
-like a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions, the first
-thought that came into his mind was that today he had to be presented
-to the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War, the polite
-Austrian adjutant, Bilíbin, and last night’s conversation. Having
-dressed for his attendance at court in full parade uniform, which he
-had not worn for a long time, he went into Bilíbin’s study fresh,
-animated, and handsome, with his hand bandaged. In the study were four
-gentlemen of the diplomatic corps. With Prince Hippolyte Kurágin,
-who was a secretary to the embassy, Bolkónski was already acquainted.
-Bilíbin introduced him to the others.
-
-The gentlemen assembled at Bilíbin’s were young, wealthy, gay society
-men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which Bilíbin, their
-leader, called les nôtres. * This set, consisting almost exclusively of
-diplomats, evidently had its own interests which had nothing to do with
-war or politics but related to high society, to certain women, and to
-the official side of the service. These gentlemen received Prince
-Andrew as one of themselves, an honor they did not extend to many. From
-politeness and to start conversation, they asked him a few questions
-about the army and the battle, and then the talk went off into merry
-jests and gossip.
-
- * Ours.
-
-“But the best of it was,” said one, telling of the misfortune of
-a fellow diplomat, “that the Chancellor told him flatly that his
-appointment to London was a promotion and that he was so to regard it.
-Can you fancy the figure he cut?...”
-
-“But the worst of it, gentlemen—I am giving Kurágin away to
-you—is that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is
-taking advantage of it!”
-
-Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over its
-arm. He began to laugh.
-
-“Tell me about that!” he said.
-
-“Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!” cried several voices.
-
-“You, Bolkónski, don’t know,” said Bilíbin turning to Prince
-Andrew, “that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of
-the Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing
-among the women!”
-
-“La femme est la compagne de l’homme,” * announced Prince
-Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs.
-
- * “Woman is man’s companion.”
-
-
-Bilíbin and the rest of “ours” burst out laughing in Hippolyte’s
-face, and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom—he had to
-admit—he had almost been jealous on his wife’s account, was the butt
-of this set.
-
-“Oh, I must give you a treat,” Bilíbin whispered to Bolkónski.
-“Kurágin is exquisite when he discusses politics—you should see his
-gravity!”
-
-He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began talking
-to him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered round these
-two.
-
-“The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance,” began
-Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the others, “without
-expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless
-His Majesty the Emperor derogates from the principle of our alliance...
-
-“Wait, I have not finished...” he said to Prince Andrew, seizing
-him by the arm, “I believe that intervention will be stronger than
-nonintervention. And...” he paused. “Finally one cannot impute the
-nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end.”
-And he released Bolkónski’s arm to indicate that he had now quite
-finished.
-
-“Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden
-mouth!” said Bilíbin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with
-satisfaction.
-
-Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was evidently
-distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain the wild
-laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.
-
-“Well now, gentlemen,” said Bilíbin, “Bolkónski is my guest in
-this house and in Brünn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I
-can, with all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it would
-be easy, but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more difficult,
-and I beg you all to help me. Brünn’s attractions must be shown him.
-You can undertake the theater, I society, and you, Hippolyte, of course
-the women.”
-
-“We must let him see Amelie, she’s exquisite!” said one of
-“ours,” kissing his finger tips.
-
-“In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane
-interests,” said Bilíbin.
-
-“I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality,
-gentlemen, it is already time for me to go,” replied Prince Andrew
-looking at his watch.
-
-“Where to?”
-
-“To the Emperor.”
-
-“Oh! Oh! Oh!”
-
-“Well, au revoir, Bolkónski! Au revoir, Prince! Come back early to
-dinner,” cried several voices. “We’ll take you in hand.”
-
-“When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the way
-that provisions are supplied and the routes indicated,” said Bilíbin,
-accompanying him to the hall.
-
-“I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I know the facts,
-I can’t,” replied Bolkónski, smiling.
-
-“Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for giving
-audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can’t do it, as
-you will see.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he had
-been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into his
-face and just nodded to him with his long head. But after it was
-over, the adjutant he had seen the previous day ceremoniously informed
-Bolkónski that the Emperor desired to give him an audience. The Emperor
-Francis received him standing in the middle of the room. Before the
-conversation began Prince Andrew was struck by the fact that the Emperor
-seemed confused and blushed as if not knowing what to say.
-
-“Tell me, when did the battle begin?” he asked hurriedly.
-
-Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple:
-“Was Kutúzov well? When had he left Krems?” and so on. The Emperor
-spoke as if his sole aim were to put a given number of questions—the
-answers to these questions, as was only too evident, did not interest
-him.
-
-“At what o’clock did the battle begin?” asked the Emperor.
-
-“I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o’clock the battle began at
-the front, but at Dürrenstein, where I was, our attack began after
-five in the afternoon,” replied Bolkónski growing more animated and
-expecting that he would have a chance to give a reliable account, which
-he had ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the Emperor
-smiled and interrupted him.
-
-“How many miles?”
-
-“From where to where, Your Majesty?”
-
-“From Dürrenstein to Krems.”
-
-“Three and a half miles, Your Majesty.”
-
-“The French have abandoned the left bank?”
-
-“According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during the
-night.”
-
-“Is there sufficient forage in Krems?”
-
-“Forage has not been supplied to the extent...”
-
-The Emperor interrupted him.
-
-“At what o’clock was General Schmidt killed?”
-
-“At seven o’clock, I believe.”
-
-“At seven o’clock? It’s very sad, very sad!”
-
-The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew withdrew and
-was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides. Everywhere he
-saw friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday’s adjutant
-reproached him for not having stayed at the palace, and offered him
-his own house. The Minister of War came up and congratulated him on the
-Maria Theresa Order of the third grade, which the Emperor was conferring
-on him. The Empress’ chamberlain invited him to see Her Majesty. The
-archduchess also wished to see him. He did not know whom to answer, and
-for a few seconds collected his thoughts. Then the Russian ambassador
-took him by the shoulder, led him to the window, and began to talk to
-him.
-
-Contrary to Bilíbin’s forecast the news he had brought was joyfully
-received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutúzov was awarded
-the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army received rewards.
-Bolkónski was invited everywhere, and had to spend the whole morning
-calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries. Between four and five
-in the afternoon, having made all his calls, he was returning to
-Bilíbin’s house thinking out a letter to his father about the battle
-and his visit to Brünn. At the door he found a vehicle half full of
-luggage. Franz, Bilíbin’s man, was dragging a portmanteau with some
-difficulty out of the front door.
-
-Before returning to Bilíbin’s Prince Andrew had gone to a bookshop
-to provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent some
-time in the shop.
-
-“What is it?” he asked.
-
-“Oh, your excellency!” said Franz, with difficulty rolling the
-portmanteau into the vehicle, “we are to move on still farther. The
-scoundrel is again at our heels!”
-
-“Eh? What?” asked Prince Andrew.
-
-Bilíbin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed excitement.
-
-“There now! Confess that this is delightful,” said he. “This
-affair of the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without
-striking a blow!”
-
-Prince Andrew could not understand.
-
-“But where do you come from not to know what every coachman in the
-town knows?”
-
-“I come from the archduchess’. I heard nothing there.”
-
-“And you didn’t see that everybody is packing up?”
-
-“I did not... What is it all about?” inquired Prince Andrew
-impatiently.
-
-“What’s it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that
-Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat
-is now rushing along the road to Brünn and will be here in a day or
-two.”
-
-“What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was
-mined?”
-
-“That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why.”
-
-Bolkónski shrugged his shoulders.
-
-“But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It
-will be cut off,” said he.
-
-“That’s just it,” answered Bilíbin. “Listen! The French entered
-Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday, those
-gentlemen, messieurs les maréchaux, * Murat, Lannes, and Belliard,
-mount and ride to the bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.)
-‘Gentlemen,’ says one of them, ‘you know the Thabor Bridge is
-mined and doubly mined and that there are menacing fortifications at its
-head and an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to blow up
-the bridge and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign the
-Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and take
-it!’ ‘Yes, let’s!’ say the others. And off they go and take the
-bridge, cross it, and now with their whole army are on this side of the
-Danube, marching on us, you, and your lines of communication.”
-
- * The marshalls.
-
-“Stop jesting,” said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news
-grieved him and yet he was pleased.
-
-As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless
-situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead it
-out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift him from
-the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to fame!
-Listening to Bilíbin he was already imagining how on reaching the army
-he would give an opinion at the war council which would be the only one
-that could save the army, and how he alone would be entrusted with the
-executing of the plan.
-
-“Stop this jesting,” he said.
-
-“I am not jesting,” Bilíbin went on. “Nothing is truer or sadder.
-These gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white handkerchiefs;
-they assure the officer on duty that they, the marshals, are on
-their way to negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets them enter the
-tête-de-pont. * They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying that
-the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting with
-Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg, and so on. The
-officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace the officers, crack
-jokes, sit on the cannon, and meanwhile a French battalion gets to
-the bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary material into
-the water, and approaches the tête-de-pont. At length appears the
-lieutenant general, our dear Prince Auersperg von Mautern himself.
-‘Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian army, hero of the Turkish wars!
-Hostilities are ended, we can shake one another’s hand.... The
-Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince Auersperg’s
-acquaintance.’ In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed, so
-bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his rapidly
-established intimacy with the French marshals, and so dazzled by the
-sight of Murat’s mantle and ostrich plumes, qu’il n’y voit que du
-feu, et oublie celui qu’il devait faire faire sur l’ennemi!” *(2)
-In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilíbin did not forget to
-pause after this mot to give time for its due appreciation. “The
-French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes the guns, and the
-bridge is taken! But what is best of all,” he went on, his excitement
-subsiding under the delightful interest of his own story, “is that the
-sergeant in charge of the cannon which was to give the signal to fire
-the mines and blow up the bridge, this sergeant, seeing that the French
-troops were running onto the bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes
-stayed his hand. The sergeant, who was evidently wiser than his general,
-goes up to Auersperg and says: ‘Prince, you are being deceived, here
-are the French!’ Murat, seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is
-allowed to speak, turns to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a
-true Gascon) and says: ‘I don’t recognize the world-famous Austrian
-discipline, if you allow a subordinate to address you like that!’ It
-was a stroke of genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and
-orders the sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair
-of the Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor
-rascality....”
-
- * Bridgehead.
-
- * (2) That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that
- he ought to be firing at the enemy.
-
-“It may be treachery,” said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the
-gray overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of firing,
-and the glory that awaited him.
-
-“Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light,” replied
-Bilíbin. “It’s not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is
-just as at Ulm... it is...”—he seemed to be trying to find the right
-expression. “C’est... c’est du Mack. Nous sommes mackés (It is...
-it is a bit of Mack. We are Macked),” he concluded, feeling that he
-had produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His
-hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a
-slight smile he began to examine his nails.
-
-“Where are you off to?” he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had
-risen and was going toward his room.
-
-“I am going away.”
-
-“Where to?”
-
-“To the army.”
-
-“But you meant to stay another two days?”
-
-“But now I am off at once.”
-
-And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went to
-his room.
-
-“Do you know, mon cher,” said Bilíbin following him, “I have been
-thinking about you. Why are you going?”
-
-And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles
-vanished from his face.
-
-Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.
-
-“Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back to
-the army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher, it is
-heroism!”
-
-“Not at all,” said Prince Andrew.
-
-“But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the other
-side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the contrary,
-is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no longer fit for
-anything else.... You have not been ordered to return and have not been
-dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and go with us wherever our
-ill luck takes us. They say we are going to Olmütz, and Olmütz is a
-very decent town. You and I will travel comfortably in my calèche.”
-
-“Do stop joking, Bilíbin,” cried Bolkónski.
-
-“I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are
-you going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two
-things,” and the skin over his left temple puckered, “either you
-will not reach your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will
-share defeat and disgrace with Kutúzov’s whole army.”
-
-And Bilíbin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was
-insoluble.
-
-“I cannot argue about it,” replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he
-thought: “I am going to save the army.”
-
-“My dear fellow, you are a hero!” said Bilíbin.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War, Bolkónski
-set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would find it and
-fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems.
-
-In Brünn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the heavy
-baggage was already being dispatched to Olmütz. Near Hetzelsdorf Prince
-Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was moving with
-great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was so obstructed
-with carts that it was impossible to get by in a carriage. Prince Andrew
-took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack commander, and hungry and
-weary, making his way past the baggage wagons, rode in search of the
-commander in chief and of his own luggage. Very sinister reports of the
-position of the army reached him as he went along, and the appearance of
-the troops in their disorderly flight confirmed these rumors.
-
-“Cette armée russe que l’or de l’Angleterre a transportée des
-extrémités de l’univers, nous allons lui faire éprouver le même
-sort—(le sort de l’armée d’Ulm).” * He remembered these words
-in Bonaparte’s address to his army at the beginning of the campaign,
-and they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of his hero, a feeling
-of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. “And should there be nothing
-left but to die?” he thought. “Well, if need be, I shall do it no
-worse than others.”
-
- * “That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of
- the earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same
- fate—(the fate of the army at Ulm).”
-
-
-He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of detachments,
-carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and vehicles of all
-kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy road, three and
-sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and before, as far as ear
-could reach, there were the rattle of wheels, the creaking of carts
-and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the crack of whips, shouts, the
-urging of horses, and the swearing of soldiers, orderlies, and officers.
-All along the sides of the road fallen horses were to be seen, some
-flayed, some not, and broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers
-sat waiting for something, and again soldiers straggling from their
-companies, crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or
-returned from them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At
-each ascent or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the
-din of shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud
-pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped,
-traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers
-directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their
-voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their faces
-that they despaired of the possibility of checking this disorder.
-
-“Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army,” thought Bolkónski,
-recalling Bilíbin’s words.
-
-Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up to
-a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse vehicle,
-evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available materials and
-looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet, and a calèche.
-A soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in shawls sat behind the
-apron under the leather hood of the vehicle. Prince Andrew rode up
-and was just putting his question to a soldier when his attention
-was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the woman in the vehicle. An
-officer in charge of transport was beating the soldier who was driving
-the woman’s vehicle for trying to get ahead of others, and the strokes
-of his whip fell on the apron of the equipage. The woman screamed
-piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew she leaned out from behind the apron
-and, waving her thin arms from under the woolen shawl, cried:
-
-“Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven’s sake... Protect
-me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh
-Chasseurs.... They won’t let us pass, we are left behind and have lost
-our people...”
-
-“I’ll flatten you into a pancake!” shouted the angry officer to
-the soldier. “Turn back with your slut!”
-
-“Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?” screamed the
-doctor’s wife.
-
-“Kindly let this cart pass. Don’t you see it’s a woman?” said
-Prince Andrew riding up to the officer.
-
-The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the
-soldier. “I’ll teach you to push on!... Back!”
-
-“Let them pass, I tell you!” repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his
-lips.
-
-“And who are you?” cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy
-rage, “who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander here,
-not you! Go back or I’ll flatten you into a pancake,” repeated he.
-This expression evidently pleased him.
-
-“That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp,” came a voice
-from behind.
-
-Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless,
-tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his
-championship of the doctor’s wife in her queer trap might expose him
-to what he dreaded more than anything in the world—to ridicule; but
-his instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence
-Prince Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised
-his riding whip.
-
-“Kind...ly let—them—pass!”
-
-The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.
-
-“It’s all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there’s
-this disorder,” he muttered. “Do as you like.”
-
-Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the
-doctor’s wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with
-a sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he
-galloped on to the village where he was told that the commander in chief
-was.
-
-On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house,
-intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to sort
-out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his mind. “This
-is a mob of scoundrels and not an army,” he was thinking as he went
-up to the window of the first house, when a familiar voice called him by
-name.
-
-He turned round. Nesvítski’s handsome face looked out of the little
-window. Nesvítski, moving his moist lips as he chewed something, and
-flourishing his arm, called him to enter.
-
-“Bolkónski! Bolkónski!... Don’t you hear? Eh? Come quick...” he
-shouted.
-
-Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvítski and another adjutant
-having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he
-had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm.
-This was particularly noticeable on Nesvítski’s usually laughing
-countenance.
-
-“Where is the commander in chief?” asked Bolkónski.
-
-“Here, in that house,” answered the adjutant.
-
-“Well, is it true that it’s peace and capitulation?” asked
-Nesvítski.
-
-“I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I could
-do to get here.”
-
-“And we, my dear boy! It’s terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack,
-we’re getting it still worse,” said Nesvítski. “But sit down and
-have something to eat.”
-
-“You won’t be able to find either your baggage or anything else now,
-Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is,” said the other
-adjutant.
-
-“Where are headquarters?”
-
-“We are to spend the night in Znaim.”
-
-“Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses,” said
-Nesvítski. “They’ve made up splendid packs for me—fit to cross
-the Bohemian mountains with. It’s a bad lookout, old fellow! But
-what’s the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that,” he
-added, noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.
-
-“It’s nothing,” replied Prince Andrew.
-
-He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor’s wife and
-the convoy officer.
-
-“What is the commander in chief doing here?” he asked.
-
-“I can’t make out at all,” said Nesvítski.
-
-“Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable,
-abominable, quite abominable!” said Prince Andrew, and he went off to
-the house where the commander in chief was.
-
-Passing by Kutúzov’s carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of
-his suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince
-Andrew entered the passage. Kutúzov himself, he was told, was in the
-house with Prince Bagratión and Weyrother. Weyrother was the Austrian
-general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little Kozlóvski was
-squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk, with cuffs turned
-up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom upwards. Kozlóvski’s
-face looked worn—he too had evidently not slept all night. He glanced
-at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to him.
-
-“Second line... have you written it?” he continued dictating to the
-clerk. “The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian...”
-
-“One can’t write so fast, your honor,” said the clerk, glancing
-angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlóvski.
-
-Through the door came the sounds of Kutúzov’s voice, excited and
-dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the
-sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlóvski looked at him, the
-disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the clerk and
-Kozlóvski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to the commander
-in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks holding the
-horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that something important and
-disastrous was about to happen.
-
-He turned to Kozlóvski with urgent questions.
-
-“Immediately, Prince,” said Kozlóvski. “Dispositions for
-Bagratión.”
-
-“What about capitulation?”
-
-“Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle.”
-
-Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard.
-Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened, and
-Kutúzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the doorway.
-Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutúzov but the expression of
-the commander in chief’s one sound eye showed him to be so preoccupied
-with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of his presence. He
-looked straight at his adjutant’s face without recognizing him.
-
-“Well, have you finished?” said he to Kozlóvski.
-
-“One moment, your excellency.”
-
-Bagratión, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm,
-impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in chief.
-
-“I have the honor to present myself,” repeated Prince Andrew rather
-loudly, handing Kutúzov an envelope.
-
-“Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!”
-
-Kutúzov went out into the porch with Bagratión.
-
-“Well, good-by, Prince,” said he to Bagratión. “My blessing, and
-may Christ be with you in your great endeavor!”
-
-His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his left
-hand he drew Bagratión toward him, and with his right, on which he wore
-a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a gesture evidently
-habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagratión kissed him on the
-neck instead.
-
-“Christ be with you!” Kutúzov repeated and went toward his
-carriage. “Get in with me,” said he to Bolkónski.
-
-“Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to remain
-with Prince Bagratión’s detachment.”
-
-“Get in,” said Kutúzov, and noticing that Bolkónski still delayed,
-he added: “I need good officers myself, need them myself!”
-
-They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.
-
-“There is still much, much before us,” he said, as if with an old
-man’s penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkónski’s
-mind. “If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God,”
-he added as if speaking to himself.
-
-Prince Andrew glanced at Kutúzov’s face only a foot distant from him
-and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar near
-his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the empty
-eye socket. “Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those men’s
-death,” thought Bolkónski.
-
-“That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment,” he said.
-
-Kutúzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had been
-saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently swaying
-on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince Andrew.
-There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With delicate irony he
-questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his interview with the
-Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court concerning the Krems
-affair, and about some ladies they both knew.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-On November 1 Kutúzov had received, through a spy, news that the army
-he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported that
-the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing in
-immense force upon Kutúzov’s line of communication with the troops
-that were arriving from Russia. If Kutúzov decided to remain at Krems,
-Napoleon’s army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut him
-off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty thousand, and he
-would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If Kutúzov decided
-to abandon the road connecting him with the troops arriving from Russia,
-he would have to march with no road into unknown parts of the Bohemian
-mountains, defending himself against superior forces of the enemy and
-abandoning all hope of a junction with Buxhöwden. If Kutúzov decided
-to retreat along the road from Krems to Olmütz, to unite with the
-troops arriving from Russia, he risked being forestalled on that road
-by the French who had crossed the Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his
-baggage and transport, having to accept battle on the march against an
-enemy three times as strong, who would hem him in from two sides.
-
-Kutúzov chose this latter course.
-
-The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were
-advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles
-off on the line of Kutúzov’s retreat. If he reached Znaim before the
-French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the
-French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army to a
-disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to forestall
-the French with his whole army was impossible. The road for the French
-from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the road for the
-Russians from Krems to Znaim.
-
-The night he received the news, Kutúzov sent Bagratión’s vanguard,
-four thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the Krems-Znaim
-to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagratión was to make this march without
-resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and if he
-succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as long as
-possible. Kutúzov himself with all his transport took the road to
-Znaim.
-
-Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills, with his
-hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as stragglers
-by the way, Bagratión came out on the Vienna-Znaim road at Hollabrünn
-a few hours ahead of the French who were approaching Hollabrünn from
-Vienna. Kutúzov with his transport had still to march for some days
-before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagratión with his four thousand
-hungry, exhausted men would have to detain for days the whole enemy army
-that came upon him at Hollabrünn, which was clearly impossible. But
-a freak of fate made the impossible possible. The success of the trick
-that had placed the Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without
-a fight led Murat to try to deceive Kutúzov in a similar way. Meeting
-Bagratión’s weak detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be
-Kutúzov’s whole army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited
-the arrival of the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna,
-and with this object offered a three days’ truce on condition that
-both armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared
-that negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that he
-therefore offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count
-Nostitz, the Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed
-Murat’s emissary and retired, leaving Bagratión’s division
-exposed. Another emissary rode to the Russian line to announce the peace
-negotiations and to offer the Russian army the three days’ truce.
-Bagratión replied that he was not authorized either to accept or refuse
-a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutúzov to report the offer he had
-received.
-
-A truce was Kutúzov’s sole chance of gaining time, giving
-Bagratión’s exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport and
-heavy convoys (whose movements were concealed from the French) advance
-if but one stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the only, and
-a quite unexpected, chance of saving the army. On receiving the news
-he immediately dispatched Adjutant General Wintzingerode, who was in
-attendance on him, to the enemy camp. Wintzingerode was not merely
-to agree to the truce but also to offer terms of capitulation, and
-meanwhile Kutúzov sent his adjutants back to hasten to the utmost the
-movements of the baggage trains of the entire army along the Krems-Znaim
-road. Bagratión’s exhausted and hungry detachment, which alone
-covered this movement of the transport and of the whole army, had to
-remain stationary in face of an enemy eight times as strong as itself.
-
-Kutúzov’s expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which were
-in no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to pass,
-and also that Murat’s mistake would very soon be discovered, proved
-correct. As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schönbrunn, sixteen miles
-from Hollabrünn) received Murat’s dispatch with the proposal of a
-truce and a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the following
-letter to Murat:
-
-Schönbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,
-
-at eight o’clock in the morning
-
-To PRINCE MURAT,
-
-I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure. You command only
-my advance guard, and have no right to arrange an armistice without my
-order. You are causing me to lose the fruits of a campaign. Break
-the armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him that the
-general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so, and that no
-one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.
-
-If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that convention, I will
-ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on, destroy the Russian
-army.... You are in a position to seize its baggage and artillery.
-
-The Russian Emperor’s aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are
-nothing when they have no powers; this one had none.... The Austrians
-let themselves be tricked at the crossing of the Vienna bridge, you are
-letting yourself be tricked by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor.
-
-NAPOLEON
-
-Bonaparte’s adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing letter to
-Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all
-the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim
-escape, and Bagratión’s four thousand men merrily lighted campfires,
-dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first time
-for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was in store
-for him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-Between three and four o’clock in the afternoon Prince Andrew, who
-had persisted in his request to Kutúzov, arrived at Grunth and reported
-himself to Bagratión. Bonaparte’s adjutant had not yet reached
-Murat’s detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In Bagratión’s
-detachment no one knew anything of the general position of affairs. They
-talked of peace but did not believe in its possibility; others talked
-of a battle but also disbelieved in the nearness of an engagement.
-Bagratión, knowing Bolkónski to be a favorite and trusted adjutant,
-received him with distinction and special marks of favor, explaining to
-him that there would probably be an engagement that day or the next, and
-giving him full liberty to remain with him during the battle or to join
-the rearguard and have an eye on the order of retreat, “which is also
-very important.”
-
-“However, there will hardly be an engagement today,” said Bagratión
-as if to reassure Prince Andrew.
-
-“If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a
-medal he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he
-wishes to stay with me, let him... he’ll be of use here if he’s a
-brave officer,” thought Bagratión. Prince Andrew, without replying,
-asked the prince’s permission to ride round the position to see the
-disposition of the forces, so as to know his bearings should he be sent
-to execute an order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly dressed
-man with a diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond of speaking
-French though he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince Andrew.
-
-On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who
-seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers dragging doors, benches,
-and fencing from the village.
-
-“There now, Prince! We can’t stop those fellows,” said the staff
-officer pointing to the soldiers. “The officers don’t keep them in
-hand. And there,” he pointed to a sutler’s tent, “they crowd in
-and sit. This morning I turned them all out and now look, it’s full
-again. I must go there, Prince, and scare them a bit. It won’t take a
-moment.”
-
-“Yes, let’s go in and I will get myself a roll and some cheese,”
-said Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to eat anything.
-
-“Why didn’t you mention it, Prince? I would have offered you
-something.”
-
-They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers, with flushed and
-weary faces, were sitting at the table eating and drinking.
-
-“Now what does this mean, gentlemen?” said the staff officer, in
-the reproachful tone of a man who has repeated the same thing more
-than once. “You know it won’t do to leave your posts like this.
-The prince gave orders that no one should leave his post. Now you,
-Captain,” and he turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer who
-without his boots (he had given them to the canteen keeper to dry),
-in only his stockings, rose when they entered, smiling not altogether
-comfortably.
-
-“Well, aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Captain Túshin?” he
-continued. “One would think that as an artillery officer you would set
-a good example, yet here you are without your boots! The alarm will be
-sounded and you’ll be in a pretty position without your boots!” (The
-staff officer smiled.) “Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of
-you, all!” he added in a tone of command.
-
-Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the artillery officer
-Túshin, who silent and smiling, shifting from one stockinged foot to
-the other, glanced inquiringly with his large, intelligent, kindly eyes
-from Prince Andrew to the staff officer.
-
-“The soldiers say it feels easier without boots,” said Captain
-Túshin smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position, evidently wishing
-to adopt a jocular tone. But before he had finished he felt that his
-jest was unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused.
-
-“Kindly return to your posts,” said the staff officer trying to
-preserve his gravity.
-
-Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer’s small figure.
-There was something peculiar about it, quite unsoldierly, rather comic,
-but extremely attractive.
-
-The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode on.
-
-Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting and overtaking
-soldiers and officers of various regiments, they saw on their left some
-entrenchments being thrown up, the freshly dug clay of which showed up
-red. Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt sleeves despite
-the cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host of white ants;
-spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown up from behind the
-bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and the officer rode up, looked at
-the entrenchment, and went on again. Just behind it they came upon some
-dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by others, who ran from the
-entrenchment. They had to hold their noses and put their horses to a
-trot to escape from the poisoned atmosphere of these latrines.
-
-“Voilà l’agrément des camps, monsieur le prince,” * said the
-staff officer.
-
- * “This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince.”
-
-
-They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French could already be
-seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began examining the position.
-
-“That’s our battery,” said the staff officer indicating the
-highest point. “It’s in charge of the queer fellow we saw without
-his boots. You can see everything from there; let’s go there,
-Prince.”
-
-“Thank you very much, I will go on alone,” said Prince Andrew,
-wishing to rid himself of this staff officer’s company, “please
-don’t trouble yourself further.”
-
-The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew rode on alone.
-
-The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the more orderly and
-cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had been
-in the baggage train he had passed that morning on the Znaim road seven
-miles away from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and alarm
-could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to the French lines the
-more confident was the appearance of our troops. The soldiers in
-their greatcoats were ranged in lines, the sergeants major and company
-officers were counting the men, poking the last man in each section in
-the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers scattered over
-the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and were building
-shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the fires sat others,
-dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg bands or mending
-boots or overcoats and crowding round the boilers and porridge cookers.
-In one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers were gazing eagerly
-at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample, which a quartermaster
-sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to an officer who sat on a log
-before his shelter, had been tasted.
-
-Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka,
-crowded round a pockmarked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who, tilting
-a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to him. The
-soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with reverential faces,
-emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths, and walked away from
-the sergeant major with brightened expressions, licking their lips and
-wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats. All their faces were
-as serene as if all this were happening at home awaiting peaceful
-encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before an action in
-which at least half of them would be left on the field. After passing a
-chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev grenadiers—fine fellows
-busy with similar peaceful affairs—near the shelter of the regimental
-commander, higher than and different from the others, Prince Andrew came
-out in front of a platoon of grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two
-soldiers held him while two others were flourishing their switches and
-striking him regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked unnaturally.
-A stout major was pacing up and down the line, and regardless of the
-screams kept repeating:
-
-“It’s a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest,
-honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor in
-him, he’s a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!”
-
-So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but unnatural
-screams, continued.
-
-“Go on, go on!” said the major.
-
-A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his face
-stepped away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the adjutant
-as he rode by.
-
-Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our front
-line and that of the enemy were far apart on the right and left flanks,
-but in the center where the men with a flag of truce had passed that
-morning, the lines were so near together that the men could see one
-another’s faces and speak to one another. Besides the soldiers who
-formed the picket line on either side, there were many curious onlookers
-who, jesting and laughing, stared at their strange foreign enemies.
-
-Since early morning—despite an injunction not to approach the picket
-line—the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away. The
-soldiers forming the picket line, like showmen exhibiting a curiosity,
-no longer looked at the French but paid attention to the sight-seers and
-grew weary waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew halted to have a look
-at the French.
-
-“Look! Look there!” one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a
-Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer and
-was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. “Hark to him
-jabbering! Fine, isn’t it? It’s all the Frenchy can do to keep up
-with him. There now, Sídorov!”
-
-“Wait a bit and listen. It’s fine!” answered Sídorov, who was
-considered an adept at French.
-
-The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dólokhov. Prince Andrew
-recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying. Dólokhov
-had come from the left flank where their regiment was stationed, with
-his captain.
-
-“Now then, go on, go on!” incited the officer, bending forward and
-trying not to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible to
-him. “More, please: more! What’s he saying?”
-
-Dólokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot
-dispute with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about the
-campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the Russians, was
-trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and had fled all
-the way from Ulm, while Dólokhov maintained that the Russians had not
-surrendered but had beaten the French.
-
-“We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you off,”
-said Dólokhov.
-
-“Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!” said
-the French grenadier.
-
-The French onlookers and listeners laughed.
-
-“We’ll make you dance as we did under Suvórov...,” * said
-Dólokhov.
-
- * “On vous fera danser.”
-
-
-“Qu’ est-ce qu’il chante?” * asked a Frenchman.
-
- * “What’s he singing about?”
-
-
-“It’s ancient history,” said another, guessing that it referred to
-a former war. “The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the
-others...”
-
-“Bonaparte...” began Dólokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.
-
-“Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacré nom...!” cried he angrily.
-
-“The devil skin your Emperor.”
-
-And Dólokhov swore at him in coarse soldier’s Russian and shouldering
-his musket walked away.
-
-“Let us go, Iván Lukích,” he said to the captain.
-
-“Ah, that’s the way to talk French,” said the picket soldiers.
-“Now, Sídorov, you have a try!”
-
-Sídorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless
-sounds very fast: “Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaská,” he said,
-trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.
-
-“Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!” came peals of such healthy
-and good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the French
-involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed to be
-to unload the muskets, explode the ammunition, and all return home as
-quickly as possible.
-
-But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and
-entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon
-confronted one another as before.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left, Prince
-Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff officer had
-told him the whole field could be seen. Here he dismounted, and stopped
-beside the farthest of the four unlimbered cannon. Before the guns an
-artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he stood at attention when the
-officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his measured, monotonous pacing.
-Behind the guns were their limbers and still farther back picket ropes
-and artillerymen’s bonfires. To the left, not far from the farthest
-cannon, was a small, newly constructed wattle shed from which came the
-sound of officers’ voices in eager conversation.
-
-It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and the
-greater part of the enemy’s opened out from this battery. Just facing
-it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schön Grabern
-could be seen, and in three places to left and right the French troops
-amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of whom were
-evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To the left from
-that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a battery, but it
-was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye. Our right flank was
-posted on a rather steep incline which dominated the French position.
-Our infantry were stationed there, and at the farthest point the
-dragoons. In the center, where Túshin’s battery stood and from which
-Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the easiest and most
-direct descent and ascent to the brook separating us from Schön
-Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a copse, in which smoked
-the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood. The French line was
-wider than ours, and it was plain that they could easily outflank us
-on both sides. Behind our position was a steep and deep dip, making it
-difficult for artillery and cavalry to retire. Prince Andrew took
-out his notebook and, leaning on the cannon, sketched a plan of the
-position. He made some notes on two points, intending to mention them to
-Bagratión. His idea was, first, to concentrate all the artillery in the
-center, and secondly, to withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the
-dip. Prince Andrew, being always near the commander in chief, closely
-following the mass movements and general orders, and constantly studying
-historical accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the
-course of events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He
-imagined only important possibilities: “If the enemy attacks the right
-flank,” he said to himself, “the Kiev grenadiers and the Podólsk
-chasseurs must hold their position till reserves from the center
-come up. In that case the dragoons could successfully make a flank
-counterattack. If they attack our center we, having the center battery
-on this high ground, shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and
-retreat to the dip by echelons.” So he reasoned.... All the time
-he had been beside the gun, he had heard the voices of the officers
-distinctly, but as often happens had not understood a word of what they
-were saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming from the
-shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not but listen.
-
-“No, friend,” said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, a
-familiar voice, “what I say is that if it were possible to know
-what is beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That’s so,
-friend.”
-
-Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: “Afraid or not, you can’t
-escape it anyhow.”
-
-“All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people,” said a third
-manly voice interrupting them both. “Of course you artillery men are
-very wise, because you can take everything along with you—vodka and
-snacks.”
-
-And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer,
-laughed.
-
-“Yes, one is afraid,” continued the first speaker, he of the
-familiar voice. “One is afraid of the unknown, that’s what it is.
-Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is
-no sky but only an atmosphere.”
-
-The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.
-
-“Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Túshin,” it said.
-
-“Why,” thought Prince Andrew, “that’s the captain who stood up
-in the sutler’s hut without his boots.” He recognized the agreeable,
-philosophizing voice with pleasure.
-
-“Some herb vodka? Certainly!” said Túshin. “But still, to
-conceive a future life...”
-
-He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air; nearer and
-nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon ball, as if it
-had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded into the ground near
-the shed with super human force, throwing up a mass of earth. The ground
-seemed to groan at the terrible impact.
-
-And immediately Túshin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth
-and his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed
-followed by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer who
-hurried off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery,
-looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes
-ran rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto
-motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was
-a battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two
-mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A
-small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill,
-probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had
-not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a report.
-The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and galloped back
-to Grunth to find Prince Bagratión. He heard the cannonade behind him
-growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our guns had begun to reply.
-From the bottom of the slope, where the parleys had taken place, came
-the report of musketry.
-
-Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte’s stern letter,
-and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at once
-moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the Russian
-wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the Emperor to
-crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him.
-
-“It has begun. Here it is!” thought Prince Andrew, feeling the
-blood rush to his heart. “But where and how will my Toulon present
-itself?”
-
-Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and drinking
-vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same rapid
-movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets ready,
-and on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that filled his
-heart. “It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but enjoyable!” was what
-the face of each soldier and each officer seemed to say.
-
-Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up, he saw,
-in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming toward him.
-The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and riding a
-white horse, was Prince Bagratión. Prince Andrew stopped, waiting for
-him to come up; Prince Bagratión reined in his horse and recognizing
-Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while Prince Andrew
-told him what he had seen.
-
-The feeling, “It has begun! Here it is!” was seen even on Prince
-Bagratión’s hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes.
-Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face
-and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking
-and feeling at that moment. “Is there anything at all behind that
-impassive face?” Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince
-Bagratión bent his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew
-told him, and said, “Very good!” in a tone that seemed to imply that
-everything that took place and was reported to him was exactly what he
-had foreseen. Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride, spoke
-quickly. Prince Bagratión, uttering his words with an Oriental accent,
-spoke particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that there was no
-need to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the direction
-of Túshin’s battery. Prince Andrew followed with the suite. Behind
-Prince Bagratión rode an officer of the suite, the prince’s personal
-adjutant, Zherkóv, an orderly officer, the staff officer on duty,
-riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian—an accountant who had
-asked permission to be present at the battle out of curiosity. The
-accountant, a stout, full-faced man, looked around him with a naïve
-smile of satisfaction and presented a strange appearance among the
-hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet coat, as he jolted on
-his horse with a convoy officer’s saddle.
-
-“He wants to see a battle,” said Zherkóv to Bolkónski, pointing
-to the accountant, “but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach
-already.”
-
-“Oh, leave off!” said the accountant with a beaming but rather
-cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of Zherkóv’s
-joke, and purposely trying to appear stupider than he really was.
-
-“It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince,” said the staff officer.
-(He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing a
-prince, but could not get it quite right.)
-
-By this time they were all approaching Túshin’s battery, and a ball
-struck the ground in front of them.
-
-“What’s that that has fallen?” asked the accountant with a naïve
-smile.
-
-“A French pancake,” answered Zherkóv.
-
-“So that’s what they hit with?” asked the accountant. “How
-awful!”
-
-He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished speaking
-when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which suddenly
-ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a Cossack, riding
-a little to their right and behind the accountant, crashed to earth with
-his horse. Zherkóv and the staff officer bent over their saddles and
-turned their horses away. The accountant stopped, facing the Cossack,
-and examined him with attentive curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the
-horse still struggled.
-
-Prince Bagratión screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing the
-cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to say,
-“Is it worth while noticing trifles?” He reined in his horse with
-the care of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged his
-saber which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber of
-a kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story of
-Suvórov giving his saber to Bagratión in Italy, and the recollection
-was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had reached the battery
-at which Prince Andrew had been when he examined the battlefield.
-
-“Whose company?” asked Prince Bagratión of an artilleryman standing
-by the ammunition wagon.
-
-He asked, “Whose company?” but he really meant, “Are you
-frightened here?” and the artilleryman understood him.
-
-“Captain Túshin’s, your excellency!” shouted the red-haired,
-freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.
-
-“Yes, yes,” muttered Bagratión as if considering something, and he
-rode past the limbers to the farthest cannon.
-
-As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and his
-suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they could see
-the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its
-former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number One, holding
-a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while Number Two with
-a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon’s mouth. The short,
-round-shouldered Captain Túshin, stumbling over the tail of the gun
-carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the general, looked out
-shading his eyes with his small hand.
-
-“Lift it two lines more and it will be just right,” cried he in a
-feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill-suited to
-his weak figure. “Number Two!” he squeaked. “Fire, Medvédev!”
-
-Bagratión called to him, and Túshin, raising three fingers to his cap
-with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military salute
-but like a priest’s benediction, approached the general. Though
-Túshin’s guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was
-firing incendiary balls at the village of Schön Grabern visible just
-opposite, in front of which large masses of French were advancing.
-
-No one had given Túshin orders where and at what to fire, but after
-consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchénko, for whom he had great
-respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the
-village. “Very good!” said Bagratión in reply to the officer’s
-report, and began deliberately to examine the whole battlefield extended
-before him. The French had advanced nearest on our right. Below the
-height on which the Kiev regiment was stationed, in the hollow where the
-rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring rolling and crackling of musketry was
-heard, and much farther to the right beyond the dragoons, the officer of
-the suite pointed out to Bagratión a French column that was outflanking
-us. To the left the horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince
-Bagratión ordered two battalions from the center to be sent to
-reinforce the right flank. The officer of the suite ventured to remark
-to the prince that if these battalions went away, the guns would remain
-without support. Prince Bagratión turned to the officer and with his
-dull eyes looked at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the
-officer’s remark was just and that really no answer could be made to
-it. But at that moment an adjutant galloped up with a message from the
-commander of the regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses
-of the French were coming down upon them and that his regiment was in
-disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince Bagratión
-bowed his head in sign of assent and approval. He rode off at a walk to
-the right and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with orders to attack the
-French. But this adjutant returned half an hour later with the news that
-the commander of the dragoons had already retreated beyond the dip in
-the ground, as a heavy fire had been opened on him and he was losing
-men uselessly, and so had hastened to throw some sharpshooters into the
-wood.
-
-“Very good!” said Bagratión.
-
-As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also, and
-as it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go there
-himself, Prince Bagratión sent Zherkóv to tell the general in command
-(the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutúzov at Braunau) that
-he must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow in the rear,
-as the right flank would probably not be able to withstand the enemy’s
-attack very long. About Túshin and the battalion that had been in
-support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince Andrew listened
-attentively to Bagratión’s colloquies with the commanding officers
-and the orders he gave them and, to his surprise, found that no orders
-were really given, but that Prince Bagratión tried to make it appear
-that everything done by necessity, by accident, or by the will of
-subordinate commanders was done, if not by his direct command, at least
-in accord with his intentions. Prince Andrew noticed, however, that
-though what happened was due to chance and was independent of the
-commander’s will, owing to the tact Bagratión showed, his presence
-was very valuable. Officers who approached him with disturbed
-countenances became calm; soldiers and officers greeted him gaily, grew
-more cheerful in his presence, and were evidently anxious to display
-their courage before him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-Prince Bagratión, having reached the highest point of our right flank,
-began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard but where
-on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer they got to
-the hollow the less they could see but the more they felt the nearness
-of the actual battlefield. They began to meet wounded men. One with a
-bleeding head and no cap was being dragged along by two soldiers who
-supported him under the arms. There was a gurgle in his throat and he
-was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently hit him in the throat or
-mouth. Another was walking sturdily by himself but without his musket,
-groaning aloud and swinging his arm which had just been hurt, while
-blood from it was streaming over his greatcoat as from a bottle. He had
-that moment been wounded and his face showed fear rather than suffering.
-Crossing a road they descended a steep incline and saw several men
-lying on the ground; they also met a crowd of soldiers some of whom were
-unwounded. The soldiers were ascending the hill breathing heavily, and
-despite the general’s presence were talking loudly and gesticulating.
-In front of them rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the
-smoke, and an officer catching sight of Bagratión rushed shouting after
-the crowd of retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagratión rode up
-to the ranks along which shots crackled now here and now there, drowning
-the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked with
-smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with it. Some
-were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the touchpans or
-taking charges from their pouches, while others were firing, though who
-they were firing at could not be seen for the smoke which there was no
-wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and whistling of bullets were
-often heard. “What is this?” thought Prince Andrew approaching the
-crowd of soldiers. “It can’t be an attack, for they are not moving;
-it can’t be a square—for they are not drawn up for that.”
-
-The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a
-pleasant smile—his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes,
-giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagratión and welcomed him as
-a host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had
-been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been
-repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack
-had been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had
-occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know what
-had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to him, and
-could not say with certainty whether the attack had been repulsed or his
-regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at the commencement
-of the action balls and shells began flying all over his regiment and
-hitting men and that afterwards someone had shouted “Cavalry!” and
-our men had begun firing. They were still firing, not at the cavalry
-which had disappeared, but at French infantry who had come into the
-hollow and were firing at our men. Prince Bagratión bowed his head as a
-sign that this was exactly what he had desired and expected. Turning
-to his adjutant he ordered him to bring down the two battalions of the
-Sixth Chasseurs whom they had just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by
-the changed expression on Prince Bagratión’s face at this moment. It
-expressed the concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of
-a man who on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water.
-The dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation
-of profound thought. The round, steady, hawk’s eyes looked before him
-eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although his
-movements were still slow and measured.
-
-The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagratión, entreating
-him to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were.
-“Please, your excellency, for God’s sake!” he kept saying,
-glancing for support at an officer of the suite who turned away
-from him. “There, you see!” and he drew attention to the bullets
-whistling, singing, and hissing continually around them. He spoke in the
-tone of entreaty and reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who
-has picked up an ax: “We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister
-your hands.” He spoke as if those bullets could not kill him, and his
-half-closed eyes gave still more persuasiveness to his words. The staff
-officer joined in the colonel’s appeals, but Bagratión did not reply;
-he only gave an order to cease firing and re-form, so as to give room
-for the two approaching battalions. While he was speaking, the curtain
-of smoke that had concealed the hollow, driven by a rising wind, began
-to move from right to left as if drawn by an invisible hand, and the
-hill opposite, with the French moving about on it, opened out before
-them. All eyes fastened involuntarily on this French column advancing
-against them and winding down over the uneven ground. One could already
-see the soldiers’ shaggy caps, distinguish the officers from the men,
-and see the standard flapping against its staff.
-
-“They march splendidly,” remarked someone in Bagratión’s suite.
-
-The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The clash
-would take place on this side of it...
-
-The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly formed up
-and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the laggards, came
-two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order. Before they had
-reached Bagratión, the weighty tread of the mass of men marching in
-step could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to Bagratión, marched
-a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a stupid and happy
-expression—the same man who had rushed out of the wattle shed. At that
-moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how dashing a fellow he
-would appear as he passed the commander.
-
-With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly with
-his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to his full
-height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with the heavy
-tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He carried close
-to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and not like a real
-weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and now back at the men
-without losing step, his whole powerful body turning flexibly. It was as
-if all the powers of his soul were concentrated on passing the commander
-in the best possible manner, and feeling that he was doing it well he
-was happy. “Left... left... left...” he seemed to repeat to himself
-at each alternate step; and in time to this, with stern but varied
-faces, the wall of soldiers burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched
-in step, and each one of these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be
-repeating to himself at each alternate step, “Left... left...
-left...” A fat major skirted a bush, puffing and falling out of
-step; a soldier who had fallen behind, his face showing alarm at his
-defection, ran at a trot, panting to catch up with his company. A cannon
-ball, cleaving the air, flew over the heads of Bagratión and his suite,
-and fell into the column to the measure of “Left... left!” “Close
-up!” came the company commander’s voice in jaunty tones. The
-soldiers passed in a semicircle round something where the ball had
-fallen, and an old trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who
-had stopped beside the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling
-into step with a hop, looked back angrily, and through the ominous
-silence and the regular tramp of feet beating the ground in unison, one
-seemed to hear left... left... left.
-
-“Well done, lads!” said Prince Bagratión.
-
-“Glad to do our best, your ex’len-lency!” came a confused shout
-from the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on
-Bagratión as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: “We
-know that ourselves!” Another, without looking round, as though
-fearing to relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on.
-
-The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.
-
-Bagratión rode round the ranks that had marched past him and
-dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over his
-felt coat, stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The head of the
-French column, with its officers leading, appeared from below the hill.
-
-“Forward, with God!” said Bagratión, in a resolute, sonorous voice,
-turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging his arms,
-he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the awkward gait of
-a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible power was leading him
-forward, and experienced great happiness.
-
-The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside Bagratión,
-could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets, and even their
-faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who, with gaitered
-legs and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with difficulty.) Prince
-Bagratión gave no further orders and silently continued to walk on in
-front of the ranks. Suddenly one shot after another rang out from the
-French, smoke appeared all along their uneven ranks, and musket shots
-sounded. Several of our men fell, among them the round-faced officer
-who had marched so gaily and complacently. But at the moment the first
-report was heard, Bagratión looked round and shouted, “Hurrah!”
-
-“Hurrah—ah!—ah!” rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and
-passing Bagratión and racing one another they rushed in an irregular
-but joyous and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right
-flank. In the center Túshin’s forgotten battery, which had managed to
-set fire to the Schön Grabern village, delayed the French advance. The
-French were putting out the fire which the wind was spreading, and thus
-gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the center to the other side
-of the dip in the ground at the rear was hurried and noisy, but the
-different companies did not get mixed. But our left—which consisted
-of the Azóv and Podólsk infantry and the Pávlograd hussars—was
-simultaneously attacked and outflanked by superior French forces under
-Lannes and was thrown into confusion. Bagratión had sent Zherkóv
-to the general commanding that left flank with orders to retreat
-immediately.
-
-Zherkóv, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse about
-and galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagratión than his courage
-failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it was
-dangerous.
-
-Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where the
-firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where they
-could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order.
-
-The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander of
-the regiment Kutúzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which Dólokhov was
-serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left flank had been
-assigned to the commander of the Pávlograd regiment in which Rostóv
-was serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two commanders were much
-exasperated with one another and, long after the action had begun on
-the right flank and the French were already advancing, were engaged
-in discussion with the sole object of offending one another. But the
-regiments, both cavalry and infantry, were by no means ready for the
-impending action. From privates to general they were not expecting a
-battle and were engaged in peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the
-horses and the infantry collecting wood.
-
-“He higher iss dan I in rank,” said the German colonel of the
-hussars, flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, “so
-let him do what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars... Bugler,
-sount ze retreat!”
-
-But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling
-together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the capotes
-of Lannes’ sharpshooters were already seen crossing the milldam and
-forming up within twice the range of a musket shot. The general in
-command of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky steps, and
-having mounted drew himself up very straight and tall and rode to the
-Pávlograd commander. The commanders met with polite bows but with
-secret malevolence in their hearts.
-
-“Once again, Colonel,” said the general, “I can’t leave half
-my men in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you,” he repeated, “to
-occupy the position and prepare for an attack.”
-
-“I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!”
-suddenly replied the irate colonel. “If you vere in the cavalry...”
-
-“I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if
-you are not aware of the fact...”
-
-“Quite avare, your excellency,” suddenly shouted the colonel,
-touching his horse and turning purple in the face. “Vill you be so
-goot to come to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don’t
-vish to destroy my men for your pleasure!”
-
-“You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own pleasure
-and I won’t allow it to be said!”
-
-Taking the colonel’s outburst as a challenge to his courage, the
-general expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the
-front line, as if their differences would be settled there amongst the
-bullets. They reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and
-they halted in silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the
-line, for from where they had been before it had been evident that it
-was impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken ground,
-as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The general
-and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another like two
-fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to detect signs
-of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination successfully. As
-there was nothing to be said, and neither wished to give occasion for
-it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave the range of fire,
-they would have remained there for a long time testing each other’s
-courage had it not been that just then they heard the rattle of musketry
-and a muffled shout almost behind them in the wood. The French had
-attacked the men collecting wood in the copse. It was no longer possible
-for the hussars to retreat with the infantry. They were cut off from
-the line of retreat on the left by the French. However inconvenient the
-position, it was now necessary to attack in order to cut a way through
-for themselves.
-
-The squadron in which Rostóv was serving had scarcely time to mount
-before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns bridge,
-there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and again that
-terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear—resembling the line
-separating the living from the dead—lay between them. All were
-conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether they would cross
-it or not, and how they would cross it, agitated them all.
-
-The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to questions put
-to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately insisting on having
-his own way, gave an order. No one said anything definite, but the rumor
-of an attack spread through the squadron. The command to form up rang
-out and the sabers whizzed as they were drawn from their scabbards.
-Still no one moved. The troops of the left flank, infantry and hussars
-alike, felt that the commander did not himself know what to do, and this
-irresolution communicated itself to the men.
-
-“If only they would be quick!” thought Rostóv, feeling that at last
-the time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which he had so
-often heard from his fellow hussars.
-
-“Fo’ward, with God, lads!” rang out Denísov’s voice. “At a
-twot fo’ward!”
-
-The horses’ croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at the
-reins and started of his own accord.
-
-Before him, on the right, Rostóv saw the front lines of his hussars and
-still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see distinctly but
-took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some way off.
-
-“Faster!” came the word of command, and Rostóv felt Rook’s flanks
-drooping as he broke into a gallop.
-
-Rostóv anticipated his horse’s movements and became more and more
-elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had been
-in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible—and now he
-had crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but
-everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. “Oh, how I
-will slash at him!” thought Rostóv, gripping the hilt of his saber.
-
-“Hur-a-a-a-ah!” came a roar of voices. “Let anyone come my way
-now,” thought Rostóv driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go
-at a full gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was
-already visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep
-over the squadron. Rostóv raised his saber, ready to strike, but at
-that instant the trooper Nikítenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away
-from him, and Rostóv felt as in a dream that he continued to be carried
-forward with unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same spot. From
-behind him Bondarchúk, an hussar he knew, jolted against him and looked
-angrily at him. Bondarchúk’s horse swerved and galloped past.
-
-“How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!” Rostóv
-asked and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle of a
-field. Instead of the moving horses and hussars’ backs, he saw nothing
-before him but the motionless earth and the stubble around him. There
-was warm blood under his arm. “No, I am wounded and the horse is
-killed.” Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back, pinning his
-rider’s leg. Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled but could
-not rise. Rostóv also tried to rise but fell back, his sabretache
-having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men were, and where the
-French, he did not know. There was no one near.
-
-Having disentangled his leg, he rose. “Where, on which side, was now
-the line that had so sharply divided the two armies?” he asked himself
-and could not answer. “Can something bad have happened to me?”
-he wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something
-superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if
-it were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find
-blood on it. “Ah, here are people coming,” he thought joyfully,
-seeing some men running toward him. “They will help me!” In front
-came a man wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned,
-and with a hooked nose. Then came two more, and many more running
-behind. One of them said something strange, not in Russian. In among the
-hindmost of these men wearing similar shakos was a Russian hussar. He
-was being held by the arms and his horse was being led behind him.
-
-“It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will
-take me too? Who are these men?” thought Rostóv, scarcely believing
-his eyes. “Can they be French?” He looked at the approaching
-Frenchmen, and though but a moment before he had been galloping to get
-at them and hack them to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful
-that he could not believe his eyes. “Who are they? Why are they
-running? Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom everyone
-is so fond of?” He remembered his mother’s love for him, and his
-family’s, and his friends’, and the enemy’s intention to kill him
-seemed impossible. “But perhaps they may do it!” For more than ten
-seconds he stood not moving from the spot or realizing the situation.
-The foremost Frenchman, the one with the hooked nose, was already so
-close that the expression of his face could be seen. And the excited,
-alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down, holding his breath,
-and running so lightly, frightened Rostóv. He seized his pistol and,
-instead of firing it, flung it at the Frenchman and ran with all his
-might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the feeling of doubt
-and conflict with which he had trodden the Enns bridge, but with the
-feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One single sentiment, that
-of fear for his young and happy life, possessed his whole being. Rapidly
-leaping the furrows, he fled across the field with the impetuosity he
-used to show at catchplay, now and then turning his good-natured, pale,
-young face to look back. A shudder of terror went through him: “No,
-better not look,” he thought, but having reached the bushes he glanced
-round once more. The French had fallen behind, and just as he looked
-round the first man changed his run to a walk and, turning, shouted
-something loudly to a comrade farther back. Rostóv paused. “No,
-there’s some mistake,” thought he. “They can’t have wanted to
-kill me.” But at the same time, his left arm felt as heavy as if
-a seventy-pound weight were tied to it. He could run no more. The
-Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostóv closed his eyes and stooped
-down. One bullet and then another whistled past him. He mustered his
-last remaining strength, took hold of his left hand with his right, and
-reached the bushes. Behind these were some Russian sharpshooters.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the outskirts
-of the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting mixed, and
-retreated as a disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his fear, uttered the
-senseless cry, “Cut off!” that is so terrible in battle, and that
-word infected the whole crowd with a feeling of panic.
-
-“Surrounded! Cut off? We’re lost!” shouted the fugitives.
-
-The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the general
-realized that something dreadful had happened to his regiment, and the
-thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years’ service who
-had never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters
-for negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the
-recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general, and above
-all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for self-preservation, he
-clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring his horse, galloped to
-the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell around, but fortunately
-missed him. His one desire was to know what was happening and at any
-cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he had made one, so that he,
-an exemplary officer of twenty-two years’ service, who had never been
-censured, should not be held to blame.
-
-Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind
-the copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and
-descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides
-the fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of soldiers
-attend to the voice of their commander, or would they, disregarding him,
-continue their flight? Despite his desperate shouts that used to seem
-so terrible to the soldiers, despite his furious purple countenance
-distorted out of all likeness to his former self, and the flourishing of
-his saber, the soldiers all continued to run, talking, firing into the
-air, and disobeying orders. The moral hesitation which decided the fate
-of battles was evidently culminating in a panic.
-
-The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the
-powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at that
-moment the French who were attacking, suddenly and without any apparent
-reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and Russian
-sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was Timókhin’s
-company, which alone had maintained its order in the wood and, having
-lain in ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French unexpectedly.
-Timókhin, armed only with a sword, had rushed at the enemy with such
-a desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination that, taken by
-surprise, the French had thrown down their muskets and run. Dólokhov,
-running beside Timókhin, killed a Frenchman at close quarters and was
-the first to seize the surrendering French officer by his collar. Our
-fugitives returned, the battalions re-formed, and the French who had
-nearly cut our left flank in half were for the moment repulsed. Our
-reserve units were able to join up, and the fight was at an end. The
-regimental commander and Major Ekonómov had stopped beside a bridge,
-letting the retreating companies pass by them, when a soldier came up
-and took hold of the commander’s stirrup, almost leaning against him.
-The man was wearing a bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no knapsack
-or cap, his head was bandaged, and over his shoulder a French munition
-pouch was slung. He had an officer’s sword in his hand. The soldier
-was pale, his blue eyes looked impudently into the commander’s face,
-and his lips were smiling. Though the commander was occupied in giving
-instructions to Major Ekonómov, he could not help taking notice of the
-soldier.
-
-“Your excellency, here are two trophies,” said Dólokhov, pointing
-to the French sword and pouch. “I have taken an officer prisoner. I
-stopped the company.” Dólokhov breathed heavily from weariness and
-spoke in abrupt sentences. “The whole company can bear witness. I beg
-you will remember this, your excellency!”
-
-“All right, all right,” replied the commander, and turned to Major
-Ekonómov.
-
-But Dólokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around his
-head, pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair.
-
-“A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your
-excellency!”
-
-
-Túshin’s battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of the
-action did Prince Bagratión, still hearing the cannonade in the center,
-send his orderly staff officer, and later Prince Andrew also, to order
-the battery to retire as quickly as possible. When the supports attached
-to Túshin’s battery had been moved away in the middle of the action
-by someone’s order, the battery had continued firing and was only not
-captured by the French because the enemy could not surmise that anyone
-could have the effrontery to continue firing from four quite undefended
-guns. On the contrary, the energetic action of that battery led the
-French to suppose that here—in the center—the main Russian forces
-were concentrated. Twice they had attempted to attack this point, but on
-each occasion had been driven back by grapeshot from the four isolated
-guns on the hillock.
-
-Soon after Prince Bagratión had left him, Túshin had succeeded in
-setting fire to Schön Grabern.
-
-“Look at them scurrying! It’s burning! Just see the smoke! Fine!
-Grand! Look at the smoke, the smoke!” exclaimed the artillerymen,
-brightening up.
-
-All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the
-direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the soldiers
-cried at each shot: “Fine! That’s good! Look at it... Grand!” The
-fire, fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French columns
-that had advanced beyond the village went back; but as though in revenge
-for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the right of the village
-and began firing them at Túshin’s battery.
-
-In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in
-successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed this
-battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our guns, one
-knocking over two horses and another tearing off a munition-wagon
-driver’s leg. Their spirits once roused were, however, not diminished,
-but only changed character. The horses were replaced by others from a
-reserve gun carriage, the wounded were carried away, and the four guns
-were turned against the ten-gun battery. Túshin’s companion officer
-had been killed at the beginning of the engagement and within an hour
-seventeen of the forty men of the guns’ crews had been disabled, but
-the artillerymen were still as merry and lively as ever. Twice they
-noticed the French appearing below them, and then they fired grapeshot
-at them.
-
-Little Túshin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly to
-“refill my pipe for that one!” and then, scattering sparks from it,
-ran forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the French.
-
-“Smack at ‘em, lads!” he kept saying, seizing the guns by the
-wheels and working the screws himself.
-
-Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always made him
-jump, Túshin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from gun to gun,
-now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders about replacing
-dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, and shouting in his
-feeble voice, so high pitched and irresolute. His face grew more and
-more animated. Only when a man was killed or wounded did he frown and
-turn away from the sight, shouting angrily at the men who, as is always
-the case, hesitated about lifting the injured or dead. The soldiers,
-for the most part handsome fellows and, as is always the case in an
-artillery company, a head and shoulders taller and twice as broad
-as their officer—all looked at their commander like children in an
-embarrassing situation, and the expression on his face was invariably
-reflected on theirs.
-
-Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and
-activity, Túshin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense of
-fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded never
-occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more elated. It
-seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a day, since he
-had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and that the corner
-of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar ground. Though he
-thought of everything, considered everything, and did everything the
-best of officers could do in his position, he was in a state akin to
-feverish delirium or drunkenness.
-
-From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle and
-thud of the enemy’s cannon balls, from the flushed and perspiring
-faces of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight of the blood
-of men and horses, from the little puffs of smoke on the enemy’s side
-(always followed by a ball flying past and striking the earth, a man, a
-gun, a horse), from the sight of all these things a fantastic world of
-his own had taken possession of his brain and at that moment afforded
-him pleasure. The enemy’s guns were in his fancy not guns but pipes
-from which occasional puffs were blown by an invisible smoker.
-
-“There... he’s puffing again,” muttered Túshin to himself, as a
-small cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left by
-the wind.
-
-“Now look out for the ball... we’ll throw it back.”
-
-“What do you want, your honor?” asked an artilleryman, standing
-close by, who heard him muttering.
-
-“Nothing... only a shell...” he answered.
-
-“Come along, our Matvévna!” he said to himself. “Matvévna” *
-was the name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which
-was large and of an old pattern. The French swarming round their guns
-seemed to him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard Number One
-of the second gun’s crew was “uncle”; Túshin looked at him more
-often than at anyone else and took delight in his every movement.
-The sound of musketry at the foot of the hill, now diminishing, now
-increasing, seemed like someone’s breathing. He listened intently to
-the ebb and flow of these sounds.
-
- * Daughter of Matthew.
-
-“Ah! Breathing again, breathing!” he muttered to himself.
-
-He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful man who was throwing
-cannon balls at the French with both hands.
-
-“Now then, Matvévna, dear old lady, don’t let me down!” he was
-saying as he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice called
-above his head: “Captain Túshin! Captain!”
-
-Túshin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer who had turned
-him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping voice:
-
-“Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you...”
-
-“Why are they down on me?” thought Túshin, looking in alarm at his
-superior.
-
-“I... don’t...” he muttered, holding up two fingers to his cap.
-“I...”
-
-But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say. A cannon
-ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and bend over his horse.
-He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another ball
-stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off.
-
-“Retire! All to retire!” he shouted from a distance.
-
-The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the same
-order.
-
-It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding up to the space
-where Túshin’s guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with a
-broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed horses.
-Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the limbers lay
-several dead men. One ball after another passed over as he approached
-and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the mere thought
-of being afraid roused him again. “I cannot be afraid,” thought he,
-and dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the order and did
-not leave the battery. He decided to have the guns removed from their
-positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together with Túshin, stepping
-across the bodies and under a terrible fire from the French, he attended
-to the removal of the guns.
-
-“A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off,” said an
-artilleryman to Prince Andrew. “Not like your honor!”
-
-Prince Andrew said nothing to Túshin. They were both so busy as to seem
-not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two cannon
-that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down the hill
-(one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind), Prince Andrew rode
-up to Túshin.
-
-“Well, till we meet again...” he said, holding out his hand to
-Túshin.
-
-“Good-by, my dear fellow,” said Túshin. “Dear soul! Good-by, my
-dear fellow!” and for some unknown reason tears suddenly filled his
-eyes.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke,
-hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing
-dark and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous. The
-cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on the
-right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Túshin with his guns,
-continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range
-of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the staff,
-among them the staff officer and Zherkóv, who had been twice sent to
-Túshin’s battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one
-another, they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to proceed,
-reprimanding and reproaching him. Túshin gave no orders, and,
-silently—fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to
-weep without knowing why—rode behind on his artillery nag. Though
-the orders were to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves
-after troops and begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty
-infantry officer who just before the battle had rushed out of
-Túshin’s wattle shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on
-“Matvévna’s” carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar
-cadet, supporting one hand with the other, came up to Túshin and asked
-for a seat.
-
-“Captain, for God’s sake! I’ve hurt my arm,” he said timidly.
-“For God’s sake... I can’t walk. For God’s sake!”
-
-It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift and
-been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice.
-
-“Tell them to give me a seat, for God’s sake!”
-
-“Give him a seat,” said Túshin. “Lay a cloak for him to sit on,
-lad,” he said, addressing his favorite soldier. “And where is the
-wounded officer?”
-
-“He has been set down. He died,” replied someone.
-
-“Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak,
-Antónov.”
-
-The cadet was Rostóv. With one hand he supported the other; he was
-pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on
-“Matvévna,” the gun from which they had removed the dead officer.
-The cloak they spread under him was wet with blood which stained his
-breeches and arm.
-
-“What, are you wounded, my lad?” said Túshin, approaching the gun
-on which Rostóv sat.
-
-“No, it’s a sprain.”
-
-“Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?” inquired Túshin.
-
-“It was the officer, your honor, stained it,” answered the
-artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if
-apologizing for the state of his gun.
-
-It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by the
-infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they halted. It
-had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the uniforms ten paces
-off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly, near by on the
-right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of shot gleamed in
-the darkness. This was the last French attack and was met by soldiers
-who had sheltered in the village houses. They all rushed out of
-the village again, but Túshin’s guns could not move, and the
-artillerymen, Túshin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances as they
-awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking eagerly,
-streamed out of a side street.
-
-“Not hurt, Petróv?” asked one.
-
-“We’ve given it ‘em hot, mate! They won’t make another push
-now,” said another.
-
-“You couldn’t see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows!
-Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn’t there something to
-drink?”
-
-The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and again in
-the complete darkness Túshin’s guns moved forward, surrounded by the
-humming infantry as by a frame.
-
-In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was flowing
-always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and the sound of
-hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and voices of the
-wounded were more distinctly heard than any other sound in the darkness
-of the night. The gloom that enveloped the army was filled with their
-groans, which seemed to melt into one with the darkness of the night.
-After a while the moving mass became agitated, someone rode past on
-a white horse followed by his suite, and said something in passing:
-“What did he say? Where to, now? Halt, is it? Did he thank us?” came
-eager questions from all sides. The whole moving mass began pressing
-closer together and a report spread that they were ordered to halt:
-evidently those in front had halted. All remained where they were in the
-middle of the muddy road.
-
-Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Túshin,
-having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a dressing
-station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a bonfire the
-soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostóv, too, dragged himself to the
-fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering shook his whole
-body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but he kept awake by
-an excruciating pain in his arm, for which he could find no satisfactory
-position. He kept closing his eyes and then again looking at the fire,
-which seemed to him dazzlingly red, and at the feeble, round-shouldered
-figure of Túshin who was sitting cross-legged like a Turk beside him.
-Túshin’s large, kind, intelligent eyes were fixed with sympathy and
-commiseration on Rostóv, who saw that Túshin with his whole heart
-wished to help him but could not.
-
-From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry, who
-were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The sound
-of voices, the tramping feet, the horses’ hoofs moving in mud, the
-crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous rumble.
-
-It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through the
-gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a storm.
-Rostóv looked at and listened listlessly to what passed before and
-around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on his heels, held
-his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.
-
-“You don’t mind your honor?” he asked Túshin. “I’ve lost my
-company, your honor. I don’t know where... such bad luck!”
-
-With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came up to
-the bonfire, and addressing Túshin asked him to have the guns moved a
-trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers rushed to
-the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately, each trying
-to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding on to.
-
-“You picked it up?... I dare say! You’re very smart!” one of them
-shouted hoarsely.
-
-Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg
-band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.
-
-“Must one die like a dog?” said he.
-
-Túshin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier
-ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.
-
-“A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you, fellow
-countrymen. Thanks for the fire—we’ll return it with interest,”
-said he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.
-
-Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and passed
-by the fire. One of them stumbled.
-
-“Who the devil has put the logs on the road?” snarled he.
-
-“He’s dead—why carry him?” said another.
-
-“Shut up!”
-
-And they disappeared into the darkness with their load.
-
-“Still aching?” Túshin asked Rostóv in a whisper.
-
-“Yes.”
-
-“Your honor, you’re wanted by the general. He is in the hut here,”
-said a gunner, coming up to Túshin.
-
-“Coming, friend.”
-
-Túshin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight,
-walked away from the fire.
-
-Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared
-for him, Prince Bagratión sat at dinner, talking with some commanding
-officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old man with
-the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton bone, and the
-general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years, flushed by a
-glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with the signet
-ring, and Zherkóv, uneasily glancing at them all, and Prince Andrew,
-pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering eyes.
-
-In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French, and
-the accountant with the naïve face was feeling its texture, shaking his
-head in perplexity—perhaps because the banner really interested him,
-perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was, to look on at
-a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next hut there was a
-French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our dragoons. Our officers
-were flocking in to look at him. Prince Bagratión was thanking the
-individual commanders and inquiring into details of the action and our
-losses. The general whose regiment had been inspected at Braunau was
-informing the prince that as soon as the action began he had withdrawn
-from the wood, mustered the men who were woodcutting, and, allowing the
-French to pass him, had made a bayonet charge with two battalions and
-had broken up the French troops.
-
-“When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was
-disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: ‘I’ll let them
-come on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion’—and
-that’s what I did.”
-
-The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not managed
-to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened. Perhaps
-it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid all that
-confusion what did or did not happen?
-
-“By the way, your excellency, I should inform you,” he
-continued—remembering Dólokhov’s conversation with Kutúzov and his
-last interview with the gentleman-ranker—“that Private Dólokhov,
-who was reduced to the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my
-presence and particularly distinguished himself.”
-
-“I saw the Pávlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,” chimed
-in Zherkóv, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the hussars all
-that day, but had heard about them from an infantry officer. “They
-broke up two squares, your excellency.”
-
-Several of those present smiled at Zherkóv’s words, expecting one of
-his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to
-the glory of our arms and of the day’s work, they assumed a serious
-expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie
-devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagratión turned to the old colonel:
-
-“Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically:
-infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were
-abandoned in the center?” he inquired, searching with his eyes for
-someone. (Prince Bagratión did not ask about the guns on the left
-flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned at the very
-beginning of the action.) “I think I sent you?” he added, turning to
-the staff officer on duty.
-
-“One was damaged,” answered the staff officer, “and the other I
-can’t understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had only
-just left.... It is true that it was hot there,” he added, modestly.
-
-Someone mentioned that Captain Túshin was bivouacking close to the
-village and had already been sent for.
-
-“Oh, but you were there?” said Prince Bagratión, addressing Prince
-Andrew.
-
-“Of course, we only just missed one another,” said the staff
-officer, with a smile to Bolkónski.
-
-“I had not the pleasure of seeing you,” said Prince Andrew, coldly
-and abruptly.
-
-All were silent. Túshin appeared at the threshold and made his way
-timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past the
-generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always was by the
-sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of the banner and
-stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.
-
-“How was it a gun was abandoned?” asked Bagratión, frowning, not so
-much at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom Zherkóv
-laughed loudest.
-
-Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his guilt
-and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive present
-themselves to Túshin in all their horror. He had been so excited that
-he had not thought about it until that moment. The officers’ laughter
-confused him still more. He stood before Bagratión with his lower
-jaw trembling and was hardly able to mutter: “I don’t know... your
-excellency... I had no men... your excellency.”
-
-“You might have taken some from the covering troops.”
-
-Túshin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that
-was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into
-trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagratión as a schoolboy who
-has blundered looks at an examiner.
-
-The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagratión, apparently not wishing
-to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture to
-intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Túshin from under his brows and his
-fingers twitched nervously.
-
-“Your excellency!” Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt
-voice, “you were pleased to send me to Captain Túshin’s battery. I
-went there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two
-guns smashed, and no supports at all.”
-
-Prince Bagratión and Túshin looked with equal intentness at
-Bolkónski, who spoke with suppressed agitation.
-
-“And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion,” he
-continued, “we owe today’s success chiefly to the action of that
-battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Túshin and his company,”
-and without awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.
-
-Prince Bagratión looked at Túshin, evidently reluctant to show
-distrust in Bolkónski’s emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully
-to credit it, bent his head, and told Túshin that he could go. Prince
-Andrew went out with him.
-
-“Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!” said Túshin.
-
-Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He felt
-sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had hoped.
-
-
-“Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will
-all this end?” thought Rostóv, looking at the changing shadows before
-him. The pain in his arm became more and more intense. Irresistible
-drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his eyes, and the
-impression of those voices and faces and a sense of loneliness merged
-with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers—wounded and
-unwounded—it was they who were crushing, weighing down, and twisting
-the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm and shoulder. To
-rid himself of them he closed his eyes.
-
-For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things
-appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand,
-Sónya’s thin little shoulders, Natásha’s eyes and laughter,
-Denísov with his voice and mustache, and Telyánin and all that affair
-with Telyánin and Bogdánich. That affair was the same thing as this
-soldier with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and this soldier
-that were so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and
-always dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them, but
-they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair’s breadth.
-It would not ache—it would be well—if only they did not pull it, but
-it was impossible to get rid of them.
-
-He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung less
-than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling snow were
-fluttering in that light. Túshin had not returned, the doctor had not
-come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was sitting naked at
-the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow body.
-
-“Nobody wants me!” thought Rostóv. “There is no one to help me or
-pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved.” He sighed
-and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.
-
-“Eh, is anything hurting you?” asked the soldier, shaking his shirt
-out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt and
-added: “What a lot of men have been crippled today—frightful!”
-
-Rostóv did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes
-fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,
-bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his
-healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. “And why
-did I come here?” he wondered.
-
-Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant of
-Bagratión’s detachment was reunited to Kutúzov’s army.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK THREE: 1805
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-Prince Vasíli was not a man who deliberately thought out his plans.
-Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own advantage. He
-was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom getting on had
-become a habit. Schemes and devices for which he never rightly accounted
-to himself, but which formed the whole interest of his life,
-were constantly shaping themselves in his mind, arising from the
-circumstances and persons he met. Of these plans he had not merely one
-or two in his head but dozens, some only beginning to form themselves,
-some approaching achievement, and some in course of disintegration. He
-did not, for instance, say to himself: “This man now has influence, I
-must gain his confidence and friendship and through him obtain a special
-grant.” Nor did he say to himself: “Pierre is a rich man, I must
-entice him to marry my daughter and lend me the forty thousand rubles
-I need.” But when he came across a man of position his instinct
-immediately told him that this man could be useful, and without any
-premeditation Prince Vasíli took the first opportunity to gain his
-confidence, flatter him, become intimate with him, and finally make his
-request.
-
-He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him an appointment as
-Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at that time conferred the status of
-Councilor of State, and insisted on the young man accompanying him to
-Petersburg and staying at his house. With apparent absent-mindedness,
-yet with unhesitating assurance that he was doing the right thing,
-Prince Vasíli did everything to get Pierre to marry his daughter. Had
-he thought out his plans beforehand he could not have been so natural
-and shown such unaffected familiarity in intercourse with everybody both
-above and below him in social standing. Something always drew him toward
-those richer and more powerful than himself and he had rare skill in
-seizing the most opportune moment for making use of people.
-
-Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezúkhov and a rich man, felt
-himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset and
-preoccupied that only in bed was he able to be by himself. He had to
-sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the purpose of
-which was not clear to him, to question his chief steward, to visit his
-estate near Moscow, and to receive many people who formerly did not
-even wish to know of his existence but would now have been offended
-and grieved had he chosen not to see them. These different
-people—businessmen, relations, and acquaintances alike—were all
-disposed to treat the young heir in the most friendly and flattering
-manner: they were all evidently firmly convinced of Pierre’s noble
-qualities. He was always hearing such words as: “With your remarkable
-kindness,” or, “With your excellent heart,” “You are yourself so
-honorable, Count,” or, “Were he as clever as you,” and so on,
-till he began sincerely to believe in his own exceptional kindness and
-extraordinary intelligence, the more so as in the depth of his heart it
-had always seemed to him that he really was very kind and intelligent.
-Even people who had formerly been spiteful toward him and evidently
-unfriendly now became gentle and affectionate. The angry eldest
-princess, with the long waist and hair plastered down like a doll’s,
-had come into Pierre’s room after the funeral. With drooping eyes
-and frequent blushes she told him she was very sorry about their past
-misunderstandings and did not now feel she had a right to ask him for
-anything, except only for permission, after the blow she had received,
-to remain for a few weeks longer in the house she so loved and where
-she had sacrificed so much. She could not refrain from weeping at these
-words. Touched that this statuesque princess could so change, Pierre
-took her hand and begged her forgiveness, without knowing what for.
-From that day the eldest princess quite changed toward Pierre and began
-knitting a striped scarf for him.
-
-“Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put up with a
-great deal from the deceased,” said Prince Vasíli to him, handing him
-a deed to sign for the princess’ benefit.
-
-Prince Vasíli had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to throw
-this bone—a bill for thirty thousand rubles—to the poor princess
-that it might not occur to her to speak of his share in the affair of
-the inlaid portfolio. Pierre signed the deed and after that the princess
-grew still kinder. The younger sisters also became affectionate to him,
-especially the youngest, the pretty one with the mole, who often made
-him feel confused by her smiles and her own confusion when meeting him.
-
-It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like him, and it
-would have seemed so unnatural had anyone disliked him, that he could
-not but believe in the sincerity of those around him. Besides, he had
-no time to ask himself whether these people were sincere or not. He
-was always busy and always felt in a state of mild and cheerful
-intoxication. He felt as though he were the center of some important and
-general movement; that something was constantly expected of him, that if
-he did not do it he would grieve and disappoint many people, but if he
-did this and that, all would be well; and he did what was demanded of
-him, but still that happy result always remained in the future.
-
-More than anyone else, Prince Vasíli took possession of Pierre’s
-affairs and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of
-Count Bezúkhov he did not let go his hold of the lad. He had the air of
-a man oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would not, for
-pity’s sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was the son of
-his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth, to the caprice
-of fate and the designs of rogues. During the few days he spent in
-Moscow after the death of Count Bezúkhov, he would call Pierre, or
-go to him himself, and tell him what ought to be done in a tone of
-weariness and assurance, as if he were adding every time: “You know
-I am overwhelmed with business and it is purely out of charity that
-I trouble myself about you, and you also know quite well that what I
-propose is the only thing possible.”
-
-“Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last,” said Prince
-Vasíli one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre’s elbow,
-speaking as if he were saying something which had long since been agreed
-upon and could not now be altered. “We start tomorrow and I’m giving
-you a place in my carriage. I am very glad. All our important business
-here is now settled, and I ought to have been off long ago. Here is
-something I have received from the chancellor. I asked him for you, and
-you have been entered in the diplomatic corps and made a Gentleman of
-the Bedchamber. The diplomatic career now lies open before you.”
-
-Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with which these words
-were pronounced, Pierre, who had so long been considering his career,
-wished to make some suggestion. But Prince Vasíli interrupted him in
-the special deep cooing tone, precluding the possibility of interrupting
-his speech, which he used in extreme cases when special persuasion was
-needed.
-
-“Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy my conscience,
-and there is nothing to thank me for. No one has ever complained yet of
-being too much loved; and besides, you are free, you could throw it
-up tomorrow. But you will see everything for yourself when you get to
-Petersburg. It is high time for you to get away from these terrible
-recollections.” Prince Vasíli sighed. “Yes, yes, my boy. And my
-valet can go in your carriage. Ah! I was nearly forgetting,” he added.
-“You know, mon cher, your father and I had some accounts to settle, so
-I have received what was due from the Ryazán estate and will keep it;
-you won’t require it. We’ll go into the accounts later.”
-
-By “what was due from the Ryazán estate” Prince Vasíli meant
-several thousand rubles quitrent received from Pierre’s peasants,
-which the prince had retained for himself.
-
-In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of
-gentleness and affection. He could not refuse the post, or rather the
-rank (for he did nothing), that Prince Vasíli had procured for him,
-and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so numerous
-that, even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of bewilderment, bustle,
-and continual expectation of some good, always in front of him but never
-attained.
-
-Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no longer in Petersburg.
-The Guards had gone to the front; Dólokhov had been reduced to the
-ranks; Anatole was in the army somewhere in the provinces; Prince Andrew
-was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity to spend his nights as he
-used to like to spend them, or to open his mind by intimate talks with
-a friend older than himself and whom he respected. His whole time
-was taken up with dinners and balls and was spent chiefly at Prince
-Vasíli’s house in the company of the stout princess, his wife, and
-his beautiful daughter Hélène.
-
-Like the others, Anna Pávlovna Schérer showed Pierre the change of
-attitude toward him that had taken place in society.
-
-Formerly in Anna Pávlovna’s presence, Pierre had always felt that
-what he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that
-remarks which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind became
-foolish as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary Hippolyte’s
-stupidest remarks came out clever and apt. Now everything Pierre said
-was charmant. Even if Anna Pávlovna did not say so, he could see that
-she wished to and only refrained out of regard for his modesty.
-
-In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received one of Anna
-Pávlovna’s usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added:
-“You will find the beautiful Hélène here, whom it is always
-delightful to see.”
-
-When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time that some
-link which other people recognized had grown up between himself and
-Hélène, and that thought both alarmed him, as if some obligation were
-being imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased him as an
-entertaining supposition.
-
-Anna Pávlovna’s “At Home” was like the former one, only the
-novelty she offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a
-diplomatist fresh from Berlin with the very latest details of the
-Emperor Alexander’s visit to Potsdam, and of how the two august
-friends had pledged themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold
-the cause of justice against the enemy of the human race. Anna Pávlovna
-received Pierre with a shade of melancholy, evidently relating to the
-young man’s recent loss by the death of Count Bezúkhov (everyone
-constantly considered it a duty to assure Pierre that he was greatly
-afflicted by the death of the father he had hardly known), and her
-melancholy was just like the august melancholy she showed at the mention
-of her most august Majesty the Empress Márya Fëdorovna. Pierre felt
-flattered by this. Anna Pávlovna arranged the different groups in her
-drawing room with her habitual skill. The large group, in which were
-Prince Vasíli and the generals, had the benefit of the diplomat.
-Another group was at the tea table. Pierre wished to join the former,
-but Anna Pávlovna—who was in the excited condition of a commander on
-a battlefield to whom thousands of new and brilliant ideas occur which
-there is hardly time to put in action—seeing Pierre, touched his
-sleeve with her finger, saying:
-
-“Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening.”
-(She glanced at Hélène and smiled at her.) “My dear Hélène, be
-charitable to my poor aunt who adores you. Go and keep her company for
-ten minutes. And that it will not be too dull, here is the dear count
-who will not refuse to accompany you.”
-
-The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pávlovna detained Pierre, looking
-as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.
-
-“Isn’t she exquisite?” she said to Pierre, pointing to the stately
-beauty as she glided away. “And how she carries herself! For so young
-a girl, such tact, such masterly perfection of manner! It comes from
-her heart. Happy the man who wins her! With her the least worldly of men
-would occupy a most brilliant position in society. Don’t you think so?
-I only wanted to know your opinion,” and Anna Pávlovna let Pierre go.
-
-Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Hélène’s
-perfection of manner. If he ever thought of Hélène, it was just of
-her beauty and her remarkable skill in appearing silently dignified in
-society.
-
-The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed
-desirous of hiding her adoration for Hélène and inclined rather
-to show her fear of Anna Pávlovna. She looked at her niece, as if
-inquiring what she was to do with these people. On leaving them, Anna
-Pávlovna again touched Pierre’s sleeve, saying: “I hope you won’t
-say that it is dull in my house again,” and she glanced at Hélène.
-
-Hélène smiled, with a look implying that she did not admit the
-possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt
-coughed, swallowed, and said in French that she was very pleased to see
-Hélène, then she turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome
-and the same look. In the middle of a dull and halting conversation,
-Hélène turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she gave
-to everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it had so little
-meaning for him, that he paid no attention to it. The aunt was just
-speaking of a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to Pierre’s
-father, Count Bezúkhov, and showed them her own box. Princess Hélène
-asked to see the portrait of the aunt’s husband on the box lid.
-
-“That is probably the work of Vinesse,” said Pierre, mentioning
-a celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the table to take the
-snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table.
-
-He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed him the snuffbox,
-passing it across Hélène’s back. Hélène stooped forward to make
-room, and looked round with a smile. She was, as always at evening
-parties, wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut very low at
-front and back. Her bust, which had always seemed like marble to Pierre,
-was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could not but perceive
-the living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near to his lips that
-he need only have bent his head a little to have touched them. He was
-conscious of the warmth of her body, the scent of perfume, and the
-creaking of her corset as she moved. He did not see her marble beauty
-forming a complete whole with her dress, but all the charm of her body
-only covered by her garments. And having once seen this he could not
-help being aware of it, just as we cannot renew an illusion we have once
-seen through.
-
-“So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?” Hélène
-seemed to say. “You had not noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a
-woman who may belong to anyone—to you too,” said her glance. And at
-that moment Pierre felt that Hélène not only could, but must, be his
-wife, and that it could not be otherwise.
-
-He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing at the
-altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know, he did not
-even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he knew not why,
-that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would happen.
-
-Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished once more to see
-her as a distant beauty far removed from him, as he had seen her every
-day until then, but he could no longer do it. He could not, any more
-than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe grass through the
-mist and taking it for a tree can again take it for a tree after he has
-once recognized it to be a tuft of grass. She was terribly close to him.
-She already had power over him, and between them there was no longer any
-barrier except the barrier of his own will.
-
-“Well, I will leave you in your little corner,” came Anna
-Pávlovna’s voice, “I see you are all right there.”
-
-And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he had done anything
-reprehensible, looked round with a blush. It seemed to him that everyone
-knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.
-
-A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pávlovna said
-to him: “I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?”
-
-This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and
-Pierre, without knowing why, was having his enormous Petersburg house
-done up.
-
-“That’s a good thing, but don’t move from Prince Vasíli’s. It
-is good to have a friend like the prince,” she said, smiling at Prince
-Vasíli. “I know something about that. Don’t I? And you are still so
-young. You need advice. Don’t be angry with me for exercising an old
-woman’s privilege.”
-
-She paused, as women always do, expecting something after they have
-mentioned their age. “If you marry it will be a different thing,”
-she continued, uniting them both in one glance. Pierre did not look at
-Hélène nor she at him. But she was just as terribly close to him. He
-muttered something and colored.
-
-When he got home he could not sleep for a long time for thinking of what
-had happened. What had happened? Nothing. He had merely understood that
-the woman he had known as a child, of whom when her beauty was mentioned
-he had said absent-mindedly: “Yes, she’s good looking,” he had
-understood that this woman might belong to him.
-
-“But she’s stupid. I have myself said she is stupid,” he thought.
-“There is something nasty, something wrong, in the feeling she excites
-in me. I have been told that her brother Anatole was in love with her
-and she with him, that there was quite a scandal and that that’s why
-he was sent away. Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasíli is her
-father... It’s bad....” he reflected, but while he was thinking this
-(the reflection was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and was
-conscious that another line of thought had sprung up, and while thinking
-of her worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be his
-wife, how she would love him become quite different, and how all he had
-thought and heard of her might be false. And he again saw her not as the
-daughter of Prince Vasíli, but visualized her whole body only veiled
-by its gray dress. “But no! Why did this thought never occur to me
-before?” and again he told himself that it was impossible, that there
-would be something unnatural, and as it seemed to him dishonorable, in
-this marriage. He recalled her former words and looks and the words
-and looks of those who had seen them together. He recalled Anna
-Pávlovna’s words and looks when she spoke to him about his house,
-recalled thousands of such hints from Prince Vasíli and others, and was
-seized by terror lest he had already, in some way, bound himself to do
-something that was evidently wrong and that he ought not to do. But at
-the very time he was expressing this conviction to himself, in another
-part of his mind her image rose in all its womanly beauty.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-In November, 1805, Prince Vasíli had to go on a tour of inspection
-in four different provinces. He had arranged this for himself so as to
-visit his neglected estates at the same time and pick up his son Anatole
-where his regiment was stationed, and take him to visit Prince Nicholas
-Bolkónski in order to arrange a match for him with the daughter of that
-rich old man. But before leaving home and undertaking these new affairs,
-Prince Vasíli had to settle matters with Pierre, who, it is true, had
-latterly spent whole days at home, that is, in Prince Vasíli’s house
-where he was staying, and had been absurd, excited, and foolish in
-Hélène’s presence (as a lover should be), but had not yet proposed
-to her.
-
-“This is all very fine, but things must be settled,” said Prince
-Vasíli to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one morning, feeling that
-Pierre who was under such obligations to him (“But never mind that”)
-was not behaving very well in this matter. “Youth, frivolity... well,
-God be with him,” thought he, relishing his own goodness of heart,
-“but it must be brought to a head. The day after tomorrow will be
-Lëlya’s name day. I will invite two or three people, and if he does
-not understand what he ought to do then it will be my affair—yes, my
-affair. I am her father.”
-
-Six weeks after Anna Pávlovna’s “At Home” and after the sleepless
-night when he had decided that to marry Hélène would be a calamity and
-that he ought to avoid her and go away, Pierre, despite that decision,
-had not left Prince Vasíli’s and felt with terror that in people’s
-eyes he was every day more and more connected with her, that it was
-impossible for him to return to his former conception of her, that he
-could not break away from her, and that though it would be a terrible
-thing he would have to unite his fate with hers. He might perhaps have
-been able to free himself but that Prince Vasíli (who had rarely before
-given receptions) now hardly let a day go by without having an evening
-party at which Pierre had to be present unless he wished to spoil
-the general pleasure and disappoint everyone’s expectation. Prince
-Vasíli, in the rare moments when he was at home, would take Pierre’s
-hand in passing and draw it downwards, or absent-mindedly hold out his
-wrinkled, clean-shaven cheek for Pierre to kiss and would say: “Till
-tomorrow,” or, “Be in to dinner or I shall not see you,” or, “I
-am staying in for your sake,” and so on. And though Prince Vasíli,
-when he stayed in (as he said) for Pierre’s sake, hardly exchanged a
-couple of words with him, Pierre felt unable to disappoint him.
-Every day he said to himself one and the same thing: “It is time I
-understood her and made up my mind what she really is. Was I mistaken
-before, or am I mistaken now? No, she is not stupid, she is an excellent
-girl,” he sometimes said to himself “she never makes a mistake,
-never says anything stupid. She says little, but what she does say is
-always clear and simple, so she is not stupid. She never was abashed and
-is not abashed now, so she cannot be a bad woman!” He had often begun
-to make reflections or think aloud in her company, and she had always
-answered him either by a brief but appropriate remark—showing that it
-did not interest her—or by a silent look and smile which more palpably
-than anything else showed Pierre her superiority. She was right in
-regarding all arguments as nonsense in comparison with that smile.
-
-She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding smile meant for him
-alone, in which there was something more significant than in the general
-smile that usually brightened her face. Pierre knew that everyone was
-waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line, and he knew that
-sooner or later he would step across it, but an incomprehensible terror
-seized him at the thought of that dreadful step. A thousand times during
-that month and a half while he felt himself drawn nearer and nearer to
-that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to himself: “What am I doing? I need
-resolution. Can it be that I have none?”
-
-He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that in this matter
-he lacked that strength of will which he had known in himself and really
-possessed. Pierre was one of those who are only strong when they feel
-themselves quite innocent, and since that day when he was overpowered
-by a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at Anna
-Pávlovna’s, an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire
-paralyzed his will.
-
-On Hélène’s name day, a small party of just their own people—as
-his wife said—met for supper at Prince Vasíli’s. All these friends
-and relations had been given to understand that the fate of the young
-girl would be decided that evening. The visitors were seated at supper.
-Princess Kurágina, a portly imposing woman who had once been handsome,
-was sitting at the head of the table. On either side of her sat the
-more important guests—an old general and his wife, and Anna Pávlovna
-Schérer. At the other end sat the younger and less important guests,
-and there too sat the members of the family, and Pierre and Hélène,
-side by side. Prince Vasíli was not having any supper: he went round
-the table in a merry mood, sitting down now by one, now by another, of
-the guests. To each of them he made some careless and agreeable remark
-except to Pierre and Hélène, whose presence he seemed not to notice.
-He enlivened the whole party. The wax candles burned brightly, the
-silver and crystal gleamed, so did the ladies’ toilets and the gold
-and silver of the men’s epaulets; servants in scarlet liveries moved
-round the table, the clatter of plates, knives, and glasses mingled with
-the animated hum of several conversations. At one end of the table, the
-old chamberlain was heard assuring an old baroness that he loved her
-passionately, at which she laughed; at the other could be heard the
-story of the misfortunes of some Mary Víktorovna or other. At the
-center of the table, Prince Vasíli attracted everybody’s attention.
-With a facetious smile on his face, he was telling the ladies about last
-Wednesday’s meeting of the Imperial Council, at which Sergéy Kuzmích
-Vyazmítinov, the new military governor general of Petersburg, had
-received and read the then famous rescript of the Emperor Alexander
-from the army to Sergéy Kuzmích, in which the Emperor said that he was
-receiving from all sides declarations of the people’s loyalty, that
-the declaration from Petersburg gave him particular pleasure, and that
-he was proud to be at the head of such a nation and would endeavor to be
-worthy of it. This rescript began with the words: “Sergéy Kuzmích,
-From all sides reports reach me,” etc.
-
-“Well, and so he never got farther than: ‘Sergéy Kuzmích’?”
-asked one of the ladies.
-
-“Exactly, not a hair’s breadth farther,” answered Prince Vasíli,
-laughing, “‘Sergéy Kuzmích... From all sides... From all sides...
-Sergéy Kuzmích...’ Poor Vyazmítinov could not get any farther!
-He began the rescript again and again, but as soon as he uttered
-‘Sergéy’ he sobbed, ‘Kuz-mí-ch,’ tears, and ‘From all
-sides’ was smothered in sobs and he could get no farther. And again
-his handkerchief, and again: ‘Sergéy Kuzmích, From all sides,’...
-and tears, till at last somebody else was asked to read it.”
-
-“Kuzmích... From all sides... and then tears,” someone repeated
-laughing.
-
-“Don’t be unkind,” cried Anna Pávlovna from her end of the table
-holding up a threatening finger. “He is such a worthy and excellent
-man, our dear Vyazmítinov....”
-
-Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the table, where the
-honored guests sat, everyone seemed to be in high spirits and under the
-influence of a variety of exciting sensations. Only Pierre and
-Hélène sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the table, a
-suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that had nothing
-to do with Sergéy Kuzmích—a smile of bashfulness at their own
-feelings. But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked, much
-as they enjoyed their Rhine wine, sauté, and ices, and however they
-avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant as
-they seemed of them, one could feel by the occasional glances they gave
-that the story about Sergéy Kuzmích, the laughter, and the food
-were all a pretense, and that the whole attention of that company was
-directed to—Pierre and Hélène. Prince Vasíli mimicked the sobbing
-of Sergéy Kuzmích and at the same time his eyes glanced toward his
-daughter, and while he laughed the expression on his face clearly said:
-“Yes... it’s getting on, it will all be settled today.” Anna
-Pávlovna threatened him on behalf of “our dear Vyazmítinov,” and
-in her eyes, which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasíli
-read a congratulation on his future son-in-law and on his daughter’s
-happiness. The old princess sighed sadly as she offered some wine to the
-old lady next to her and glanced angrily at her daughter, and her sigh
-seemed to say: “Yes, there’s nothing left for you and me but to sip
-sweet wine, my dear, now that the time has come for these young ones to
-be thus boldly, provocatively happy.” “And what nonsense all this is
-that I am saying!” thought a diplomatist, glancing at the happy faces
-of the lovers. “That’s happiness!”
-
-Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting that
-society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a healthy
-and handsome young man and woman for one another. And this human feeling
-dominated everything else and soared above all their affected chatter.
-Jests fell flat, news was not interesting, and the animation was
-evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the footmen waiting at
-table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their duties as they looked
-at the beautiful Hélène with her radiant face and at the red, broad,
-and happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It seemed as if the very light
-of the candles was focused on those two happy faces alone.
-
-Pierre felt that he was the center of it all, and this both pleased and
-embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed in some occupation.
-He did not see, hear, or understand anything clearly. Only now and
-then detached ideas and impressions from the world of reality shot
-unexpectedly through his mind.
-
-“So it is all finished!” he thought. “And how has it all happened?
-How quickly! Now I know that not because of her alone, nor of myself
-alone, but because of everyone, it must inevitably come about. They are
-all expecting it, they are so sure that it will happen that I cannot, I
-cannot, disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not know, but it
-will certainly happen!” thought Pierre, glancing at those dazzling
-shoulders close to his eyes.
-
-Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what. He felt it
-awkward to attract everyone’s attention and to be considered a
-lucky man and, with his plain face, to be looked on as a sort of Paris
-possessed of a Helen. “But no doubt it always is and must be so!”
-he consoled himself. “And besides, what have I done to bring it about?
-How did it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasíli. Then there
-was nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I played cards
-with her and picked up her reticule and drove out with her. How did it
-begin, when did it all come about?” And here he was sitting by her
-side as her betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her nearness, her
-breathing, her movements, her beauty. Then it would suddenly seem to him
-that it was not she but he was so unusually beautiful, and that that was
-why they all looked so at him, and flattered by this general admiration
-he would expand his chest, raise his head, and rejoice at his good
-fortune. Suddenly he heard a familiar voice repeating something to him a
-second time. But Pierre was so absorbed that he did not understand what
-was said.
-
-“I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkónski,” repeated
-Prince Vasíli a third time. “How absent-minded you are, my dear
-fellow.”
-
-Prince Vasíli smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling at
-him and Hélène. “Well, what of it, if you all know it?” thought
-Pierre. “What of it? It’s the truth!” and he himself smiled his
-gentle childlike smile, and Hélène smiled too.
-
-“When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmütz?” repeated
-Prince Vasíli, who pretended to want to know this in order to settle a
-dispute.
-
-“How can one talk or think of such trifles?” thought Pierre.
-
-“Yes, from Olmütz,” he answered, with a sigh.
-
-After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others into the
-drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some without taking leave
-of Hélène. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an important
-occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go away,
-refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved a mournful
-silence as he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity of his
-diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre’s happiness. The old
-general grumbled at his wife when she asked how his leg was. “Oh, the
-old fool,” he thought. “That Princess Hélène will be beautiful
-still when she’s fifty.”
-
-“I think I may congratulate you,” whispered Anna Pávlovna to the
-old princess, kissing her soundly. “If I hadn’t this headache I’d
-have stayed longer.”
-
-The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her
-daughter’s happiness.
-
-While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained for a long time
-alone with Hélène in the little drawing room where they were sitting.
-He had often before, during the last six weeks, remained alone with her,
-but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt that it was inevitable,
-but he could not make up his mind to take the final step. He felt
-ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone else’s place here
-beside Hélène. “This happiness is not for you,” some inner voice
-whispered to him. “This happiness is for those who have not in them
-what there is in you.”
-
-But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her whether she was
-satisfied with the party. She replied in her usual simple manner that
-this name day of hers had been one of the pleasantest she had ever had.
-
-Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were sitting in
-the large drawing room. Prince Vasíli came up to Pierre with languid
-footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasíli gave
-him a look of stern inquiry, as though what Pierre had just said was
-so strange that one could not take it in. But then the expression of
-severity changed, and he drew Pierre’s hand downwards, made him sit
-down, and smiled affectionately.
-
-“Well, Lëlya?” he asked, turning instantly to his daughter and
-addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural to
-parents who have petted their children from babyhood, but which Prince
-Vasíli had only acquired by imitating other parents.
-
-And he again turned to Pierre.
-
-“Sergéy Kuzmích—From all sides—” he said, unbuttoning the top
-button of his waistcoat.
-
-Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was not the story
-about Sergéy Kuzmích that interested Prince Vasíli just then, and
-Prince Vasíli saw that Pierre knew this. He suddenly muttered
-something and went away. It seemed to Pierre that even the prince was
-disconcerted. The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the world
-touched Pierre: he looked at Hélène and she too seemed disconcerted,
-and her look seemed to say: “Well, it is your own fault.”
-
-“The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!” thought Pierre,
-and he again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergéy
-Kuzmích, asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it
-properly. Hélène answered with a smile that she too had missed it.
-
-When Prince Vasíli returned to the drawing room, the princess, his
-wife, was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre.
-
-“Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear...”
-
-“Marriages are made in heaven,” replied the elderly lady.
-
-Prince Vasíli passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies, and sat down
-on a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed his eyes and seemed to
-be dozing. His head sank forward and then he roused himself.
-
-“Aline,” he said to his wife, “go and see what they are about.”
-
-The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified and
-indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing room. Pierre and
-Hélène still sat talking just as before.
-
-“Still the same,” she said to her husband.
-
-Prince Vasíli frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks quivered and his
-face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him. Shaking
-himself, he rose, threw back his head, and with resolute steps went
-past the ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he went
-joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant that Pierre
-rose in alarm on seeing it.
-
-“Thank God!” said Prince Vasíli. “My wife has told me
-everything!” (He put one arm around Pierre and the other around his
-daughter.)—“My dear boy... Lëlya... I am very pleased.” (His
-voice trembled.) “I loved your father... and she will make you a good
-wife... God bless you!...”
-
-He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with his
-malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks.
-
-“Princess, come here!” he shouted.
-
-The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using
-her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful
-Hélène’s hand several times. After a while they were left alone
-again.
-
-“All this had to be and could not be otherwise,” thought Pierre,
-“so it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because
-it’s definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt.” Pierre
-held the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful
-bosom as it rose and fell.
-
-“Hélène!” he said aloud and paused.
-
-“Something special is always said in such cases,” he thought, but
-could not remember what it was that people say. He looked at her face.
-She drew nearer to him. Her face flushed.
-
-“Oh, take those off... those...” she said, pointing to his
-spectacles.
-
-Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange look eyes have
-from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a frightened and
-inquiring look. He was about to stoop over her hand and kiss it, but
-with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she intercepted his
-lips and met them with her own. Her face struck Pierre, by its altered,
-unpleasantly excited expression.
-
-“It is too late now, it’s done; besides I love her,” thought
-Pierre.
-
-“Je vous aime!” * he said, remembering what has to be said at such
-moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of himself.
-
- * “I love you.”
-
-
-Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezúkhov’s
-large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as people
-said, of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions of money.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-Old Prince Nicholas Bolkónski received a letter from Prince Vasíli
-in November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying him
-a visit. “I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of course I
-shall think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see you at
-the same time, my honored benefactor,” wrote Prince Vasíli. “My son
-Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you will
-allow him personally to express the deep respect that, emulating his
-father, he feels for you.”
-
-“It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors are
-coming to us of their own accord,” incautiously remarked the little
-princess on hearing the news.
-
-Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.
-
-A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasíli’s servants came one
-evening in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.
-
-Old Bolkónski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasíli’s
-character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and
-Alexander Prince Vasíli had risen to high position and honors. And now,
-from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little princess,
-he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion changed into
-a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever he mentioned
-him. On the day of Prince Vasíli’s arrival, Prince Bolkónski was
-particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether he was in a bad
-temper because Prince Vasíli was coming, or whether his being in a bad
-temper made him specially annoyed at Prince Vasíli’s visit, he was
-in a bad temper, and in the morning Tíkhon had already advised the
-architect not to go to the prince with his report.
-
-“Do you hear how he’s walking?” said Tíkhon, drawing the
-architect’s attention to the sound of the prince’s footsteps.
-“Stepping flat on his heels—we know what that means....”
-
-However, at nine o’clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable
-collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day
-before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the
-habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still
-visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of the
-soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince went
-through the conservatories, the serfs’ quarters, and the outbuildings,
-frowning and silent.
-
-“Can a sleigh pass?” he asked his overseer, a venerable man,
-resembling his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him
-back to the house.
-
-“The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor.”
-
-The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. “God be
-thanked,” thought the overseer, “the storm has blown over!”
-
-“It would have been hard to drive up, your honor,” he added. “I
-heard, your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor.”
-
-The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,
-frowning.
-
-“What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?” he said in
-his shrill, harsh voice. “The road is not swept for the princess my
-daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!”
-
-“Your honor, I thought...”
-
-“You thought!” shouted the prince, his words coming more and more
-rapidly and indistinctly. “You thought!... Rascals! Blackguards!...
-I’ll teach you to think!” and lifting his stick he swung it and
-would have hit Alpátych, the overseer, had not the latter instinctively
-avoided the blow. “Thought... Blackguards...” shouted the prince
-rapidly.
-
-But although Alpátych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding the
-stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly before
-him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he continued
-to shout: “Blackguards!... Throw the snow back on the road!” did not
-lift his stick again but hurried into the house.
-
-Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew
-that the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle
-Bourienne with a radiant face that said: “I know nothing, I am the
-same as usual,” and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with downcast
-eyes. What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such occasions
-she ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could not.
-She thought: “If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not
-sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he will
-say (as he has done before) that I’m in the dumps.”
-
-The prince looked at his daughter’s frightened face and snorted.
-
-“Fool... or dummy!” he muttered.
-
-“And the other one is not here. They’ve been telling tales,” he
-thought—referring to the little princess who was not in the dining
-room.
-
-“Where is the princess?” he asked. “Hiding?”
-
-“She is not very well,” answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with
-a bright smile, “so she won’t come down. It is natural in her
-state.”
-
-“Hm! Hm!” muttered the prince, sitting down.
-
-His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he
-flung it away. Tíkhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little
-princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the prince
-that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to appear.
-
-“I am afraid for the baby,” she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne:
-“Heaven knows what a fright might do.”
-
-In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear, and
-with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not
-realize because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The prince
-reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his contempt
-for her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to life at Bald
-Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle Bourienne, spent whole
-days with her, asked her to sleep in her room, and often talked with her
-about the old prince and criticized him.
-
-“So we are to have visitors, mon prince?” remarked Mademoiselle
-Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. “His
-Excellency Prince Vasíli Kurágin and his son, I understand?” she
-said inquiringly.
-
-“Hm!—his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the
-service,” said the prince disdainfully. “Why his son is coming I
-don’t understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know.
-I don’t want him.” (He looked at his blushing daughter.) “Are you
-unwell today? Eh? Afraid of the ‘minister’ as that idiot Alpátych
-called him this morning?”
-
-“No, mon père.”
-
-Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice
-of a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the
-conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and
-after the soup the prince became more genial.
-
-After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess
-was sitting at a small table, chattering with Másha, her maid. She grew
-pale on seeing her father-in-law.
-
-She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her cheeks
-had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.
-
-“Yes, I feel a kind of oppression,” she said in reply to the
-prince’s question as to how she felt.
-
-“Do you want anything?”
-
-“No, merci, mon père.”
-
-“Well, all right, all right.”
-
-He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpátych stood with
-bowed head.
-
-“Has the snow been shoveled back?”
-
-“Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven’s sake... It was only
-my stupidity.”
-
-“All right, all right,” interrupted the prince, and laughing his
-unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpátych to kiss, and then
-proceeded to his study.
-
-Prince Vasíli arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by
-coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to
-one of the lodges over the road purposely laden with snow.
-
-Prince Vasíli and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.
-
-Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo before a
-table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly fixed his
-large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a continual round
-of amusement which someone for some reason had to provide for him.
-And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and a rich and ugly
-heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought, turn out very well
-and amusingly. “And why not marry her if she really has so much money?
-That never does any harm,” thought Anatole.
-
-He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had
-become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his
-father’s room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to
-him. Prince Vasíli’s two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked
-round with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter
-entered, as if to say: “Yes, that’s how I want you to look.”
-
-“I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?” Anatole asked,
-as if continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been
-mentioned during the journey.
-
-“Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious
-with the old prince.”
-
-“If he starts a row I’ll go away,” said Prince Anatole. “I
-can’t bear those old men! Eh?”
-
-“Remember, for you everything depends on this.”
-
-In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants’ rooms that
-the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of both had
-been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in her room,
-vainly trying to master her agitation.
-
-“Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never
-happen!” she said, looking at herself in the glass. “How shall I
-enter the drawing room? Even if I like him I can’t now be myself with
-him.” The mere thought of her father’s look filled her with terror.
-The little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received
-from Másha, the lady’s maid, the necessary report of how handsome the
-minister’s son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and with
-what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs while the son
-had followed him like an eagle, three steps at a time. Having received
-this information, the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne, whose
-chattering voices had reached her from the corridor, went into Princess
-Mary’s room.
-
-“You know they’ve come, Marie?” said the little princess, waddling
-in, and sinking heavily into an armchair.
-
-She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the morning,
-but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully done and her
-face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its sunken and faded
-outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg society, it was still
-more noticeable how much plainer she had become. Some unobtrusive touch
-had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne’s toilet which rendered her
-fresh and pretty face yet more attractive.
-
-“What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?” she
-began. “They’ll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing
-room and we shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself
-up at all!”
-
-The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and merrily
-began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary should be
-dressed. Princess Mary’s self-esteem was wounded by the fact that
-the arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both
-her companions’ not having the least conception that it could be
-otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them
-would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to
-dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed, her
-beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it took
-on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as she
-submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these women
-quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She was so plain that
-neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they began dressing
-her with perfect sincerity, and with the naïve and firm conviction
-women have that dress can make a face pretty.
-
-“No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty,” said Lise, looking
-sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. “You have a maroon
-dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life may
-be at stake. But this one is too light, it’s not becoming!”
-
-It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary
-that was not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little
-princess felt this; they still thought that if a blue ribbon were placed
-in the hair, the hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged lower on
-the best maroon dress, and so on, all would be well. They forgot that
-the frightened face and the figure could not be altered, and that
-however they might change the setting and adornment of that face, it
-would still remain piteous and plain. After two or three changes to
-which Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair had been arranged
-on the top of her head (a style that quite altered and spoiled her
-looks) and she had put on a maroon dress with a pale-blue scarf, the
-little princess walked twice round her, now adjusting a fold of the
-dress with her little hand, now arranging the scarf and looking at her
-with her head bent first on one side and then on the other.
-
-“No, it will not do,” she said decidedly, clasping her hands. “No,
-Mary, really this dress does not suit you. I prefer you in your little
-gray everyday dress. Now please, do it for my sake. Katie,” she said
-to the maid, “bring the princess her gray dress, and you’ll see,
-Mademoiselle Bourienne, how I shall arrange it,” she added, smiling
-with a foretaste of artistic pleasure.
-
-But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess Mary remained
-sitting motionless before the glass, looking at her face, and saw in the
-mirror her eyes full of tears and her mouth quivering, ready to burst
-into sobs.
-
-“Come, dear princess,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, “just one more
-little effort.”
-
-The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to Princess
-Mary.
-
-“Well, now we’ll arrange something quite simple and becoming,” she
-said.
-
-The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s, and Katie’s, who
-was laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping
-of birds.
-
-“No, leave me alone,” said Princess Mary.
-
-Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the birds
-was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful
-eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and imploringly at
-them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel to insist.
-
-“At least, change your coiffure,” said the little princess.
-“Didn’t I tell you,” she went on, turning reproachfully to
-Mademoiselle Bourienne, “Mary’s is a face which such a coiffure does
-not suit in the least. Not in the least! Please change it.”
-
-“Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same to
-me,” answered a voice struggling with tears.
-
-Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to own to themselves
-that Princess Mary in this guise looked very plain, worse than usual,
-but it was too late. She was looking at them with an expression they
-both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad. This expression in Princess
-Mary did not frighten them (she never inspired fear in anyone), but they
-knew that when it appeared on her face, she became mute and was not to
-be shaken in her determination.
-
-“You will change it, won’t you?” said Lise. And as Princess Mary
-gave no answer, she left the room.
-
-Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with Lise’s request,
-she not only left her hair as it was, but did not even look in her
-glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she sat with downcast eyes and
-pondered. A husband, a man, a strong dominant and strangely attractive
-being rose in her imagination, and carried her into a totally different
-happy world of his own. She fancied a child, her own—such as she had
-seen the day before in the arms of her nurse’s daughter—at her
-own breast, the husband standing by and gazing tenderly at her and the
-child. “But no, it is impossible, I am too ugly,” she thought.
-
-“Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment,” came the
-maid’s voice at the door.
-
-She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking, and
-before going down she went into the room where the icons hung and, her
-eyes fixed on the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit by a
-lamp, she stood before it with folded hands for a few moments. A painful
-doubt filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly love for a
-man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess Mary dreamed of
-happiness and of children, but her strongest, most deeply hidden longing
-was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide this feeling from
-others and even from herself, the stronger it grew. “O God,” she
-said, “how am I to stifle in my heart these temptations of the devil?
-How am I to renounce forever these vile fancies, so as peacefully to
-fulfill Thy will?” And scarcely had she put that question than God
-gave her the answer in her own heart. “Desire nothing for thyself,
-seek nothing, be not anxious or envious. Man’s future and thy own fate
-must remain hidden from thee, but live so that thou mayest be ready for
-anything. If it be God’s will to prove thee in the duties of marriage,
-be ready to fulfill His will.” With this consoling thought (but
-yet with a hope for the fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing)
-Princess Mary sighed, and having crossed herself went down, thinking
-neither of her gown and coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what
-she would say. What could all that matter in comparison with the will of
-God, without Whose care not a hair of man’s head can fall?
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasíli and his son were already
-in the drawing room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle
-Bourienne. When she entered with her heavy step, treading on her heels,
-the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little princess,
-indicating her to the gentlemen, said: “Voilà Marie!” Princess Mary
-saw them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince Vasíli’s face,
-serious for an instant at the sight of her, but immediately smiling
-again, and the little princess curiously noting the impression
-“Marie” produced on the visitors. And she saw Mademoiselle
-Bourienne, with her ribbon and pretty face, and her unusually animated
-look which was fixed on him, but him she could not see, she only saw
-something large, brilliant, and handsome moving toward her as she
-entered the room. Prince Vasíli approached first, and she kissed the
-bold forehead that bent over her hand and answered his question by
-saying that, on the contrary, she remembered him quite well. Then
-Anatole came up to her. She still could not see him. She only felt a
-soft hand taking hers firmly, and she touched with her lips a white
-forehead, over which was beautiful light-brown hair smelling of pomade.
-When she looked up at him she was struck by his beauty. Anatole stood
-with his right thumb under a button of his uniform, his chest expanded
-and his back drawn in, slightly swinging one foot, and, with his head a
-little bent, looked with beaming face at the princess without
-speaking and evidently not thinking about her at all. Anatole was not
-quick-witted, nor ready or eloquent in conversation, but he had the
-faculty, so invaluable in society, of composure and imperturbable
-self-possession. If a man lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on
-a first introduction and betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of
-such silence and an anxiety to find something to say, the effect is
-bad. But Anatole was dumb, swung his foot, and smilingly examined the
-princess’ hair. It was evident that he could be silent in this way for
-a very long time. “If anyone finds this silence inconvenient, let him
-talk, but I don’t want to,” he seemed to say. Besides this, in his
-behavior to women Anatole had a manner which particularly inspires in
-them curiosity, awe, and even love—a supercilious consciousness of
-his own superiority. It was as if he said to them: “I know you, I know
-you, but why should I bother about you? You’d be only too glad, of
-course.” Perhaps he did not really think this when he met women—even
-probably he did not, for in general he thought very little—but his
-looks and manner gave that impression. The princess felt this, and as if
-wishing to show him that she did not even dare expect to interest him,
-she turned to his father. The conversation was general and animated,
-thanks to Princess Lise’s voice and little downy lip that lifted over
-her white teeth. She met Prince Vasíli with that playful manner often
-employed by lively chatty people, and consisting in the assumption
-that between the person they so address and themselves there are some
-semi-private, long-established jokes and amusing reminiscences, though
-no such reminiscences really exist—just as none existed in this case.
-Prince Vasíli readily adopted her tone and the little princess also
-drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew, into these amusing recollections of
-things that had never occurred. Mademoiselle Bourienne also shared them
-and even Princess Mary felt herself pleasantly made to share in these
-merry reminiscences.
-
-“Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to
-ourselves, dear prince,” said the little princess (of course, in
-French) to Prince Vasíli. “It’s not as at Annette’s * receptions
-where you always ran away; you remember cette chère Annette!”
-
- * Anna Pávlovna.
-
-“Ah, but you won’t talk politics to me like Annette!”
-
-“And our little tea table?”
-
-“Oh, yes!”
-
-“Why is it you were never at Annette’s?” the little princess asked
-Anatole. “Ah, I know, I know,” she said with a sly glance, “your
-brother Hippolyte told me about your goings on. Oh!” and she shook her
-finger at him, “I have even heard of your doings in Paris!”
-
-“And didn’t Hippolyte tell you?” asked Prince Vasíli, turning to
-his son and seizing the little princess’ arm as if she would have run
-away and he had just managed to catch her, “didn’t he tell you how
-he himself was pining for the dear princess, and how she showed him the
-door? Oh, she is a pearl among women, Princess,” he added, turning to
-Princess Mary.
-
-When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne for her part seized the
-opportunity of joining in the general current of recollections.
-
-She took the liberty of inquiring whether it was long since Anatole
-had left Paris and how he had liked that city. Anatole answered the
-Frenchwoman very readily and, looking at her with a smile, talked to her
-about her native land. When he saw the pretty little Bourienne, Anatole
-came to the conclusion that he would not find Bald Hills dull either.
-“Not at all bad!” he thought, examining her, “not at all bad, that
-little companion! I hope she will bring her along with her when we’re
-married, la petite est gentille.” *
-
- * The little one is charming.
-
-The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and considering
-what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed him. “What are
-Prince Vasíli and that son of his to me? Prince Vasíli is a shallow
-braggart and his son, no doubt, is a fine specimen,” he grumbled to
-himself. What angered him was that the coming of these visitors revived
-in his mind an unsettled question he always tried to stifle, one about
-which he always deceived himself. The question was whether he could ever
-bring himself to part from his daughter and give her to a husband. The
-prince never directly asked himself that question, knowing beforehand
-that he would have to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only
-with his feelings but with the very possibility of life. Life without
-Princess Mary, little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to
-him. “And why should she marry?” he thought. “To be unhappy for
-certain. There’s Lise, married to Andrew—a better husband one would
-think could hardly be found nowadays—but is she contented with her
-lot? And who would marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward! They’ll
-take her for her connections and wealth. Are there no women living
-unmarried, and even the happier for it?” So thought Prince Bolkónski
-while dressing, and yet the question he was always putting off demanded
-an immediate answer. Prince Vasíli had brought his son with the evident
-intention of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably ask
-for an answer. His birth and position in society were not bad. “Well,
-I’ve nothing against it,” the prince said to himself, “but he must
-be worthy of her. And that is what we shall see.”
-
-“That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!” he added
-aloud.
-
-He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing rapidly
-round the company. He noticed the change in the little princess’
-dress, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s ribbon, Princess Mary’s unbecoming
-coiffure, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s and Anatole’s smiles, and the
-loneliness of his daughter amid the general conversation. “Got herself
-up like a fool!” he thought, looking irritably at her. “She is
-shameless, and he ignores her!”
-
-He went straight up to Prince Vasíli.
-
-“Well! How d’ye do? How d’ye do? Glad to see you!”
-
-“Friendship laughs at distance,” began Prince Vasíli in his usual
-rapid, self-confident, familiar tone. “Here is my second son; please
-love and befriend him.”
-
-Prince Bolkónski surveyed Anatole.
-
-“Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!” he said. “Well, come and
-kiss me,” and he offered his cheek.
-
-Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and perfect
-composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his father had
-told him to expect.
-
-Prince Bolkónski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the sofa
-and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasíli, pointed to it and began
-questioning him about political affairs and news. He seemed to listen
-attentively to what Prince Vasíli said, but kept glancing at Princess
-Mary.
-
-“And so they are writing from Potsdam already?” he said, repeating
-Prince Vasíli’s last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his
-daughter.
-
-“Is it for visitors you’ve got yourself up like that, eh?” said
-he. “Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for
-the visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that in future you are
-never to dare to change your way of dress without my consent.”
-
-“It was my fault, mon père,” interceded the little princess, with a
-blush.
-
-“You must do as you please,” said Prince Bolkónski, bowing to his
-daughter-in-law, “but she need not make a fool of herself, she’s
-plain enough as it is.”
-
-And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who was
-reduced to tears.
-
-“On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well,” said
-Prince Vasíli.
-
-“Now you, young prince, what’s your name?” said Prince Bolkónski,
-turning to Anatole, “come here, let us talk and get acquainted.”
-
-“Now the fun begins,” thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile
-beside the old prince.
-
-“Well, my dear boy, I hear you’ve been educated abroad, not taught
-to read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me,
-my dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?” asked the old man,
-scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently.
-
-“No, I have been transferred to the line,” said Anatole, hardly able
-to restrain his laughter.
-
-“Ah! That’s a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the
-Tsar and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve.
-Well, are you off to the front?”
-
-“No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am attached...
-what is it I am attached to, Papa?” said Anatole, turning to his
-father with a laugh.
-
-“A splendid soldier, splendid! ‘What am I attached to!’ Ha, ha,
-ha!” laughed Prince Bolkónski, and Anatole laughed still louder.
-Suddenly Prince Bolkónski frowned.
-
-“You may go,” he said to Anatole.
-
-Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.
-
-“And so you’ve had him educated abroad, Prince Vasíli, haven’t
-you?” said the old prince to Prince Vasíli.
-
-“I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education there
-is much better than ours.”
-
-“Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The
-lad’s a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now.” He took
-Prince Vasíli’s arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were
-alone together, Prince Vasíli announced his hopes and wishes to the old
-prince.
-
-“Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can’t part from
-her?” said the old prince angrily. “What an idea! I’m ready for it
-tomorrow! Only let me tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better. You
-know my principles—everything aboveboard! I will ask her tomorrow in
-your presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can stay and
-I’ll see.” The old prince snorted. “Let her marry, it’s all the
-same to me!” he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting
-from his son.
-
-“I will tell you frankly,” said Prince Vasíli in the tone of
-a crafty man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so
-keen-sighted a companion. “You know, you see right through people.
-Anatole is no genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an excellent
-son or kinsman.”
-
-“All right, all right, we’ll see!”
-
-As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time
-without male society, on Anatole’s appearance all the three women of
-Prince Bolkónski’s household felt that their life had not been real
-till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing immediately
-increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in
-darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full of significance.
-
-Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The
-handsome open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband absorbed
-all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave, determined, manly, and
-magnanimous. She felt convinced of that. Thousands of dreams of a future
-family life continually rose in her imagination. She drove them away and
-tried to conceal them.
-
-“But am I not too cold with him?” thought the princess. “I try
-to be reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him
-already, but then he cannot know what I think of him and may imagine
-that I do not like him.”
-
-And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to her new
-guest. “Poor girl, she’s devilish ugly!” thought Anatole.
-
-Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole’s
-arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young woman
-without any definite position, without relations or even a country, did
-not intend to devote her life to serving Prince Bolkónski, to reading
-aloud to him and being friends with Princess Mary. Mademoiselle
-Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian prince who, able to
-appreciate at a glance her superiority to the plain, badly dressed,
-ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in love with her and carry her
-off; and here at last was a Russian prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew
-a story, heard from her aunt but finished in her own way, which she
-liked to repeat to herself. It was the story of a girl who had been
-seduced, and to whom her poor mother (sa pauvre mère) appeared, and
-reproached her for yielding to a man without being married. Mademoiselle
-Bourienne was often touched to tears as in imagination she told this
-story to him, her seducer. And now he, a real Russian prince, had
-appeared. He would carry her away and then sa pauvre mère would appear
-and he would marry her. So her future shaped itself in Mademoiselle
-Bourienne’s head at the very time she was talking to Anatole about
-Paris. It was not calculation that guided her (she did not even for a
-moment consider what she should do), but all this had long been familiar
-to her, and now that Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself around
-him and she wished and tried to please him as much as possible.
-
-The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet,
-unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the
-familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any
-struggle, but with naïve and lighthearted gaiety.
-
-Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man
-tired of being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the
-spectacle of his power over these three women. Besides that, he was
-beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne
-that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him with great
-suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless actions.
-
-After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess Mary was
-asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in high spirits,
-came and leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside Mademoiselle
-Bourienne. Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully joyous emotion.
-Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately poetic world and
-the look she felt upon her made that world still more poetic. But
-Anatole’s expression, though his eyes were fixed on her, referred not
-to her but to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne’s little
-foot, which he was then touching with his own under the clavichord.
-Mademoiselle Bourienne was also looking at Princess Mary, and in her
-lovely eyes there was a look of fearful joy and hope that was also new
-to the princess.
-
-“How she loves me!” thought Princess Mary. “How happy I am now,
-and how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband?
-Can it be possible?” she thought, not daring to look at his face, but
-still feeling his eyes gazing at her.
-
-In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole
-kissed Princess Mary’s hand. She did not know how she found the
-courage, but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came near
-to her shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up and
-kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne’s hand. (This was not etiquette, but
-then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!) Mademoiselle
-Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a frightened look.
-
-“What delicacy!” thought the princess. “Is it possible that
-Amélie” (Mademoiselle Bourienne) “thinks I could be jealous of her,
-and not value her pure affection and devotion to me?” She went up
-to her and kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little
-princess’ hand.
-
-“No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are behaving
-well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!” she said. And
-smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as he
-got into bed, all kept awake a long time that night.
-
-“Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind—yes,
-kind, that is the chief thing,” thought Princess Mary; and fear, which
-she had seldom experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round, it
-seemed to her that someone was there standing behind the screen in the
-dark corner. And this someone was he—the devil—and he was also this
-man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips.
-
-She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.
-
-Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a long
-time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at someone, now
-working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of her pauvre mère
-rebuking her for her fall.
-
-The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly made.
-She could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every position was
-awkward and uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her now more than
-ever because Anatole’s presence had vividly recalled to her the time
-when she was not like that and when everything was light and gay. She
-sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and nightcap and Katie, sleepy
-and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy feather bed for the third
-time, muttering to herself.
-
-“I told you it was all lumps and holes!” the little princess
-repeated. “I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it’s not my
-fault!” and her voice quivered like that of a child about to cry.
-
-The old prince did not sleep either. Tíkhon, half asleep, heard him
-pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though he
-had been insulted through his daughter. The insult was the more pointed
-because it concerned not himself but another, his daughter, whom he
-loved more than himself. He kept telling himself that he would consider
-the whole matter and decide what was right and how he should act, but
-instead of that he only excited himself more and more.
-
-“The first man that turns up—she forgets her father and everything
-else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags her tail and is unlike
-herself! Glad to throw her father over! And she knew I should notice
-it. Fr... fr... fr! And don’t I see that that idiot had eyes only for
-Bourienne—I shall have to get rid of her. And how is it she has not
-pride enough to see it? If she has no pride for herself she might at
-least have some for my sake! She must be shown that the blockhead thinks
-nothing of her and looks only at Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but
-I’ll let her see....”
-
-The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a
-mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne,
-Princess Mary’s self-esteem would be wounded and his point (not to
-be parted from her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this
-thought, he called Tíkhon and began to undress.
-
-“What devil brought them here?” thought he, while Tíkhon was
-putting the nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest.
-“I never invited them. They came to disturb my life—and there is not
-much of it left.”
-
-“Devil take ‘em!” he muttered, while his head was still covered by
-the shirt.
-
-Tíkhon knew his master’s habit of sometimes thinking aloud, and
-therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive expression of
-the face that emerged from the shirt.
-
-“Gone to bed?” asked the prince.
-
-Tíkhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of his
-master’s thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince
-Vasíli and his son.
-
-“They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency.”
-
-“No good... no good...” said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his
-feet into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of his dressing
-gown, he went to the couch on which he slept.
-
-Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle Bourienne,
-they quite understood one another as to the first part of their romance,
-up to the appearance of the pauvre mère; they understood that they had
-much to say to one another in private and so they had been seeking an
-opportunity since morning to meet one another alone. When Princess Mary
-went to her father’s room at the usual hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne
-and Anatole met in the conservatory.
-
-Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special trepidation.
-It seemed to her that not only did everybody know that her fate would be
-decided that day, but that they also knew what she thought about it. She
-read this in Tíkhon’s face and in that of Prince Vasíli’s valet,
-who made her a low bow when she met him in the corridor carrying hot
-water.
-
-The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his treatment of
-his daughter that morning. Princess Mary well knew this painstaking
-expression of her father’s. His face wore that expression when his
-dry hands clenched with vexation at her not understanding a sum in
-arithmetic, when rising from his chair he would walk away from her,
-repeating in a low voice the same words several times over.
-
-He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously.
-
-“I have had a proposition made me concerning you,” he said with an
-unnatural smile. “I expect you have guessed that Prince Vasíli has
-not come and brought his pupil with him” (for some reason Prince
-Bolkónski referred to Anatole as a “pupil”) “for the sake of my
-beautiful eyes. Last night a proposition was made me on your account
-and, as you know my principles, I refer it to you.”
-
-“How am I to understand you, mon père?” said the princess, growing
-pale and then blushing.
-
-“How understand me!” cried her father angrily. “Prince Vasíli
-finds you to his taste as a daughter-in-law and makes a proposal to you
-on his pupil’s behalf. That’s how it’s to be understood! ‘How
-understand it’!... And I ask you!”
-
-“I do not know what you think, Father,” whispered the princess.
-
-“I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I’m not going to
-get married. What about you? That’s what I want to know.”
-
-The princess saw that her father regarded the matter with disapproval,
-but at that moment the thought occurred to her that her fate would be
-decided now or never. She lowered her eyes so as not to see the gaze
-under which she felt that she could not think, but would only be able to
-submit from habit, and she said: “I wish only to do your will, but if
-I had to express my own desire...” She had no time to finish. The old
-prince interrupted her.
-
-“That’s admirable!” he shouted. “He will take you with your
-dowry and take Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She’ll be the
-wife, while you...”
-
-The prince stopped. He saw the effect these words had produced on his
-daughter. She lowered her head and was ready to burst into tears.
-
-“Now then, now then, I’m only joking!” he said. “Remember this,
-Princess, I hold to the principle that a maiden has a full right to
-choose. I give you freedom. Only remember that your life’s happiness
-depends on your decision. Never mind me!”
-
-“But I do not know, Father!”
-
-“There’s no need to talk! He receives his orders and will marry you
-or anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to your room, think it
-over, and come back in an hour and tell me in his presence: yes or no.
-I know you will pray over it. Well, pray if you like, but you had better
-think it over. Go! Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!” he still shouted
-when the princess, as if lost in a fog, had already staggered out of the
-study.
-
-Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her father had said
-about Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be sure, but
-still it was terrible, and she could not help thinking of it. She was
-going straight on through the conservatory, neither seeing nor hearing
-anything, when suddenly the well-known whispering of Mademoiselle
-Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes, and two steps away saw
-Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering something to her. With
-a horrified expression on his handsome face, Anatole looked at Princess
-Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the waist of Mademoiselle
-Bourienne who had not yet seen her.
-
-“Who’s that? Why? Wait a moment!” Anatole’s face seemed to say.
-Princess Mary looked at them in silence. She could not understand it. At
-last Mademoiselle Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole bowed to
-Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in a laugh at
-this strange incident, and then shrugging his shoulders went to the door
-that led to his own apartments.
-
-An hour later, Tíkhon came to call Princess Mary to the old prince;
-he added that Prince Vasíli was also there. When Tíkhon came to her
-Princess Mary was sitting on the sofa in her room, holding the weeping
-Mademoiselle Bourienne in her arms and gently stroking her hair. The
-princess’ beautiful eyes with all their former calm radiance were
-looking with tender affection and pity at Mademoiselle Bourienne’s
-pretty face.
-
-“No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!” said
-Mademoiselle Bourienne.
-
-“Why? I love you more than ever,” said Princess Mary, “and I will
-try to do all I can for your happiness.”
-
-“But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand being so
-carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother...”
-
-“I quite understand,” answered Princess Mary, with a sad smile.
-“Calm yourself, my dear. I will go to my father,” she said, and went
-out.
-
-Prince Vasíli, with one leg thrown high over the other and a snuffbox
-in his hand, was sitting there with a smile of deep emotion on his face,
-as if stirred to his heart’s core and himself regretting and laughing
-at his own sensibility, when Princess Mary entered. He hurriedly took a
-pinch of snuff.
-
-“Ah, my dear, my dear!” he began, rising and taking her by both
-hands. Then, sighing, he added: “My son’s fate is in your hands.
-Decide, my dear, good, gentle Marie, whom I have always loved as a
-daughter!”
-
-He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.
-
-“Fr... fr...” snorted Prince Bolkónski. “The prince is making a
-proposition to you in his pupil’s—I mean, his son’s—name. Do you
-wish or not to be Prince Anatole Kurágin’s wife? Reply: yes or no,”
-he shouted, “and then I shall reserve the right to state my opinion
-also. Yes, my opinion, and only my opinion,” added Prince Bolkónski,
-turning to Prince Vasíli and answering his imploring look. “Yes, or
-no?”
-
-“My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my
-life from yours. I don’t wish to marry,” she answered positively,
-glancing at Prince Vasíli and at her father with her beautiful eyes.
-
-“Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!” cried Prince Bolkónski,
-frowning and taking his daughter’s hand; he did not kiss her, but only
-bending his forehead to hers just touched it, and pressed her hand so
-that she winced and uttered a cry.
-
-Prince Vasíli rose.
-
-“My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall never, never
-forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a little hope of touching
-this heart, so kind and generous? Say ‘perhaps’... The future is so
-long. Say ‘perhaps.’”
-
-“Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank you for
-the honor, but I shall never be your son’s wife.”
-
-“Well, so that’s finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to have
-seen you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess. Go!” said
-the old prince. “Very, very glad to have seen you,” repeated he,
-embracing Prince Vasíli.
-
-“My vocation is a different one,” thought Princess Mary. “My
-vocation is to be happy with another kind of happiness, the happiness
-of love and self-sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will arrange
-poor Amélie’s happiness, she loves him so passionately, and so
-passionately repents. I will do all I can to arrange the match between
-them. If he is not rich I will give her the means; I will ask my
-father and Andrew. I shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so
-unfortunate, a stranger, alone, helpless! And, oh God, how passionately
-she must love him if she could so far forget herself! Perhaps I might
-have done the same!...” thought Princess Mary.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-It was long since the Rostóvs had news of Nicholas. Not till midwinter
-was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son’s
-handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm and
-haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to read the
-letter.
-
-Anna Mikháylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the house,
-on hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the room and
-found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing at the same
-time.
-
-Anna Mikháylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still
-living with the Rostóvs.
-
-“My dear friend?” said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry, prepared
-to sympathize in any way.
-
-The count sobbed yet more.
-
-“Nikólenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling
-boy... the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How
-tell the little countess!”
-
-Anna Mikháylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief wiped
-the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried her
-own eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and till
-teatime she would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God’s
-help, would inform her.
-
-At dinner Anna Mikháylovna talked the whole time about the war news
-and about Nikólenka, twice asked when the last letter had been received
-from him, though she knew that already, and remarked that they might
-very likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each time that these
-hints began to make the countess anxious and she glanced uneasily at
-the count and at Anna Mikháylovna, the latter very adroitly turned
-the conversation to insignificant matters. Natásha, who, of the whole
-family, was the most gifted with a capacity to feel any shades of
-intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her ears from the beginning
-of the meal and was certain that there was some secret between her
-father and Anna Mikháylovna, that it had something to do with her
-brother, and that Anna Mikháylovna was preparing them for it. Bold as
-she was, Natásha, who knew how sensitive her mother was to anything
-relating to Nikólenka, did not venture to ask any questions at dinner,
-but she was too excited to eat anything and kept wriggling about on her
-chair regardless of her governess’ remarks. After dinner, she rushed
-headlong after Anna Mikháylovna and, dashing at her, flung herself on
-her neck as soon as she overtook her in the sitting room.
-
-“Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!”
-
-“Nothing, my dear.”
-
-“No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won’t give up—I know you know
-something.”
-
-Anna Mikháylovna shook her head.
-
-“You are a little slyboots,” she said.
-
-“A letter from Nikólenka! I’m sure of it!” exclaimed Natásha,
-reading confirmation in Anna Mikháylovna’s face.
-
-“But for God’s sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your
-mamma.”
-
-“I will, I will, only tell me! You won’t? Then I will go and tell at
-once.”
-
-Anna Mikháylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the letter,
-on condition that she should tell no one.
-
-“No, on my true word of honor,” said Natásha, crossing herself,
-“I won’t tell anyone!” and she ran off at once to Sónya.
-
-“Nikólenka... wounded... a letter,” she announced in gleeful
-triumph.
-
-“Nicholas!” was all Sónya said, instantly turning white.
-
-Natásha, seeing the impression the news of her brother’s wound
-produced on Sónya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the
-news.
-
-She rushed to Sónya, hugged her, and began to cry.
-
-“A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he
-wrote himself,” said she through her tears.
-
-“There now! It’s true that all you women are crybabies,” remarked
-Pétya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides. “Now I’m very
-glad, very glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself so.
-You are all blubberers and understand nothing.”
-
-Natásha smiled through her tears.
-
-“You haven’t read the letter?” asked Sónya.
-
-“No, but she said that it was all over and that he’s now an
-officer.”
-
-“Thank God!” said Sónya, crossing herself. “But perhaps she
-deceived you. Let us go to Mamma.”
-
-Pétya paced the room in silence for a time.
-
-“If I’d been in Nikólenka’s place I would have killed even more
-of those Frenchmen,” he said. “What nasty brutes they are! I’d
-have killed so many that there’d have been a heap of them.”
-
-“Hold your tongue, Pétya, what a goose you are!”
-
-“I’m not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles,” said
-Pétya.
-
-“Do you remember him?” Natásha suddenly asked, after a moment’s
-silence.
-
-Sónya smiled.
-
-“Do I remember Nicholas?”
-
-“No, Sónya, but do you remember so that you remember him perfectly,
-remember everything?” said Natásha, with an expressive gesture,
-evidently wishing to give her words a very definite meaning. “I
-remember Nikólenka too, I remember him well,” she said. “But I
-don’t remember Borís. I don’t remember him a bit.”
-
-“What! You don’t remember Borís?” asked Sónya in surprise.
-
-“It’s not that I don’t remember—I know what he is like, but not
-as I remember Nikólenka. Him—I just shut my eyes and remember,
-but Borís... No!” (She shut her eyes.) “No! there’s nothing at
-all.”
-
-“Oh, Natásha!” said Sónya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at
-her friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant
-to say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking
-was out of the question, “I am in love with your brother once for all
-and, whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him
-as long as I live.”
-
-Natásha looked at Sónya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and said
-nothing. She felt that Sónya was speaking the truth, that there was
-such love as Sónya was speaking of. But Natásha had not yet felt
-anything like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.
-
-“Shall you write to him?” she asked.
-
-Sónya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas, and
-whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already an
-officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of herself
-and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had taken on
-himself?
-
-“I don’t know. I think if he writes, I will write too,” she said,
-blushing.
-
-“And you won’t feel ashamed to write to him?”
-
-Sónya smiled.
-
-“No.”
-
-“And I should be ashamed to write to Borís. I’m not going to.”
-
-“Why should you be ashamed?”
-
-“Well, I don’t know. It’s awkward and would make me ashamed.”
-
-“And I know why she’d be ashamed,” said Pétya, offended by
-Natásha’s previous remark. “It’s because she was in love with
-that fat one in spectacles” (that was how Pétya described his
-namesake, the new Count Bezúkhov) “and now she’s in love with that
-singer” (he meant Natásha’s Italian singing master), “that’s
-why she’s ashamed!”
-
-“Pétya, you’re a stupid!” said Natásha.
-
-“Not more stupid than you, madam,” said the nine-year-old Pétya,
-with the air of an old brigadier.
-
-The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikháylovna’s hints at dinner.
-On retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her eyes fixed on a
-miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a snuffbox, while the tears
-kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikháylovna, with the letter, came on
-tiptoe to the countess’ door and paused.
-
-“Don’t come in,” she said to the old count who was following her.
-“Come later.” And she went in, closing the door behind her.
-
-The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.
-
-At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna
-Mikháylovna’s voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then silence,
-then both voices together with glad intonations, and then footsteps.
-Anna Mikháylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud expression
-of a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation and admits the
-public to appreciate his skill.
-
-“It is done!” she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the
-countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait and
-in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her lips.
-
-When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him, embraced his
-bald head, over which she again looked at the letter and the portrait,
-and in order to press them again to her lips, she slightly pushed away
-the bald head. Véra, Natásha, Sónya, and Pétya now entered the room,
-and the reading of the letter began. After a brief description of
-the campaign and the two battles in which he had taken part, and his
-promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his father’s and mother’s
-hands asking for their blessing, and that he kissed Véra, Natásha, and
-Pétya. Besides that, he sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling, Madame
-Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them to kiss for him “dear
-Sónya, whom he loved and thought of just the same as ever.” When she
-heard this Sónya blushed so that tears came into her eyes and, unable
-to bear the looks turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall,
-whirled round it at full speed with her dress puffed out like a balloon,
-and, flushed and smiling, plumped down on the floor. The countess was
-crying.
-
-“Why are you crying, Mamma?” asked Véra. “From all he says one
-should be glad and not cry.”
-
-This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natásha looked
-at her reproachfully. “And who is it she takes after?” thought the
-countess.
-
-Nicholas’ letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were
-considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she
-did not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses, and
-Dmítri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the letter
-each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it fresh
-proofs of Nikólenka’s virtues. How strange, how extraordinary, how
-joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of whose
-tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son about whom
-she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count, that son who
-had first learned to say “pear” and then “granny,” that this son
-should now be away in a foreign land amid strange surroundings, a manly
-warrior doing some kind of man’s work of his own, without help or
-guidance. The universal experience of ages, showing that children do
-grow imperceptibly from the cradle to manhood, did not exist for the
-countess. Her son’s growth toward manhood, at each of its stages,
-had seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed the
-millions of human beings who grew up in the same way. As twenty
-years before, it seemed impossible that the little creature who lived
-somewhere under her heart would ever cry, suck her breast, and begin to
-speak, so now she could not believe that that little creature could be
-this strong, brave man, this model son and officer that, judging by this
-letter, he now was.
-
-“What a style! How charmingly he describes!” said she, reading the
-descriptive part of the letter. “And what a soul! Not a word about
-himself.... Not a word! About some Denísov or other, though he himself,
-I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about his
-sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has remembered
-everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was only so
-high—I always said....”
-
-For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of
-letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied out,
-while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of the
-count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and equipment
-of the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna Mikháylovna,
-practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor with army
-authorities to secure advantageous means of communication for herself
-and her son. She had opportunities of sending her letters to the Grand
-Duke Constantine Pávlovich, who commanded the Guards. The Rostóvs
-supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was quite a definite address,
-and that if a letter reached the Grand Duke in command of the Guards
-there was no reason why it should not reach the Pávlograd regiment,
-which was presumably somewhere in the same neighborhood. And so it was
-decided to send the letters and money by the Grand Duke’s courier to
-Borís and Borís was to forward them to Nicholas. The letters were from
-the old count, the countess, Pétya, Véra, Natásha, and Sónya, and
-finally there were six thousand rubles for his outfit and various other
-things the old count sent to his son.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-On the twelfth of November, Kutúzov’s active army, in camp before
-Olmütz, was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors—the
-Russian and the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia, spent
-the night ten miles from Olmütz and next morning were to come straight
-to the review, reaching the field at Olmütz by ten o’clock.
-
-That day Nicholas Rostóv received a letter from Borís, telling him
-that the Ismáylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles from
-Olmütz and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money for
-him. Rostóv was particularly in need of money now that the troops,
-after their active service, were stationed near Olmütz and the camp
-swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering
-all sorts of tempting wares. The Pávlograds held feast after feast,
-celebrating awards they had received for the campaign, and made
-expeditions to Olmütz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian,
-who had recently opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses.
-Rostóv, who had just celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought
-Denísov’s horse, Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades and
-the sutlers. On receiving Borís’ letter he rode with a fellow officer
-to Olmütz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set off alone
-to the Guards’ camp to find his old playmate. Rostóv had not yet had
-time to get his uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket, decorated with
-a soldier’s cross, equally shabby cadet’s riding breeches lined with
-worn leather, and an officer’s saber with a sword knot. The Don horse
-he was riding was one he had bought from a Cossack during the campaign,
-and he wore a crumpled hussar cap stuck jauntily back on one side of his
-head. As he rode up to the camp he thought how he would impress Borís
-and all his comrades of the Guards by his appearance—that of a
-fighting hussar who had been under fire.
-
-The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip, parading
-their cleanliness and discipline. They had come by easy stages, their
-knapsacks conveyed on carts, and the Austrian authorities had provided
-excellent dinners for the officers at every halting place. The regiments
-had entered and left the town with their bands playing, and by the Grand
-Duke’s orders the men had marched all the way in step (a practice on
-which the Guards prided themselves), the officers on foot and at their
-proper posts. Borís had been quartered, and had marched all the
-way, with Berg who was already in command of a company. Berg, who had
-obtained his captaincy during the campaign, had gained the confidence of
-his superiors by his promptitude and accuracy and had arranged his money
-matters very satisfactorily. Borís, during the campaign, had made the
-acquaintance of many persons who might prove useful to him, and by
-a letter of recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become
-acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkónski, through whom he hoped to
-obtain a post on the commander in chief’s staff. Berg and Borís,
-having rested after yesterday’s march, were sitting, clean and neatly
-dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to them,
-playing chess. Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees. Borís, in
-the accurate way characteristic of him, was building a little pyramid of
-chessmen with his delicate white fingers while awaiting Berg’s move,
-and watched his opponent’s face, evidently thinking about the game as
-he always thought only of whatever he was engaged on.
-
-“Well, how are you going to get out of that?” he remarked.
-
-“We’ll try to,” replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing
-his hand.
-
-At that moment the door opened.
-
-“Here he is at last!” shouted Rostóv. “And Berg too! Oh, you
-petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!” he exclaimed, imitating his Russian
-nurse’s French, at which he and Borís used to laugh long ago.
-
-“Dear me, how you have changed!”
-
-Borís rose to meet Rostóv, but in doing so did not omit to steady and
-replace some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace his
-friend, but Nicholas avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of youth,
-that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a manner
-different from that of its elders which is often insincere, Nicholas
-wished to do something special on meeting his friend. He wanted to pinch
-him, push him, do anything but kiss him—a thing everybody did. But
-notwithstanding this, Borís embraced him in a quiet, friendly way and
-kissed him three times.
-
-They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when young
-men take their first steps on life’s road, each saw immense changes in
-the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which they had taken
-those first steps. Both had changed greatly since they last met and both
-were in a hurry to show the changes that had taken place in them.
-
-“Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you’d been to a fete,
-not like us sinners of the line,” cried Rostóv, with martial swagger
-and with baritone notes in his voice, new to Borís, pointing to his own
-mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostóv’s loud
-voice, popped her head in at the door.
-
-“Eh, is she pretty?” he asked with a wink.
-
-“Why do you shout so? You’ll frighten them!” said Borís. “I did
-not expect you today,” he added. “I only sent you the note yesterday
-by Bolkónski—an adjutant of Kutúzov’s, who’s a friend of mine.
-I did not think he would get it to you so quickly.... Well, how are you?
-Been under fire already?” asked Borís.
-
-Without answering, Rostóv shook the soldier’s Cross of St. George
-fastened to the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm,
-glanced at Berg with a smile.
-
-“As you see,” he said.
-
-“Indeed? Yes, yes!” said Borís, with a smile. “And we too have
-had a splendid march. You know, of course, that His Imperial Highness
-rode with our regiment all the time, so that we had every comfort and
-every advantage. What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and
-balls! I can’t tell you. And the Tsarévich was very gracious to all
-our officers.”
-
-And the two friends told each other of their doings, the one of his
-hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the other of the pleasures
-and advantages of service under members of the Imperial family.
-
-“Oh, you Guards!” said Rostóv. “I say, send for some wine.”
-
-Borís made a grimace.
-
-“If you really want it,” said he.
-
-He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and sent
-for wine.
-
-“Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you,” he added.
-
-Rostóv took the letter and, throwing the money on the sofa, put both
-arms on the table and began to read. After reading a few lines, he
-glanced angrily at Berg, then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind the
-letter.
-
-“Well, they’ve sent you a tidy sum,” said Berg, eying the heavy
-purse that sank into the sofa. “As for us, Count, we get along on our
-pay. I can tell you for myself...”
-
-“I say, Berg, my dear fellow,” said Rostóv, “when you get a
-letter from home and meet one of your own people whom you want to talk
-everything over with, and I happen to be there, I’ll go at once, to
-be out of your way! Do go somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!” he
-exclaimed, and immediately seizing him by the shoulder and looking
-amiably into his face, evidently wishing to soften the rudeness of his
-words, he added, “Don’t be hurt, my dear fellow; you know I speak
-from my heart as to an old acquaintance.”
-
-“Oh, don’t mention it, Count! I quite understand,” said Berg,
-getting up and speaking in a muffled and guttural voice.
-
-“Go across to our hosts: they invited you,” added Borís.
-
-Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck of dust,
-stood before a looking glass and brushed the hair on his temples
-upwards, in the way affected by the Emperor Alexander, and, having
-assured himself from the way Rostóv looked at it that his coat had been
-noticed, left the room with a pleasant smile.
-
-“Oh dear, what a beast I am!” muttered Rostóv, as he read the
-letter.
-
-“Why?”
-
-“Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them
-such a fright! Oh, what a pig I am!” he repeated, flushing suddenly.
-“Well, have you sent Gabriel for some wine? All right let’s have
-some!”
-
-In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of recommendation
-to Bagratión which the old countess at Anna Mikháylovna’s advice had
-obtained through an acquaintance and sent to her son, asking him to take
-it to its destination and make use of it.
-
-“What nonsense! Much I need it!” said Rostóv, throwing the letter
-under the table.
-
-“Why have you thrown that away?” asked Borís.
-
-“It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want it
-for!”
-
-“Why ‘What the devil’?” said Borís, picking it up and reading
-the address. “This letter would be of great use to you.”
-
-“I want nothing, and I won’t be anyone’s adjutant.”
-
-“Why not?” inquired Borís.
-
-“It’s a lackey’s job!”
-
-“You are still the same dreamer, I see,” remarked Borís, shaking
-his head.
-
-“And you’re still the same diplomatist! But that’s not the
-point... Come, how are you?” asked Rostóv.
-
-“Well, as you see. So far everything’s all right, but I confess I
-should much like to be an adjutant and not remain at the front.”
-
-“Why?”
-
-“Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try to
-make as successful a career of it as possible.”
-
-“Oh, that’s it!” said Rostóv, evidently thinking of something
-else.
-
-He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend’s eyes, evidently
-trying in vain to find the answer to some question.
-
-Old Gabriel brought in the wine.
-
-“Shouldn’t we now send for Berg?” asked Borís. “He would drink
-with you. I can’t.”
-
-“Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?”
-asked Rostóv, with a contemptuous smile.
-
-“He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow,” answered
-Borís.
-
-Again Rostóv looked intently into Borís’ eyes and sighed. Berg
-returned, and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three
-officers became animated. The Guardsmen told Rostóv of their march and
-how they had been made much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They spoke
-of the sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke, and told
-stories of his kindness and irascibility. Berg, as usual, kept silent
-when the subject did not relate to himself, but in connection with the
-stories of the Grand Duke’s quick temper he related with gusto how in
-Galicia he had managed to deal with the Grand Duke when the latter
-made a tour of the regiments and was annoyed at the irregularity of
-a movement. With a pleasant smile Berg related how the Grand Duke
-had ridden up to him in a violent passion, shouting: “Arnauts!”
-(“Arnauts” was the Tsarévich’s favorite expression when he was in
-a rage) and called for the company commander.
-
-“Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed, because I knew
-I was right. Without boasting, you know, I may say that I know the Army
-Orders by heart and know the Regulations as well as I do the Lord’s
-Prayer. So, Count, there never is any negligence in my company, and
-so my conscience was at ease. I came forward....” (Berg stood up and
-showed how he presented himself, with his hand to his cap, and really
-it would have been difficult for a face to express greater respect and
-self-complacency than his did.) “Well, he stormed at me, as the saying
-is, stormed and stormed and stormed! It was not a matter of life but
-rather of death, as the saying is. ‘Albanians!’ and ‘devils!’
-and ‘To Siberia!’” said Berg with a sagacious smile. “I knew I
-was in the right so I kept silent; was not that best, Count?... ‘Hey,
-are you dumb?’ he shouted. Still I remained silent. And what do you
-think, Count? The next day it was not even mentioned in the Orders of
-the Day. That’s what keeping one’s head means. That’s the way,
-Count,” said Berg, lighting his pipe and emitting rings of smoke.
-
-“Yes, that was fine,” said Rostóv, smiling.
-
-But Borís noticed that he was preparing to make fun of Berg, and
-skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to tell them how and where
-he got his wound. This pleased Rostóv and he began talking about it,
-and as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of his
-Schön Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a battle
-generally do describe it, that is, as they would like it to have been,
-as they have heard it described by others, and as sounds well, but not
-at all as it really was. Rostóv 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 Rostóv 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. Besides, to tell everything as
-it really happened, it would have been necessary to make an effort of
-will to tell only what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth,
-and young people are rarely capable of it. His hearers expected a story
-of how beside himself and all aflame with excitement, he had flown like
-a storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed right and left, how his
-saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And so he
-told them all that.
-
-In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: “You cannot imagine
-what a strange frenzy one experiences during an attack,” Prince
-Andrew, whom Borís was expecting, entered the room. Prince Andrew, who
-liked to help young men, was flattered by being asked for his assistance
-and being well disposed toward Borís, who had managed to please him the
-day before, he wished to do what the young man wanted. Having been sent
-with papers from Kutúzov to the Tsarévich, he looked in on Borís,
-hoping to find him alone. When he came in and saw an hussar of the line
-recounting his military exploits (Prince Andrew could not endure
-that sort of man), he gave Borís a pleasant smile, frowned as with
-half-closed eyes he looked at Rostóv, bowed slightly and wearily, and
-sat down languidly on the sofa: he felt it unpleasant to have dropped
-in on bad company. Rostóv flushed up on noticing this, but he did not
-care, this was a mere stranger. Glancing, however, at Borís, he saw
-that he too seemed ashamed of the hussar of the line.
-
-In spite of Prince Andrew’s disagreeable, ironical tone, in spite of
-the contempt with which Rostóv, from his fighting army point of view,
-regarded all these little adjutants on the staff of whom the newcomer
-was evidently one, Rostóv felt confused, blushed, and became silent.
-Borís inquired what news there might be on the staff, and what, without
-indiscretion, one might ask about our plans.
-
-“We shall probably advance,” replied Bolkónski, evidently reluctant
-to say more in the presence of a stranger.
-
-Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness, whether, as was
-rumored, the allowance of forage money to captains of companies would be
-doubled. To this Prince Andrew answered with a smile that he could
-give no opinion on such an important government order, and Berg laughed
-gaily.
-
-“As to your business,” Prince Andrew continued, addressing Borís,
-“we will talk of it later” (and he looked round at Rostóv). “Come
-to me after the review and we will do what is possible.”
-
-And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to Rostóv,
-whose state of unconquerable childish embarrassment now changing to
-anger he did not condescend to notice, and said: “I think you were
-talking of the Schön Grabern affair? Were you there?”
-
-“I was there,” said Rostóv angrily, as if intending to insult the
-aide-de-camp.
-
-Bolkónski noticed the hussar’s state of mind, and it amused him. With
-a slightly contemptuous smile, he said: “Yes, there are many stories
-now told about that affair!”
-
-“Yes, stories!” repeated Rostóv loudly, looking with eyes suddenly
-grown furious, now at Borís, now at Bolkónski. “Yes, many stories!
-But our stories are the stories of men who have been under the enemy’s
-fire! Our stories have some weight, not like the stories of those
-fellows on the staff who get rewards without doing anything!”
-
-“Of whom you imagine me to be one?” said Prince Andrew, with a quiet
-and particularly amiable smile.
-
-A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this man’s
-self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostóv’s soul.
-
-“I am not talking about you,” he said, “I don’t know you and,
-frankly, I don’t want to. I am speaking of the staff in general.”
-
-“And I will tell you this,” Prince Andrew interrupted in a tone of
-quiet authority, “you wish to insult me, and I am ready to agree with
-you that it would be very easy to do so if you haven’t sufficient
-self-respect, but admit that the time and place are very badly chosen.
-In a day or two we shall all have to take part in a greater and more
-serious duel, and besides, Drubetskóy, who says he is an old friend
-of yours, is not at all to blame that my face has the misfortune to
-displease you. However,” he added rising, “you know my name and
-where to find me, but don’t forget that I do not regard either myself
-or you as having been at all insulted, and as a man older than you, my
-advice is to let the matter drop. Well then, on Friday after the review
-I shall expect you, Drubetskóy. Au revoir!” exclaimed Prince Andrew,
-and with a bow to them both he went out.
-
-Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostóv think of what he ought to
-have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. He
-ordered his horse at once and, coldly taking leave of Borís, rode
-home. Should he go to headquarters next day and challenge that affected
-adjutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question that worried
-him all the way. He thought angrily of the pleasure he would have at
-seeing the fright of that small and frail but proud man when covered by
-his pistol, and then he felt with surprise that of all the men he knew
-there was none he would so much like to have for a friend as that very
-adjutant whom he so hated.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-The day after Rostóv had been to see Borís, a review was held of the
-Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia and
-those who had been campaigning under Kutúzov. The two Emperors,
-the Russian with his heir the Tsarévich, and the Austrian with the
-Archduke, inspected the allied army of eighty thousand men.
-
-From early morning the smart clean troops were on the move, forming up
-on the field before the fortress. Now thousands of feet and bayonets
-moved and halted at the officers’ command, turned with banners flying,
-formed up at intervals, and wheeled round other similar masses of
-infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the rhythmic beat of
-hoofs and the jingling of showy cavalry in blue, red, and green braided
-uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen in front mounted on black, roan,
-or gray horses; then again, spreading out with the brazen clatter of the
-polished shining cannon that quivered on the gun carriages and with
-the smell of linstocks, came the artillery which crawled between the
-infantry and cavalry and took up its appointed position. Not only the
-generals in full parade uniforms, with their thin or thick waists drawn
-in to the utmost, their red necks squeezed into their stiff collars, and
-wearing scarves and all their decorations, not only the elegant, pomaded
-officers, but every soldier with his freshly washed and shaven face and
-his weapons clean and polished to the utmost, and every horse groomed
-till its coat shone like satin and every hair of its wetted mane lay
-smooth—felt that no small matter was happening, but an important and
-solemn affair. Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own
-insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and
-yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that
-enormous whole.
-
-From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had begun and by ten
-o’clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were drawn
-up on the vast field. The whole army was extended in three lines: the
-cavalry in front, behind it the artillery, and behind that again the
-infantry.
-
-A space like a street was left between each two lines of troops. The
-three parts of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutúzov’s
-fighting army (with the Pávlograds on the right flank of the front);
-those recently arrived from Russia, both Guards and regiments of the
-line; and the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the same lines,
-under one command, and in a like order.
-
-Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: “They’re coming!
-They’re coming!” Alarmed voices were heard, and a stir of final
-preparation swept over all the troops.
-
-From the direction of Olmütz in front of them, a group was seen
-approaching. And at that moment, though the day was still, a light gust
-of wind blowing over the army slightly stirred the streamers on the
-lances and the unfolded standards fluttered against their staffs. It
-looked as if by that slight motion the army itself was expressing its
-joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was heard shouting:
-“Eyes front!” Then, like the crowing of cocks at sunrise, this was
-repeated by others from various sides and all became silent.
-
-In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard. This
-was the Emperors’ suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank, and the
-trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general march. It
-seemed as though not the trumpeters were playing, but as if the army
-itself, rejoicing at the Emperors’ approach, had naturally burst into
-music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly voice of the Emperor
-Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of greeting, and the
-first regiment roared “Hurrah!” so deafeningly, continuously, and
-joyfully that the men themselves were awed by their multitude and the
-immensity of the power they constituted.
-
-Rostóv, standing in the front lines of Kutúzov’s army which the Tsar
-approached first, experienced the same feeling as every other man in
-that army: a feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of
-might, and a passionate attraction to him who was the cause of this
-triumph.
-
-He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast mass (and he
-himself an insignificant atom in it) would go through fire and water,
-commit crime, die, or perform deeds of highest heroism, and so he could
-not but tremble and his heart stand still at the imminence of that word.
-
-“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” thundered from all sides, one regiment
-after another greeting the Tsar with the strains of the march, and then
-“Hurrah!”... Then the general march, and again “Hurrah! Hurrah!”
-growing ever stronger and fuller and merging into a deafening roar.
-
-Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and immobility
-seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he came up it became alive,
-its thunder joining the roar of the whole line along which he had
-already passed. Through the terrible and deafening roar of those voices,
-amid the square masses of troops standing motionless as if turned to
-stone, hundreds of riders composing the suites moved carelessly but
-symmetrically and above all freely, and in front of them two men—the
-Emperors. Upon them the undivided, tensely passionate attention of that
-whole mass of men was concentrated.
-
-The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse
-Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its peaks front and back, with his
-pleasant face and resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone’s
-attention.
-
-Rostóv was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight had
-recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within twenty
-paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of his
-handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling of tenderness
-and ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and every
-movement of the Tsar’s seemed to him enchanting.
-
-Stopping in front of the Pávlograds, the Tsar said something in French
-to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.
-
-Seeing that smile, Rostóv involuntarily smiled himself and felt a still
-stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He longed to show that love in
-some way and knowing that this was impossible was ready to cry. The Tsar
-called the colonel of the regiment and said a few words to him.
-
-“Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?”
-thought Rostóv. “I should die of happiness!”
-
-The Tsar addressed the officers also: “I thank you all, gentlemen, I
-thank you with my whole heart.” To Rostóv every word sounded like a
-voice from heaven. How gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar!
-
-“You have earned the St. George’s standards and will be worthy of
-them.”
-
-“Oh, to die, to die for him,” thought Rostóv.
-
-The Tsar said something more which Rostóv did not hear, and the
-soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted “Hurrah!”
-
-Rostóv too, bending over his saddle, shouted “Hurrah!” with all his
-might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout, if
-only to express his rapture fully.
-
-The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if undecided.
-
-“How can the Emperor be undecided?” thought Rostóv, but then even
-this indecision appeared to him majestic and enchanting, like everything
-else the Tsar did.
-
-That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar’s foot, in the narrow
-pointed boot then fashionable, touched the groin of the bobtailed bay
-mare he rode, his hand in a white glove gathered up the reins, and he
-moved off accompanied by an irregularly swaying sea of aides-de-camp.
-Farther and farther he rode away, stopping at other regiments, till at
-last only his white plumes were visible to Rostóv from amid the suites
-that surrounded the Emperors.
-
-Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostóv noticed Bolkónski, sitting
-his horse indolently and carelessly. Rostóv recalled their quarrel of
-yesterday and the question presented itself whether he ought or ought
-not to challenge Bolkónski. “Of course not!” he now thought. “Is
-it worth thinking or speaking of it at such a moment? At a time of such
-love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do any of our quarrels
-and affronts matter? I love and forgive everybody now.”
-
-When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments, the troops began
-a ceremonial march past him, and Rostóv on Bedouin, recently purchased
-from Denísov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron—that is,
-alone and in full view of the Emperor.
-
-Before he reached him, Rostóv, who was a splendid horseman, spurred
-Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the showy trot in which the
-animal went when excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to his chest, his
-tail extended, Bedouin, as if also conscious of the Emperor’s eye
-upon him, passed splendidly, lifting his feet with a high and graceful
-action, as if flying through the air without touching the ground.
-
-Rostóv himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn in and feeling
-himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a frowning but
-blissful face “like a vewy devil,” as Denísov expressed it.
-
-“Fine fellows, the Pávlograds!” remarked the Emperor.
-
-“My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the fire
-this instant!” thought Rostóv.
-
-When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also
-Kutúzov’s, collected in groups and began to talk about the awards,
-about the Austrians and their uniforms, about their lines, about
-Bonaparte, and how badly the latter would fare now, especially if the
-Essen corps arrived and Prussia took our side.
-
-But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander. His
-every word and movement was described with ecstasy.
-
-They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against the
-enemy under the Emperor’s command. Commanded by the Emperor himself
-they could not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might: so thought
-Rostóv and most of the officers after the review.
-
-All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two battles
-would have made them.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-The day after the review, Borís, in his best uniform and with his
-comrade Berg’s best wishes for success, rode to Olmütz to see
-Bolkónski, wishing to profit by his friendliness and obtain for himself
-the best post he could—preferably that of adjutant to some important
-personage, a position in the army which seemed to him most attractive.
-“It is all very well for Rostóv, whose father sends him ten thousand
-rubles at a time, to talk about not wishing to cringe to anybody and not
-be anyone’s lackey, but I who have nothing but my brains have to
-make a career and must not miss opportunities, but must avail myself of
-them!” he reflected.
-
-He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmütz that day, but the appearance of
-the town where the headquarters and the diplomatic corps were stationed
-and the two Emperors were living with their suites, households, and
-courts only strengthened his desire to belong to that higher world.
-
-He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman’s uniform, all these
-exalted personages passing in the streets in their elegant carriages
-with their plumes, ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military
-men, seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant officer of the
-Guards, that they not only did not wish to, but simply could not, be
-aware of his existence. At the quarters of the commander in chief,
-Kutúzov, where he inquired for Bolkónski, all the adjutants and even
-the orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on him that a
-great many officers like him were always coming there and that everybody
-was heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather because of
-it, next day, November 15, after dinner he again went to Olmütz and,
-entering the house occupied by Kutúzov, asked for Bolkónski. Prince
-Andrew was in and Borís was shown into a large hall probably formerly
-used for dancing, but in which five beds now stood, and furniture of
-various kinds: a table, chairs, and a clavichord. One adjutant, nearest
-the door, was sitting at the table in a Persian dressing gown, writing.
-Another, the red, stout Nesvítski, lay on a bed with his arms under his
-head, laughing with an officer who had sat down beside him. A third was
-playing a Viennese waltz on the clavichord, while a fourth, lying on
-the clavichord, sang the tune. Bolkónski was not there. None of these
-gentlemen changed his position on seeing Borís. The one who was writing
-and whom Borís addressed turned round crossly and told him Bolkónski
-was on duty and that he should go through the door on the left into the
-reception room if he wished to see him. Borís thanked him and went to
-the reception room, where he found some ten officers and generals.
-
-When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping contemptuously (with
-that peculiar expression of polite weariness which plainly says, “If
-it were not my duty I would not talk to you for a moment”), was
-listening to an old Russian general with decorations, who stood very
-erect, almost on tiptoe, with a soldier’s obsequious expression on his
-purple face, reporting something.
-
-“Very well, then, be so good as to wait,” said Prince Andrew to the
-general, in Russian, speaking with the French intonation he affected
-when he wished to speak contemptuously, and noticing Borís, Prince
-Andrew, paying no more heed to the general who ran after him imploring
-him to hear something more, nodded and turned to him with a cheerful
-smile.
-
-At that moment Borís clearly realized what he had before surmised, that
-in the army, besides the subordination and discipline prescribed in the
-military code, which he and the others knew in the regiment, there was
-another, more important, subordination, which made this tight-laced,
-purple-faced general wait respectfully while Captain Prince Andrew, for
-his own pleasure, chose to chat with Lieutenant Drubetskóy. More than
-ever was Borís resolved to serve in future not according to the written
-code, but under this unwritten law. He felt now that merely by having
-been recommended to Prince Andrew he had already risen above the general
-who at the front had the power to annihilate him, a lieutenant of the
-Guards. Prince Andrew came up to him and took his hand.
-
-“I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing about
-with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the dispositions.
-When Germans start being accurate, there’s no end to it!”
-
-Borís smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to
-as something generally known. But it was the first time he had heard
-Weyrother’s name, or even the term “dispositions.”
-
-“Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have
-been thinking about you.”
-
-“Yes, I was thinking”—for some reason Borís could not help
-blushing—“of asking the commander in chief. He has had a letter from
-Prince Kurágin about me. I only wanted to ask because I fear the Guards
-won’t be in action,” he added as if in apology.
-
-“All right, all right. We’ll talk it over,” replied Prince Andrew.
-“Only let me report this gentleman’s business, and I shall be at
-your disposal.”
-
-While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-faced general, that
-gentleman—evidently not sharing Borís’ conception of the advantages
-of the unwritten code of subordination—looked so fixedly at the
-presumptuous lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he had to
-say to the adjutant that Borís felt uncomfortable. He turned away and
-waited impatiently for Prince Andrew’s return from the commander in
-chief’s room.
-
-“You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you,”
-said Prince Andrew when they had gone into the large room where the
-clavichord was. “It’s no use your going to the commander in chief.
-He would say a lot of pleasant things, ask you to dinner” (“That
-would not be bad as regards the unwritten code,” thought Borís),
-“but nothing more would come of it. There will soon be a battalion of
-us aides-de-camp and adjutants! But this is what we’ll do: I have
-a good friend, an adjutant general and an excellent fellow, Prince
-Dolgorúkov; and though you may not know it, the fact is that now
-Kutúzov with his staff and all of us count for nothing. Everything is
-now centered round the Emperor. So we will go to Dolgorúkov; I have to
-go there anyhow and I have already spoken to him about you. We shall
-see whether he cannot attach you to himself or find a place for you
-somewhere nearer the sun.”
-
-Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a young
-man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining help
-of this kind for another, which from pride he would never accept for
-himself, he kept in touch with the circle which confers success and
-which attracted him. He very readily took up Borís’ cause and went
-with him to Dolgorúkov.
-
-It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmütz
-occupied by the Emperors and their retinues.
-
-That same day a council of war had been held in which all the members of
-the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that council, contrary
-to the views of the old generals Kutúzov and Prince Schwartzenberg, it
-had been decided to advance immediately and give battle to Bonaparte.
-The council of war was just over when Prince Andrew accompanied
-by Borís arrived at the palace to find Dolgorúkov. Everyone at
-headquarters was still under the spell of the day’s council, at which
-the party of the young had triumphed. The voices of those who counseled
-delay and advised waiting for something else before advancing had been
-so completely silenced and their arguments confuted by such conclusive
-evidence of the advantages of attacking that what had been discussed
-at the council—the coming battle and the victory that would certainly
-result from it—no longer seemed to be in the future but in the past.
-All the advantages were on our side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly
-superior to Napoleon’s, were concentrated in one place, the troops
-inspired by the Emperors’ presence were eager for action. The
-strategic position where the operations would take place was familiar in
-all its details to the Austrian General Weyrother: a lucky accident had
-ordained that the Austrian army should maneuver the previous year on the
-very fields where the French had now to be fought; the adjacent
-locality was known and shown in every detail on the maps, and Bonaparte,
-evidently weakened, was undertaking nothing.
-
-Dolgorúkov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack, had just
-returned from the council, tired and exhausted but eager and proud
-of the victory that had been gained. Prince Andrew introduced his
-protégé, but Prince Dolgorúkov politely and firmly pressing his hand
-said nothing to Borís and, evidently unable to suppress the thoughts
-which were uppermost in his mind at that moment, addressed Prince Andrew
-in French.
-
-“Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God grant that
-the one that will result from it will be as victorious! However, dear
-fellow,” he said abruptly and eagerly, “I must confess to having
-been unjust to the Austrians and especially to Weyrother. What
-exactitude, what minuteness, what knowledge of the locality, what
-foresight for every eventuality, every possibility even to the smallest
-detail! No, my dear fellow, no conditions better than our present ones
-could have been devised. This combination of Austrian precision with
-Russian valor—what more could be wished for?”
-
-“So the attack is definitely resolved on?” asked Bolkónski.
-
-“And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that Bonaparte has
-decidedly lost bearings, you know that a letter was received from him
-today for the Emperor.” Dolgorúkov smiled significantly.
-
-“Is that so? And what did he say?” inquired Bolkónski.
-
-“What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to gain time.
-I tell you he is in our hands, that’s certain! But what was most
-amusing,” he continued, with a sudden, good-natured laugh, “was that
-we could not think how to address the reply! If not as ‘Consul’
-and of course not as ‘Emperor,’ it seemed to me it should be to
-‘General Bonaparte.’”
-
-“But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him General
-Bonaparte, there is a difference,” remarked Bolkónski.
-
-“That’s just it,” interrupted Dolgorúkov quickly, laughing.
-“You know Bilíbin—he’s a very clever fellow. He suggested
-addressing him as ‘Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.’”
-
-Dolgorúkov laughed merrily.
-
-“Only that?” said Bolkónski.
-
-“All the same, it was Bilíbin who found a suitable form for the
-address. He is a wise and clever fellow.”
-
-“What was it?”
-
-“To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement
-français,” said Dolgorúkov, with grave satisfaction. “Good,
-wasn’t it?”
-
-“Yes, but he will dislike it extremely,” said Bolkónski.
-
-“Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he’s dined with him—the
-present Emperor—more than once in Paris, and tells me he never met a
-more cunning or subtle diplomatist—you know, a combination of French
-adroitness and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale about him and
-Count Markóv? Count Markóv was the only man who knew how to handle
-him. You know the story of the handkerchief? It is delightful!”
-
-And the talkative Dolgorúkov, turning now to Borís, now to Prince
-Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markóv, our ambassador,
-purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking
-at Markóv, probably expecting Markóv to pick it up for him, and how
-Markóv immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up without
-touching Bonaparte’s.
-
-“Delightful!” said Bolkónski. “But I have come to you, Prince,
-as a petitioner on behalf of this young man. You see...” but
-before Prince Andrew could finish, an aide-de-camp came in to summon
-Dolgorúkov to the Emperor.
-
-“Oh, what a nuisance,” said Dolgorúkov, getting up hurriedly and
-pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and Borís. “You know I should
-be very glad to do all in my power both for you and for this dear young
-man.” Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of
-good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. “But you see... another
-time!”
-
-Borís was excited by the thought of being so close to the higher powers
-as he felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious that here
-he was in contact with the springs that set in motion the enormous
-movements of the mass of which in his regiment he felt himself a tiny,
-obedient, and insignificant atom. They followed Prince Dolgorúkov out
-into the corridor and met—coming out of the door of the Emperor’s
-room by which Dolgorúkov had entered—a short man in civilian clothes
-with a clever face and sharply projecting jaw which, without spoiling
-his face, gave him a peculiar vivacity and shiftiness of expression.
-This short man nodded to Dolgorúkov as to an intimate friend and stared
-at Prince Andrew with cool intensity, walking straight toward him and
-evidently expecting him to bow or to step out of his way. Prince Andrew
-did neither: a look of animosity appeared on his face and the other
-turned away and went down the side of the corridor.
-
-“Who was that?” asked Borís.
-
-“He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of
-men—the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartorýski.... It
-is such men as he who decide the fate of nations,” added Bolkónski
-with a sigh he could not suppress, as they passed out of the palace.
-
-Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the very battle of
-Austerlitz, Borís was unable to see either Prince Andrew or Dolgorúkov
-again and remained for a while with the Ismáylov regiment.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denísov’s squadron, in
-which Nicholas Rostóv served and which was in Prince Bagratión’s
-detachment, moved from the place where it had spent the night, advancing
-into action as arranged, and after going behind other columns for
-about two thirds of a mile was stopped on the highroad. Rostóv saw the
-Cossacks and then the first and second squadrons of hussars and infantry
-battalions and artillery pass by and go forward and then Generals
-Bagratión and Dolgorúkov ride past with their adjutants. All the fear
-before action which he had experienced as previously, all the inner
-struggle to conquer that fear, all his dreams of distinguishing himself
-as a true hussar in this battle, had been wasted. Their squadron
-remained in reserve and Nicholas Rostóv spent that day in a dull and
-wretched mood. At nine in the morning, he heard firing in front and
-shouts of hurrah, and saw wounded being brought back (there were not
-many of them), and at last he saw how a whole detachment of French
-cavalry was brought in, convoyed by a sótnya of Cossacks. Evidently the
-affair was over and, though not big, had been a successful engagement.
-The men and officers returning spoke of a brilliant victory, of the
-occupation of the town of Wischau and the capture of a whole French
-squadron. The day was bright and sunny after a sharp night frost, and
-the cheerful glitter of that autumn day was in keeping with the news of
-victory which was conveyed, not only by the tales of those who had taken
-part in it, but also by the joyful expression on the faces of soldiers,
-officers, generals, and adjutants, as they passed Rostóv going or
-coming. And Nicholas, who had vainly suffered all the dread that
-precedes a battle and had spent that happy day in inactivity, was all
-the more depressed.
-
-“Come here, Wostóv. Let’s dwink to dwown our gwief!” shouted
-Denísov, who had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some
-food.
-
-The officers gathered round Denísov’s canteen, eating and talking.
-
-“There! They are bringing another!” cried one of the officers,
-indicating a captive French dragoon who was being brought in on foot by
-two Cossacks.
-
-One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he had
-taken from the prisoner.
-
-“Sell us that horse!” Denísov called out to the Cossacks.
-
-“If you like, your honor!”
-
-The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and their prisoner.
-The French dragoon was a young Alsatian who spoke French with a German
-accent. He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when
-he heard some French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers,
-addressing first one, then another. He said he would not have been
-taken, it was not his fault but the corporal’s who had sent him to
-seize some horsecloths, though he had told him the Russians were there.
-And at every word he added: “But don’t hurt my little horse!” and
-stroked the animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp where he
-was. Now he excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now,
-imagining himself before his own officers, insisted on his soldierly
-discipline and zeal in the service. He brought with him into our
-rearguard all the freshness of atmosphere of the French army, which was
-so alien to us.
-
-The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostóv, being the
-richest of the officers now that he had received his money, bought it.
-
-“But don’t hurt my little horse!” said the Alsatian good-naturedly
-to Rostóv when the animal was handed over to the hussar.
-
-Rostóv smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money.
-
-“Alley! Alley!” said the Cossack, touching the prisoner’s arm to
-make him go on.
-
-“The Emperor! The Emperor!” was suddenly heard among the hussars.
-
-All began to run and bustle, and Rostóv saw coming up the road behind
-him several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment everyone
-was in his place, waiting.
-
-Rostóv did not know or remember how he ran to his place and mounted.
-Instantly his regret at not having been in action and his dejected mood
-amid people of whom he was weary had gone, instantly every thought of
-himself had vanished. He was filled with happiness at his nearness to
-the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made up to him for the
-day he had lost. He was happy as a lover when the longed-for moment of
-meeting arrives. Not daring to look round and without looking round, he
-was ecstatically conscious of his approach. He felt it not only from the
-sound of the hoofs of the approaching cavalcade, but because as he drew
-near everything grew brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more
-festive around him. Nearer and nearer to Rostóv came that sun shedding
-beams of mild and majestic light around, and already he felt himself
-enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice, that kindly, calm,
-and majestic voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord with
-Rostóv’s feeling, there was a deathly stillness amid which was heard
-the Emperor’s voice.
-
-“The Pávlograd hussars?” he inquired.
-
-“The reserves, sire!” replied a voice, a very human one compared to
-that which had said: “The Pávlograd hussars?”
-
-The Emperor drew level with Rostóv and halted. Alexander’s face was
-even more beautiful than it had been three days before at the review. It
-shone with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that it suggested
-the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was the face
-of the majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the squadron, the
-Emperor’s eyes met Rostóv’s and rested on them for not more than
-two seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was going on in
-Rostóv’s soul (it seemed to Rostóv that he understood everything),
-at any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two seconds into
-Rostóv’s face. A gentle, mild light poured from them. Then all at
-once he raised his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse with his left
-foot, and galloped on.
-
-The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the
-battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at twelve
-o’clock left the third column with which he had been and galloped
-toward the vanguard. Before he came up with the hussars, several
-adjutants met him with news of the successful result of the action.
-
-This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron, was
-represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the
-Emperor and the whole army, especially while the smoke hung over
-the battlefield, believed that the French had been defeated and were
-retreating against their will. A few minutes after the Emperor had
-passed, the Pávlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau
-itself, a petty German town, Rostóv saw the Emperor again. In the
-market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the
-Emperor’s arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom there
-had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his suite
-of officers and courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare, a
-different one from that which he had ridden at the review, and bending
-to one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes and looked
-at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered head. The
-wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his proximity
-to the Emperor shocked Rostóv. Rostóv saw how the Emperor’s rather
-round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run down them, how his
-left foot began convulsively tapping the horse’s side with the spur,
-and how the well-trained horse looked round unconcerned and did not
-stir. An adjutant, dismounting, lifted the soldier under the arms to
-place him on a stretcher that had been brought. The soldier groaned.
-
-“Gently, gently! Can’t you do it more gently?” said the Emperor
-apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.
-
-Rostóv saw tears filling the Emperor’s eyes and heard him, as he was
-riding away, say to Czartorýski: “What a terrible thing war is: what
-a terrible thing! Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!”
-
-The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within sight
-of the enemy’s lines, which all day long had yielded ground to us
-at the least firing. The Emperor’s gratitude was announced to the
-vanguard, rewards were promised, and the men received a double ration of
-vodka. The campfires crackled and the soldiers’ songs resounded
-even more merrily than on the previous night. Denísov celebrated his
-promotion to the rank of major, and Rostóv, who had already drunk
-enough, at the end of the feast proposed the Emperor’s health. “Not
-‘our Sovereign, the Emperor,’ as they say at official dinners,”
-said he, “but the health of our Sovereign, that good, enchanting, and
-great man! Let us drink to his health and to the certain defeat of the
-French!”
-
-“If we fought before,” he said, “not letting the French pass, as
-at Schön Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We
-will all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not
-saying it right, I have drunk a good deal—but that is how I feel, and
-so do you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!”
-
-“Hurrah!” rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.
-
-And the old cavalry captain, Kírsten, shouted enthusiastically and no
-less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostóv.
-
-When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kírsten filled
-others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand to the
-soldiers’ bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white chest
-showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the light
-of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.
-
-“Lads! here’s to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over
-our enemies! Hurrah!” he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar’s
-baritone.
-
-The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.
-
-Late that night, when all had separated, Denísov with his short hand
-patted his favorite, Rostóv, on the shoulder.
-
-“As there’s no one to fall in love with on campaign, he’s fallen
-in love with the Tsar,” he said.
-
-“Denísov, don’t make fun of it!” cried Rostóv. “It is such a
-lofty, beautiful feeling, such a...”
-
-“I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove...”
-
-“No, you don’t understand!”
-
-And Rostóv got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming of
-what happiness it would be to die—not in saving the Emperor’s life
-(he did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before his
-eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian
-arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only man to
-experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding the battle
-of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army were then in
-love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory of the
-Russian arms.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his physician,
-was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and among the troops
-near by the news spread that the Emperor was unwell. He ate nothing and
-had slept badly that night, those around him reported. The cause of this
-indisposition was the strong impression made on his sensitive mind by
-the sight of the killed and wounded.
-
-At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with
-a flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was
-brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The
-Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At midday
-he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off with
-Prince Dolgorúkov to the advanced post of the French army.
-
-It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander
-a meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a
-personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince
-Dolgorúkov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate
-with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were
-actuated by a real desire for peace.
-
-Toward evening Dolgorúkov came back, went straight to the Tsar, and
-remained alone with him for a long time.
-
-On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced two
-days’ march and the enemy’s outposts after a brief interchange
-of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the
-nineteenth, a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till
-the morning of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz
-was fought.
-
-Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity—the eager talk, running to
-and fro, and dispatching of adjutants—was confined to the Emperor’s
-headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this activity reached
-Kutúzov’s headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns.
-By evening, the adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the
-army, and in the night from the nineteenth to the twentieth, the whole
-eighty thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of
-voices, and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles
-long.
-
-The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor’s
-headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that
-followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower
-clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third,
-and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to
-work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with
-regular motion as a result of all that activity.
-
-Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military
-machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as
-indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted
-to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet
-reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and
-the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a
-neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared
-to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever
-catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins
-in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
-
-Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable
-wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the
-hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human
-activities of 160,000 Russians and French—all their passions, desires,
-remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and
-enthusiasm—was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the
-so-called battle of the three Emperors—that is to say, a slow movement
-of the hand on the dial of human history.
-
-Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the
-commander in chief.
-
-At six in the evening, Kutúzov went to the Emperor’s headquarters
-and after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand
-marshal of the court, Count Tolstóy.
-
-Bolkónski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the
-coming action from Dolgorúkov. He felt that Kutúzov was upset
-and dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were
-dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor’s headquarters
-everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something others do
-not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorúkov.
-
-“Well, how d’you do, my dear fellow?” said Dolgorúkov, who was
-sitting at tea with Bilíbin. “The fete is for tomorrow. How is your
-old fellow? Out of sorts?”
-
-“I won’t say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be
-heard.”
-
-“But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when he
-talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when Bonaparte
-fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible.”
-
-“Yes, you have seen him?” said Prince Andrew. “Well, what is
-Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?”
-
-“Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as
-a general engagement,” repeated Dolgorúkov, evidently prizing this
-general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with
-Napoleon. “If he weren’t afraid of a battle why did he ask for that
-interview? Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat is
-so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is afraid,
-afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!”
-
-“But tell me, what is he like, eh?” said Prince Andrew again.
-
-“He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call
-him ‘Your Majesty,’ but who, to his chagrin, got no title from
-me! That’s the sort of man he is, and nothing more,” replied
-Dolgorúkov, looking round at Bilíbin with a smile.
-
-“Despite my great respect for old Kutúzov,” he continued, “we
-should be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him
-a chance to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in
-our hands! No, we mustn’t forget Suvórov and his rule—not to put
-yourself in a position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe
-me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than all
-the experience of old Cunctators.”
-
-“But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the
-outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces are
-situated,” said Prince Andrew.
-
-He wished to explain to Dolgorúkov a plan of attack he had himself
-formed.
-
-“Oh, that is all the same,” Dolgorúkov said quickly, and getting up
-he spread a map on the table. “All eventualities have been foreseen.
-If he is standing before Brünn...”
-
-And Prince Dolgorúkov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother’s
-plan of a flanking movement.
-
-Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which might
-have been as good as Weyrother’s, but for the disadvantage that
-Weyrother’s had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew began
-to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his own plan,
-Prince Dolgorúkov ceased to listen to him and gazed absent-mindedly not
-at the map, but at Prince Andrew’s face.
-
-“There will be a council of war at Kutúzov’s tonight, though; you
-can say all this there,” remarked Dolgorúkov.
-
-“I will do so,” said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.
-
-“Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?” said Bilíbin, who,
-till then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and
-now was evidently ready with a joke. “Whether tomorrow brings
-victory or defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except your
-Kutúzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a column! The
-commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le Prince de
-Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally Prishprish, and so on
-like all those Polish names.”
-
-“Be quiet, backbiter!” said Dolgorúkov. “It is not true; there
-are now two Russians, Milorádovich, and Dokhtúrov, and there would be
-a third, Count Arakchéev, if his nerves were not too weak.”
-
-“However, I think General Kutúzov has come out,” said Prince
-Andrew. “I wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!” he added and
-went out after shaking hands with Dolgorúkov and Bilíbin.
-
-On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking Kutúzov,
-who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of tomorrow’s
-battle.
-
-Kutúzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause, replied:
-“I think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstóy and
-asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? ‘But, my
-dear general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after military
-matters yourself!’ Yes... That was the answer I got!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-Shortly after nine o’clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his
-plans to Kutúzov’s quarters where the council of war was to be
-held. All the commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in
-chief’s and with the exception of Prince Bagratión, who declined to
-come, were all there at the appointed time.
-
-Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his
-eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the dissatisfied
-and drowsy Kutúzov, who reluctantly played the part of chairman and
-president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt himself to be
-at the head of a movement that had already become unrestrainable. He was
-like a horse running downhill harnessed to a heavy cart. Whether he was
-pulling it or being pushed by it he did not know, but rushed along at
-headlong speed with no time to consider what this movement might lead
-to. Weyrother had been twice that evening to the enemy’s picket
-line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the Emperors, Russian and
-Austrian, to report and explain, and to his headquarters where he had
-dictated the dispositions in German, and now, much exhausted, he arrived
-at Kutúzov’s.
-
-He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the
-commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and indistinctly,
-without looking at the man he was addressing, and did not reply to
-questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had a pitiful,
-weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was haughty and
-self-confident.
-
-Kutúzov was occupying a nobleman’s castle of modest dimensions near
-Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the commander
-in chief’s office were gathered Kutúzov himself, Weyrother, and the
-members of the council of war. They were drinking tea, and only awaited
-Prince Bagratión to begin the council. At last Bagratión’s orderly
-came with the news that the prince could not attend. Prince Andrew came
-in to inform the commander in chief of this and, availing himself
-of permission previously given him by Kutúzov to be present at the
-council, he remained in the room.
-
-“Since Prince Bagratión is not coming, we may begin,” said
-Weyrother, hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on
-which an enormous map of the environs of Brünn was spread out.
-
-Kutúzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged over
-his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low chair,
-with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms. At the sound
-of Weyrother’s voice, he opened his one eye with an effort.
-
-“Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late,” said he, and nodding
-his head he let it droop and again closed his eye.
-
-If at first the members of the council thought that Kutúzov was
-pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading that
-followed proved that the commander in chief at that moment was absorbed
-by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his contempt for
-the dispositions or anything else—he was engaged in satisfying the
-irresistible human need for sleep. He really was asleep. Weyrother, with
-the gesture of a man too busy to lose a moment, glanced at Kutúzov and,
-having convinced himself that he was asleep, took up a paper and in
-a loud, monotonous voice began to read out the dispositions for the
-impending battle, under a heading which he also read out:
-
-“Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz and
-Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805.”
-
-The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began as
-follows:
-
-“As the enemy’s left wing rests on wooded hills and his right
-extends along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there,
-while we, on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his
-right, it is advantageous to attack the enemy’s latter wing especially
-if we occupy the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we
-can both fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain between
-Schlappanitz and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of
-Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the enemy’s front. For this
-object it is necessary that... The first column marches... The second
-column marches... The third column marches...” and so on, read
-Weyrother.
-
-The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult dispositions.
-The tall, fair-haired General Buxhöwden stood, leaning his back against
-the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and seemed not to listen
-or even to wish to be thought to listen. Exactly opposite Weyrother,
-with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed upon him and his mustache
-twisted upwards, sat the ruddy Milorádovich in a military pose, his
-elbows turned outwards, his hands on his knees, and his shoulders
-raised. He remained stubbornly silent, gazing at Weyrother’s face,
-and only turned away his eyes when the Austrian chief of staff finished
-reading. Then Milorádovich looked round significantly at the other
-generals. But one could not tell from that significant look whether he
-agreed or disagreed and was satisfied or not with the arrangements. Next
-to Weyrother sat Count Langeron who, with a subtle smile that never left
-his typically southern French face during the whole time of the reading,
-gazed at his delicate fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners
-a gold snuffbox on which was a portrait. In the middle of one of the
-longest sentences, he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised
-his head, and with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his
-thin lips interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the
-Austrian general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his
-elbows, as if to say: “You can tell me your views later, but now be so
-good as to look at the map and listen.” Langeron lifted his eyes with
-an expression of perplexity, turned round to Milorádovich as if seeking
-an explanation, but meeting the latter’s impressive but meaningless
-gaze drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his snuffbox.
-
-“A geography lesson!” he muttered as if to himself, but loud enough
-to be heard.
-
-Przebyszéwski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his
-hand to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in
-attention. Dohktúrov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with
-an assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map
-conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar locality. He
-asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had not clearly heard
-and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother complied and Dohktúrov
-noted them down.
-
-When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron again
-brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother or at
-anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry out
-such a plan in which the enemy’s position was assumed to be known,
-whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.
-Langeron’s objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief
-aim was to show General Weyrother—who had read his dispositions with
-as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children—that
-he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him something
-in military matters.
-
-When the monotonous sound of Weyrother’s voice ceased, Kutúzov opened
-his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the mill wheel
-is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking,
-“So you are still at that silly business!” quickly closed his eye
-again, and let his head sink still lower.
-
-Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother’s vanity
-as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might easily
-attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of this
-plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a firm and
-contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all objections
-be they what they might.
-
-“If he could attack us, he would have done so today,” said he.
-
-“So you think he is powerless?” said Langeron.
-
-“He has forty thousand men at most,” replied Weyrother, with the
-smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the treatment of
-a case.
-
-“In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack,” said
-Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round for support
-to Milorádovich who was near him.
-
-But Milorádovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything
-rather than of what the generals were disputing about.
-
-“Ma foi!” said he, “tomorrow we shall see all that on the
-battlefield.”
-
-Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it was
-strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals and to
-have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced himself of, but
-had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.
-
-“The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard from
-his camp,” said he. “What does that mean? Either he is retreating,
-which is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing his position.”
-(He smiled ironically.) “But even if he also took up a position in
-the Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of trouble and all our
-arrangements to the minutest detail remain the same.”
-
-“How is that?...” began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting
-an opportunity to express his doubts.
-
-Kutúzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the
-generals.
-
-“Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow—or rather for today, for
-it is past midnight—cannot now be altered,” said he. “You have
-heard them, and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there is
-nothing more important...” he paused, “than to have a good sleep.”
-
-He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was past
-midnight. Prince Andrew went out.
-
-The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to
-express his opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy
-impression. Whether Dolgorúkov and Weyrother, or Kutúzov, Langeron,
-and the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were
-right—he did not know. “But was it really not possible for Kutúzov
-to state his views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on
-account of court and personal considerations tens of thousands of lives,
-and my life, my life,” he thought, “must be risked?”
-
-“Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow,” he
-thought. And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of most
-distant, most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he remembered
-his last parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the days
-when he first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for
-her and for himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened mood he
-went out of the hut in which he was billeted with Nesvítski and began
-to walk up and down before it.
-
-The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed
-mysteriously. “Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!” he thought. “Tomorrow
-everything may be over for me! All these memories will be no more, none
-of them will have any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even certainly,
-I have a presentiment that for the first time I shall have to show all
-I can do.” And his fancy pictured the battle, its loss, the
-concentration of fighting at one point, and the hesitation of all the
-commanders. And then that happy moment, that Toulon for which he had
-so long waited, presents itself to him at last. He firmly and clearly
-expresses his opinion to Kutúzov, to Weyrother, and to the Emperors.
-All are struck by the justness of his views, but no one undertakes to
-carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a division—stipulates that no
-one is to interfere with his arrangements—leads his division to
-the decisive point, and gains the victory alone. “But death and
-suffering?” suggested another voice. Prince Andrew, however, did not
-answer that voice and went on dreaming of his triumphs. The dispositions
-for the next battle are planned by him alone. Nominally he is only an
-adjutant on Kutúzov’s staff, but he does everything alone. The next
-battle is won by him alone. Kutúzov is removed and he is appointed...
-“Well and then?” asked the other voice. “If before that you are
-not ten times wounded, killed, or betrayed, well... what then?...”
-“Well then,” Prince Andrew answered himself, “I don’t know
-what will happen and don’t want to know, and can’t, but if I want
-this—want glory, want to be known to men, want to be loved by them, it
-is not my fault that I want it and want nothing but that and live only
-for that. Yes, for that alone! I shall never tell anyone, but, oh God!
-what am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men’s esteem? Death,
-wounds, the loss of family—I fear nothing. And precious and dear
-as many persons are to me—father, sister, wife—those dearest to
-me—yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would give them all at
-once for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of love from men I
-don’t know and never shall know, for the love of these men here,” he
-thought, as he listened to voices in Kutúzov’s courtyard. The voices
-were those of the orderlies who were packing up; one voice, probably a
-coachman’s, was teasing Kutúzov’s old cook whom Prince Andrew knew,
-and who was called Tit. He was saying, “Tit, I say, Tit!”
-
-“Well?” returned the old man.
-
-“Go, Tit, thresh a bit!” said the wag.
-
-“Oh, go to the devil!” called out a voice, drowned by the laughter
-of the orderlies and servants.
-
-“All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I
-value this mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in this
-mist!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-That same night, Rostóv was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in front
-of Bagratión’s detachment. His hussars were placed along the line
-in couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master the
-sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with our
-army’s campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind him;
-in front of him was misty darkness. Rostóv could see nothing, peer as
-he would into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray, now there
-was something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer where the enemy
-ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in his own eyes. His
-eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared—now the Emperor, now
-Denísov, and now Moscow memories—and he again hurriedly opened his
-eyes and saw close before him the head and ears of the horse he was
-riding, and sometimes, when he came within six paces of them, the
-black figures of hussars, but in the distance was still the same misty
-darkness. “Why not?... It might easily happen,” thought Rostóv,
-“that the Emperor will meet me and give me an order as he would to any
-other officer; he’ll say: ‘Go and find out what’s there.’ There
-are many stories of his getting to know an officer in just such a chance
-way and attaching him to himself! What if he gave me a place near him?
-Oh, how I would guard him, how I would tell him the truth, how I would
-unmask his deceivers!” And in order to realize vividly his love
-devotion to the sovereign, Rostóv pictured to himself an enemy or a
-deceitful German, whom he would not only kill with pleasure but whom
-he would slap in the face before the Emperor. Suddenly a distant shout
-aroused him. He started and opened his eyes.
-
-“Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and
-watchword—shaft, Olmütz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in
-reserve tomorrow,” he thought. “I’ll ask leave to go to the front,
-this may be my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won’t be long
-now before I am off duty. I’ll take another turn and when I get back
-I’ll go to the general and ask him.” He readjusted himself in the
-saddle and touched up his horse to ride once more round his hussars. It
-seemed to him that it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a sloping
-descent lit up, and facing it a black knoll that seemed as steep as a
-wall. On this knoll there was a white patch that Rostóv could not at
-all make out: was it a glade in the wood lit up by the moon, or some
-unmelted snow, or some white houses? He even thought something moved on
-that white spot. “I expect it’s snow... that spot... a spot—une
-tache,” he thought. “There now... it’s not a tache... Natásha...
-sister, black eyes... Na... tasha... (Won’t she be surprised when
-I tell her how I’ve seen the Emperor?) Natásha... take my
-sabretache...”—“Keep to the right, your honor, there are bushes
-here,” came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostóv was riding in
-the act of falling asleep. Rostóv lifted his head that had sunk almost
-to his horse’s mane and pulled up beside the hussar. He was succumbing
-to irresistible, youthful, childish drowsiness. “But what was I
-thinking? I mustn’t forget. How shall I speak to the Emperor? No,
-that’s not it—that’s tomorrow. Oh yes! Natásha... sabretache...
-saber them... Whom? The hussars... Ah, the hussars with mustaches. Along
-the Tverskáya Street rode the hussar with mustaches... I thought about
-him too, just opposite Gúryev’s house... Old Gúryev.... Oh, but
-Denísov’s a fine fellow. But that’s all nonsense. The chief thing
-is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and wished to say
-something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared not. But that’s
-nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the important thing I
-was thinking of. Yes, Na-tásha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes! That’s
-right!” And his head once more sank to his horse’s neck. All at once
-it seemed to him that he was being fired at. “What? What? What?... Cut
-them down! What?...” said Rostóv, waking up. At the moment he opened
-his eyes he heard in front of him, where the enemy was, the long-drawn
-shouts of thousands of voices. His horse and the horse of the hussar
-near him pricked their ears at these shouts. Over there, where the
-shouting came from, a fire flared up and went out again, then another,
-and all along the French line on the hill fires flared up and the
-shouting grew louder and louder. Rostóv could hear the sound of French
-words but could not distinguish them. The din of many voices was too
-great; all he could hear was: “ahahah!” and “rrrr!”
-
-“What’s that? What do you make of it?” said Rostóv to the hussar
-beside him. “That must be the enemy’s camp!”
-
-The hussar did not reply.
-
-“Why, don’t you hear it?” Rostóv asked again, after waiting for a
-reply.
-
-“Who can tell, your honor?” replied the hussar reluctantly.
-
-“From the direction, it must be the enemy,” repeated Rostóv.
-
-“It may be he or it may be nothing,” muttered the hussar. “It’s
-dark... Steady!” he cried to his fidgeting horse.
-
-Rostóv’s horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground,
-pricking its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting
-grew still louder and merged into a general roar that only an army
-of several thousand men could produce. The lights spread farther and
-farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostóv no longer
-wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy army had a
-stimulating effect on him. “Vive l’Empereur! l’Empereur!” he now
-heard distinctly.
-
-“They can’t be far off, probably just beyond the stream,” he said
-to the hussar beside him.
-
-The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The sound
-of horse’s hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars was
-heard, and out of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of hussars
-suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant.
-
-“Your honor, the generals!” said the sergeant, riding up to Rostóv.
-
-Rostóv, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode with
-the sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the line.
-One was on a white horse. Prince Bagratión and Prince Dolgorúkov with
-their adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the
-lights and shouts in the enemy’s camp. Rostóv rode up to Bagratión,
-reported to him, and then joined the adjutants listening to what the
-generals were saying.
-
-“Believe me,” said Prince Dolgorúkov, addressing Bagratión, “it
-is nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to
-kindle fires and make a noise to deceive us.”
-
-“Hardly,” said Bagratión. “I saw them this evening on that
-knoll; if they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too....
-Officer!” said Bagratión to Rostóv, “are the enemy’s skirmishers
-still there?”
-
-“They were there this evening, but now I don’t know, your
-excellency. Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?” replied
-Rostóv.
-
-Bagratión stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostóv’s face
-in the mist.
-
-“Well, go and see,” he said, after a pause.
-
-“Yes, sir.”
-
-Rostóv spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fédchenko and two other
-hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the direction
-from which the shouting came. He felt both frightened and pleased to be
-riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and dangerous misty
-distance where no one had been before him. Bagratión called to him from
-the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostóv pretended not to hear
-him and did not stop but rode on and on, continually mistaking bushes
-for trees and gullies for men and continually discovering his mistakes.
-Having descended the hill at a trot, he no longer saw either our own or
-the enemy’s fires, but heard the shouting of the French more loudly
-and distinctly. In the valley he saw before him something like a river,
-but when he reached it he found it was a road. Having come out onto
-the road he reined in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along it or
-cross it and ride over the black field up the hillside. To keep to the
-road which gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because it
-would be easier to see people coming along it. “Follow me!” said he,
-crossed the road, and began riding up the hill at a gallop toward the
-point where the French pickets had been standing that evening.
-
-“Your honor, there he is!” cried one of the hussars behind him. And
-before Rostóv had time to make out what the black thing was that had
-suddenly appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a report,
-and a bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive sound passed
-out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but flashed in the pan.
-Rostóv turned his horse and galloped back. Four more reports followed
-at intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the fog singing in
-different tones. Rostóv reined in his horse, whose spirits had risen,
-like his own, at the firing, and went back at a footpace. “Well, some
-more! Some more!” a merry voice was saying in his soul. But no more
-shots came.
-
-Only when approaching Bagratión did Rostóv let his horse gallop again,
-and with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.
-
-Dolgorúkov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had
-only lit fires to deceive us.
-
-“What does that prove?” he was saying as Rostóv rode up. “They
-might retreat and leave the pickets.”
-
-“It’s plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince,” said
-Bagratión. “Wait till tomorrow morning, we’ll find out everything
-tomorrow.”
-
-“The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was
-in the evening,” reported Rostóv, stooping forward with his hand at
-the salute and unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his
-ride and especially by the sound of the bullets.
-
-“Very good, very good,” said Bagratión. “Thank you, officer.”
-
-“Your excellency,” said Rostóv, “may I ask a favor?”
-
-“What is it?”
-
-“Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached
-to the first squadron?”
-
-“What’s your name?”
-
-“Count Rostóv.”
-
-“Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me.”
-
-“Count Ilyá Rostóv’s son?” asked Dolgorúkov.
-
-But Rostóv did not reply.
-
-“Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?”
-
-“I will give the order.”
-
-“Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the
-Emperor,” thought Rostóv.
-
-“Thank God!”
-
-The fires and shouting in the enemy’s army were occasioned by the fact
-that while Napoleon’s proclamation was being read to the troops the
-Emperor himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing him,
-lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, “Vive l’Empereur!”
-Napoleon’s proclamation was as follows:
-
-Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the
-Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at
-Hollabrünn and have pursued ever since to this place. The position we
-occupy is a strong one, and while they are marching to go round me on
-the right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will myself direct
-your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with your habitual
-valor carry disorder and confusion into the enemy’s ranks, but should
-victory be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see your Emperor
-exposing himself to the first blows of the enemy, for there must be no
-doubt of victory, especially on this day when what is at stake is the
-honor of the French infantry, so necessary to the honor of our nation.
-
-Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let every
-man be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these hirelings
-of England, inspired by such hatred of our nation! This victory will
-conclude our campaign and we can return to winter quarters, where fresh
-French troops who are being raised in France will join us, and the peace
-I shall conclude will be worthy of my people, of you, and of myself.
-
-NAPOLEON
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the
-center, the reserves, and Bagratión’s right flank had not yet moved,
-but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery,
-which were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French
-right flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to plan,
-were already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into which they
-were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes smart. It was cold
-and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking tea and breakfasting, the
-soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a tattoo with their feet to
-warm themselves, gathering round the fires throwing into the flames the
-remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, and everything that they
-did not want or could not carry away with them. Austrian column guides
-were moving in and out among the Russian troops and served as heralds
-of the advance. As soon as an Austrian officer showed himself near
-a commanding officer’s quarters, the regiment began to move: the
-soldiers ran from the fires, thrust their pipes into their boots, their
-bags into the carts, got their muskets ready, and formed rank. The
-officers buttoned up their coats, buckled on their swords and pouches,
-and moved along the ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies
-harnessed and packed the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and
-battalion and regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave
-final instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men
-who remained behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet
-resounded. The column moved forward without knowing where and unable,
-from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog, to see
-either the place they were leaving or that to which they were going.
-
-A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his regiment as
-much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has walked, whatever
-strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches, just as a sailor is
-always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and rigging of his ship, so
-the soldier always has around him the same comrades, the same ranks, the
-same sergeant major Iván Mítrich, the same company dog Jack, and the
-same commanders. The sailor rarely cares to know the latitude in which
-his ship is sailing, but on the day of battle—heaven knows how and
-whence—a stern note of which all are conscious sounds in the moral
-atmosphere of an army, announcing the approach of something decisive
-and solemn, and awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of
-battle the soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their
-regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning
-what is going on around them.
-
-The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they could
-not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and level
-ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one might
-encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns advanced
-for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and ascending hills,
-avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and unknown ground, and
-nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary, the soldiers became
-aware that in front, behind, and on all sides, other Russian columns
-were moving in the same direction. Every soldier felt glad to know that
-to the unknown place where he was going, many more of our men were going
-too.
-
-“There now, the Kúrskies have also gone past,” was being said in
-the ranks.
-
-“It’s wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last
-night I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A regular
-Moscow!”
-
-Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or talked to
-the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war, were out of
-humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not exert themselves
-to cheer the men but merely carried out the orders), yet the troops
-marched gaily, as they always do when going into action, especially to
-an attack. But when they had marched for about an hour in the dense fog,
-the greater part of the men had to halt and an unpleasant consciousness
-of some dislocation and blunder spread through the ranks. How such
-a consciousness is communicated is very difficult to define, but it
-certainly is communicated very surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly,
-and irrepressibly, as water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been
-alone without any allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before
-this consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as
-it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the stupid
-Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had been
-occasioned by the sausage eaters.
-
-“Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up
-against the French?”
-
-“No, one can’t hear them. They’d be firing if we had.”
-
-“They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in
-the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It’s all those damned
-Germans’ muddling! What stupid devils!”
-
-“Yes, I’d send them on in front, but no fear, they’re crowding up
-behind. And now here we stand hungry.”
-
-“I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking the
-way,” said an officer.
-
-“Ah, those damned Germans! They don’t know their own country!”
-said another.
-
-“What division are you?” shouted an adjutant, riding up.
-
-“The Eighteenth.”
-
-“Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you
-won’t get there till evening.”
-
-“What stupid orders! They don’t themselves know what they are
-doing!” said the officer and rode off.
-
-Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.
-
-“Tafa-lafa! But what he’s jabbering no one can make out,” said a
-soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. “I’d shoot them,
-the scoundrels!”
-
-“We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven’t got
-halfway. Fine orders!” was being repeated on different sides.
-
-And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to
-turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the
-Germans.
-
-The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was
-moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center
-was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all
-ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in
-front of the infantry, who had to wait.
-
-At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a
-Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry should be
-halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher command, was to
-blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and dispirited. After
-an hour’s delay they at last moved on, descending the hill. The fog
-that was dispersing on the hill lay still more densely below, where they
-were descending. In front in the fog a shot was heard and then another,
-at first irregularly at varying intervals—trata...tat—and then more
-and more regularly and rapidly, and the action at the Goldbach Stream
-began.
-
-Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having
-stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their
-commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading through
-the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front or around
-them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the enemy
-lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders from
-the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in those unknown
-surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this way the action
-began for the first, second, and third columns, which had gone down into
-the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutúzov was, stood on the
-Pratzen Heights.
-
-Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog; on the
-higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of what was
-going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we supposed,
-six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea of mist, no one
-knew till after eight o’clock.
-
-It was nine o’clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a sea
-down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where Napoleon
-stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above him was
-a clear blue sky, and the sun’s vast orb quivered like a huge hollow,
-crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist. The whole French
-army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff, were not on the far side
-of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and Schlappanitz beyond which we
-intended to take up our position and begin the action, but were on this
-side, so close to our own forces that Napoleon with the naked eye could
-distinguish a mounted man from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak
-which he had worn on his Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab
-horse a little in front of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills
-which seemed to rise out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian
-troops were moving in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of
-firing in the valley. Not a single muscle of his face—which in those
-days was still thin—moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on
-one spot. His predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian
-force had already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes
-and part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack
-and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that in
-a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian
-columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one
-direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into
-the mist. From information he had received the evening before, from the
-sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the night,
-by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all
-indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far away
-in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen constituted
-the center of the Russian army, and that that center was already
-sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still he did not
-begin the engagement.
-
-Today was a great day for him—the anniversary of his coronation.
-Before dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and
-in good spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the field
-in that happy mood in which everything seems possible and everything
-succeeds. He sat motionless, looking at the heights visible above
-the mist, and his cold face wore that special look of confident,
-self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy happily
-in love. The marshals stood behind him not venturing to distract his
-attention. He looked now at the Pratzen Heights, now at the sun floating
-up out of the mist.
-
-When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and mist were
-aglow with dazzling light—as if he had only awaited this to begin the
-action—he drew the glove from his shapely white hand, made a sign
-with it to the marshals, and ordered the action to begin. The marshals,
-accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in different directions, and
-a few minutes later the chief forces of the French army moved rapidly
-toward those Pratzen Heights which were being more and more denuded by
-Russian troops moving down the valley to their left.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-At eight o’clock Kutúzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth
-column, Milorádovich’s, the one that was to take the place of
-Przebyszéwski’s and Langeron’s columns which had already gone down
-into the valley. He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and gave
-them the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to lead
-that column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen he
-halted. Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number forming the
-commander in chief’s suite. He was in a state of suppressed excitement
-and irritation, though controlledly calm as a man is at the approach of
-a long-awaited moment. He was firmly convinced that this was the day of
-his Toulon, or his bridge of Arcola. How it would come about he did not
-know, but he felt sure it would do so. The locality and the position of
-our troops were known to him as far as they could be known to anyone
-in our army. His own strategic plan, which obviously could not now
-be carried out, was forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother’s plan,
-Prince Andrew considered possible contingencies and formed new projects
-such as might call for his rapidity of perception and decision.
-
-To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen forces
-could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight would
-concentrate. “There we shall encounter difficulties, and there,”
-thought he, “I shall be sent with a brigade or division, and there,
-standard in hand, I shall go forward and break whatever is in front of
-me.”
-
-He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions.
-Seeing them he kept thinking, “That may be the very standard with
-which I shall lead the army.”
-
-In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights was
-a hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay like a
-milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in the valley to the left into which
-our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of firing.
-Above the heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the vast orb
-of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that sea of mist,
-some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there the enemy probably
-was, for something could be descried. On the right the Guards were
-entering the misty region with a sound of hoofs and wheels and now and
-then a gleam of bayonets; to the left beyond the village similar masses
-of cavalry came up and disappeared in the sea of mist. In front and
-behind moved infantry. The commander in chief was standing at the end of
-the village letting the troops pass by him. That morning Kutúzov seemed
-worn and irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a halt
-without any command being given, apparently obstructed by something in
-front.
-
-“Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the
-village!” he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. “Don’t
-you understand, your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not
-defile through narrow village streets when we are marching against the
-enemy?”
-
-“I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,”
-answered the general.
-
-Kutúzov laughed bitterly.
-
-“You’ll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy!
-Very fine!”
-
-“The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the
-dispositions...”
-
-“The dispositions!” exclaimed Kutúzov bitterly. “Who told you
-that?... Kindly do as you are ordered.”
-
-“Yes, sir.”
-
-“My dear fellow,” Nesvítski whispered to Prince Andrew, “the old
-man is as surly as a dog.”
-
-An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his hat
-galloped up to Kutúzov and asked in the Emperor’s name had the fourth
-column advanced into action.
-
-Kutúzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to fall
-upon Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutúzov’s
-malevolent and caustic expression softened, as if admitting that what
-was being done was not his adjutant’s fault, and still not answering
-the Austrian adjutant, he addressed Bolkónski.
-
-“Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed the
-village. Tell it to stop and await my orders.”
-
-Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him.
-
-“And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted,” he added. “What
-are they doing? What are they doing?” he murmured to himself, still
-not replying to the Austrian.
-
-Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.
-
-Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped
-the third division and convinced himself that there really were no
-sharpshooters in front of our columns. The colonel at the head of the
-regiment was much surprised at the commander in chief’s order to throw
-out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there were other troops
-in front of him and that the enemy must be at least six miles away.
-There was really nothing to be seen in front except a barren descent
-hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the commander in chief’s
-name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew galloped back. Kutúzov
-still in the same place, his stout body resting heavily in the saddle
-with the lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily with closed eyes. The
-troops were no longer moving, but stood with the butts of their muskets
-on the ground.
-
-“All right, all right!” he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a
-general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all
-the left-flank columns had already descended.
-
-“Plenty of time, your excellency,” muttered Kutúzov in the midst of
-a yawn. “Plenty of time,” he repeated.
-
-Just then at a distance behind Kutúzov was heard the sound of regiments
-saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole extended
-line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person they were
-greeting was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the regiment in front
-of which Kutúzov was standing began to shout, he rode a little to one
-side and looked round with a frown. Along the road from Pratzen galloped
-what looked like a squadron of horsemen in various uniforms. Two of them
-rode side by side in front, at full gallop. One in a black uniform with
-white plumes in his hat rode a bobtailed chestnut horse, the other who
-was in a white uniform rode a black one. These were the two Emperors
-followed by their suites. Kutúzov, affecting the manners of an old
-soldier at the front, gave the command “Attention!” and rode up
-to the Emperors with a salute. His whole appearance and manner were
-suddenly transformed. He put on the air of a subordinate who obeys
-without reasoning. With an affectation of respect which evidently struck
-Alexander unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted.
-
-This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy face
-of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and vanished.
-After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than on the field
-of Olmütz where Bolkónski had seen him for the first time abroad, but
-there was still the same bewitching combination of majesty and mildness
-in his fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the same capacity for
-varying expression and the same prevalent appearance of goodhearted
-innocent youth.
-
-At the Olmütz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed
-brighter and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping two
-miles, and reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked round
-at the faces of his suite, young and animated as his own. Czartorýski,
-Novosíltsev, Prince Volkónsky, Strógonov, and the others, all richly
-dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed, fresh, only slightly
-heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling, had stopped behind the
-Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced young man, sat very
-erect on his handsome black horse, looking about him in a leisurely and
-preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his white adjutants and asked
-some question—“Most likely he is asking at what o’clock they
-started,” thought Prince Andrew, watching his old acquaintance with
-a smile he could not repress as he recalled his reception at Brünn.
-In the Emperors’ suite were the picked young orderly officers of the
-Guard and line regiments, Russian and Austrian. Among them were grooms
-leading the Tsar’s beautiful relay horses covered with embroidered
-cloths.
-
-As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields enters
-a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and confidence of
-success reached Kutúzov’s cheerless staff with the galloping advent
-of all these brilliant young men.
-
-“Why aren’t you beginning, Michael Ilariónovich?” said the
-Emperor Alexander hurriedly to Kutúzov, glancing courteously at the
-same time at the Emperor Francis.
-
-“I am waiting, Your Majesty,” answered Kutúzov, bending forward
-respectfully.
-
-The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had not
-quite heard.
-
-“Waiting, Your Majesty,” repeated Kutúzov. (Prince Andrew noted
-that Kutúzov’s upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the
-word “waiting.”) “Not all the columns have formed up yet, Your
-Majesty.”
-
-The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his
-rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosíltsev who was near him, as
-if complaining of Kutúzov.
-
-“You know, Michael Ilariónovich, we are not on the Empress’ Field
-where a parade does not begin till all the troops are assembled,” said
-the Tsar with another glance at the Emperor Francis, as if inviting
-him if not to join in at least to listen to what he was saying. But the
-Emperor Francis continued to look about him and did not listen.
-
-“That is just why I do not begin, sire,” said Kutúzov in a
-resounding voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not being
-heard, and again something in his face twitched—“That is just why
-I do not begin, sire, because we are not on parade and not on the
-Empress’ Field,” said he clearly and distinctly.
-
-In the Emperor’s suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed
-dissatisfaction and reproach. “Old though he may be, he should not, he
-certainly should not, speak like that,” their glances seemed to say.
-
-The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutúzov’s eye
-waiting to hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutúzov, with
-respectfully bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence lasted
-for about a minute.
-
-“However, if you command it, Your Majesty,” said Kutúzov, lifting
-his head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning, but
-submissive general.
-
-He touched his horse and having called Milorádovich, the commander of
-the column, gave him the order to advance.
-
-The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Nóvgorod and
-one of the Ápsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.
-
-As this Ápsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Milorádovich,
-without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous
-tuft of plumes in his cocked hat worn on one side with its corners front
-and back, galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing salute reined
-in his horse before the Emperor.
-
-“God be with you, general!” said the Emperor.
-
-“Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilité,
-sire,” * he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles among
-the gentlemen of the Tsar’s suite by his poor French.
-
- * “Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to
- do, Sire.”
-
-
-Milorádovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a little
-behind the Emperor. The Ápsheron men, excited by the Tsar’s presence,
-passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a bold, brisk
-pace.
-
-“Lads!” shouted Milorádovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery
-voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect of
-battle, and by the sight of the gallant Ápsherons, his comrades in
-Suvórov’s time, now passing so gallantly before the Emperors, that he
-forgot the sovereigns’ presence. “Lads, it’s not the first village
-you’ve had to take,” cried he.
-
-“Glad to do our best!” shouted the soldiers.
-
-The Emperor’s horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had
-carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the
-field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot and
-pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the
-Empress’ Field, not understanding the significance of the firing, nor
-of the nearness of the Emperor Francis’ black cob, nor of all that was
-being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.
-
-The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a
-remark to him, pointing to the gallant Ápsherons.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-Kutúzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind the
-carabineers.
-
-When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column he
-stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been an
-inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops were
-marching along both.
-
-The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly visible
-about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down below, on
-the left, the firing became more distinct. Kutúzov had stopped and was
-speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who was a little behind
-looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask him for a field glass.
-
-“Look, look!” said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the
-distance, but down the hill before him. “It’s the French!”
-
-The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass, trying
-to snatch it from one another. The expression on all their faces
-suddenly changed to one of horror. The French were supposed to be a
-mile and a half away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared just in
-front of us.
-
-“It’s the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But
-how is that?” said different voices.
-
-With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not more
-than five hundred paces from where Kutúzov was standing, a dense French
-column coming up to meet the Ápsherons.
-
-“Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come,”
-thought Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutúzov.
-
-“The Ápsherons must be stopped, your excellency,” cried he. But at
-that very instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was heard
-quite close at hand, and a voice of naïve terror barely two steps from
-Prince Andrew shouted, “Brothers! All’s lost!” And at this as if
-at a command, everyone began to run.
-
-Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where five
-minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would it
-have been difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible not to
-be carried back with it oneself. Bolkónski only tried not to lose
-touch with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp what was
-happening in front of him. Nesvítski with an angry face, red and unlike
-himself, was shouting to Kutúzov that if he did not ride away at once
-he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutúzov remained in the same
-place and without answering drew out a handkerchief. Blood was flowing
-from his cheek. Prince Andrew forced his way to him.
-
-“You are wounded?” he asked, hardly able to master the trembling of
-his lower jaw.
-
-“The wound is not here, it is there!” said Kutúzov, pressing the
-handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing soldiers.
-“Stop them!” he shouted, and at the same moment, probably realizing
-that it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and rode to the
-right.
-
-A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it.
-
-The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by
-them it was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, “Get on!
-Why are you hindering us?” Another in the same place turned round and
-fired in the air; a third was striking the horse Kutúzov himself rode.
-Having by a great effort got away to the left from that flood of men,
-Kutúzov, with his suite diminished by more than half, rode toward a
-sound of artillery fire near by. Having forced his way out of the crowd
-of fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutúzov, saw on the
-slope of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was still firing
-and Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some Russian infantry,
-neither moving forward to protect the battery nor backward with the
-fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself from the infantry and
-approached Kutúzov. Of Kutúzov’s suite only four remained. They were
-all pale and exchanged looks in silence.
-
-“Stop those wretches!” gasped Kutúzov to the regimental commander,
-pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to punish
-him for those words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment and across
-Kutúzov’s suite like a flock of little birds.
-
-The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutúzov, were firing
-at him. After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his leg;
-several soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding the
-flag let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on the
-muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing without
-orders.
-
-“Oh! Oh! Oh!” groaned Kutúzov despairingly and looked around....
-“Bolkónski!” he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness
-of the feebleness of age, “Bolkónski!” he whispered, pointing to
-the disordered battalion and at the enemy, “what’s that?”
-
-But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of
-shame and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and run to
-the standard.
-
-“Forward, lads!” he shouted in a voice piercing as a child’s.
-
-“Here it is!” thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and
-hearing with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him.
-Several soldiers fell.
-
-“Hurrah!” shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to hold up
-the heavy standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole
-battalion would follow him.
-
-And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier moved and then
-another and soon the whole battalion ran forward shouting “Hurrah!”
-and overtook him. A sergeant of the battalion ran up and took the flag
-that was swaying from its weight in Prince Andrew’s hands, but he
-was immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the standard and,
-dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In front he saw our
-artillerymen, some of whom were fighting, while others, having abandoned
-their guns, were running toward him. He also saw French infantry
-soldiers who were seizing the artillery horses and turning the guns
-round. Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within twenty paces
-of the cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above him unceasingly and
-to right and left of him soldiers continually groaned and dropped. But
-he did not look at them: he looked only at what was going on in front
-of him—at the battery. He now saw clearly the figure of a red-haired
-gunner with his shako knocked awry, pulling one end of a mop while
-a French soldier tugged at the other. He could distinctly see the
-distraught yet angry expression on the faces of these two men, who
-evidently did not realize what they were doing.
-
-“What are they about?” thought Prince Andrew as he gazed at them.
-“Why doesn’t the red-haired gunner run away as he is unarmed?
-Why doesn’t the Frenchman stab him? He will not get away before the
-Frenchman remembers his bayonet and stabs him....”
-
-And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to
-the struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had
-triumphantly secured the mop and still did not realize what awaited him,
-was about to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it ended. It
-seemed to him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him on the head
-with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but the worst of
-it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his seeing what he had
-been looking at.
-
-“What’s this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way,” thought he,
-and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle
-of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner
-had been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or
-saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the
-sky—the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with gray
-clouds gliding slowly across it. “How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not
-at all as I ran,” thought Prince Andrew—“not as we ran, shouting
-and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened
-and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds
-glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see that
-lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All
-is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing,
-nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but
-quiet and peace. Thank God!...”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-On our right flank commanded by Bagratión, at nine o’clock the battle
-had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorúkov’s demand to
-commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility from himself,
-Prince Bagratión proposed to Dolgorúkov to send to inquire of the
-commander in chief. Bagratión knew that as the distance between the two
-flanks was more than six miles, even if the messenger were not killed
-(which he very likely would be), and found the commander in chief
-(which would be very difficult), he would not be able to get back before
-evening.
-
-Bagratión cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his suite,
-and the boyish face Rostóv, breathless with excitement and hope, was
-the first to catch his eye. He sent him.
-
-“And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in
-chief, your excellency?” said Rostóv, with his hand to his cap.
-
-“You can give the message to His Majesty,” said Dolgorúkov,
-hurriedly interrupting Bagratión.
-
-On being relieved from picket duty Rostóv had managed to get a few
-hours’ sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute,
-with elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and generally in
-that state of mind which makes everything seem possible, pleasant, and
-easy.
-
-All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be a
-general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he was
-orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going with a
-message to Kutúzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself. The morning
-was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart was full of
-joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his horse the rein
-and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the line of
-Bagratión’s troops, which had not yet advanced into action but were
-standing motionless; then he came to the region occupied by Uvárov’s
-cavalry and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation for battle;
-having passed Uvárov’s cavalry he clearly heard the sound of cannon
-and musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder and louder.
-
-In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket shots
-at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two cannon shots,
-but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the hill before
-Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon that sometimes
-several of them were not separated from one another but merged into a
-general roar.
-
-He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one another
-down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling, spreading,
-and mingling with one another. He could also, by the gleam of bayonets
-visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of infantry and narrow
-lines of artillery with green caissons.
-
-Rostóv stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was
-going on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand
-or make out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men of
-some sort were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of troops;
-but why, whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make out.
-These sights and sounds had no depressing or intimidating effect on him;
-on the contrary, they stimulated his energy and determination.
-
-“Go on! Go on! Give it them!” he mentally exclaimed at these sounds,
-and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther and
-farther into the region where the army was already in action.
-
-“How it will be there I don’t know, but all will be well!” thought
-Rostóv.
-
-After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part of the
-line (the Guards) was already in action.
-
-“So much the better! I shall see it close,” he thought.
-
-He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came
-galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered
-ranks were returning from the attack. Rostóv got out of their way,
-involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.
-
-“That is no business of mine,” he thought. He had not ridden many
-hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole
-width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white
-uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and
-across his path. Rostóv put his horse to full gallop to get out of the
-way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at the
-same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of the
-horses were already galloping. Rostóv heard the thud of their hoofs
-and the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their figures, and
-even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our Horse Guards,
-advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming to meet them.
-
-The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their horses.
-Rostóv could already see their faces and heard the command:
-“Charge!” shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to
-full speed. Rostóv, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack on
-the French, galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go, but
-still was not in time to avoid them.
-
-The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned angrily
-on seeing Rostóv before him, with whom he would inevitably collide.
-This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostóv and his Bedouin over
-(Rostóv felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to these gigantic men
-and horses) had it not occurred to Rostóv to flourish his whip before
-the eyes of the Guardsman’s horse. The heavy black horse, sixteen
-hands high, shied, throwing back its ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman
-drove his huge spurs in violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail
-and extending its neck, galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse
-Guards passed Rostóv before he heard them shout, “Hurrah!” and
-looking back saw that their foremost ranks were mixed up with some
-foreign cavalry with red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing
-more, for immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and
-smoke enveloped everything.
-
-At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him, disappeared in
-the smoke, Rostóv hesitated whether to gallop after them or to go where
-he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of the Horse Guards that
-amazed the French themselves. Rostóv was horrified to hear later that
-of all that mass of huge and handsome men, of all those brilliant,
-rich youths, officers and cadets, who had galloped past him on their
-thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were left after the charge.
-
-“Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall see
-the Emperor immediately!” thought Rostóv and galloped on.
-
-When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them and
-around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so
-much because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on
-the soldiers’ faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the
-officers.
-
-Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he heard a
-voice calling him by name.
-
-“Rostóv!”
-
-“What?” he answered, not recognizing Borís.
-
-“I say, we’ve been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!” said
-Borís with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have been
-under fire for the first time.
-
-Rostóv stopped.
-
-“Have you?” he said. “Well, how did it go?”
-
-“We drove them back!” said Borís with animation, growing talkative.
-“Can you imagine it?” and he began describing how the Guards, having
-taken up their position and seeing troops before them, thought they were
-Austrians, and all at once discovered from the cannon balls discharged
-by those troops that they were themselves in the front line and had
-unexpectedly to go into action. Rostóv without hearing Borís to the
-end spurred his horse.
-
-“Where are you off to?” asked Borís.
-
-“With a message to His Majesty.”
-
-“There he is!” said Borís, thinking Rostóv had said “His
-Highness,” and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high shoulders
-and frowning brows stood a hundred paces away from them in his helmet
-and Horse Guards’ jacket, shouting something to a pale, white
-uniformed Austrian officer.
-
-“But that’s the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the
-Emperor,” said Rostóv, and was about to spur his horse.
-
-“Count! Count!” shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager
-as Borís. “Count! I am wounded in my right hand” (and he showed his
-bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) “and I remained at
-the front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family—the
-von Bergs—have been knights!”
-
-He said something more, but Rostóv did not wait to hear it and rode
-away.
-
-Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostóv, to avoid
-again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the Horse
-Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round the place
-where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard. Suddenly he
-heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind our troops,
-where he could never have expected the enemy to be.
-
-“What can it be?” he thought. “The enemy in the rear of our army?
-Impossible!” And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself
-and for the issue of the whole battle. “But be that what it may,”
-he reflected, “there is no riding round it now. I must look for the
-commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish with
-the rest.”
-
-The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostóv was more and
-more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the village of
-Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds.
-
-“What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is
-firing?” Rostóv kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian
-soldiers running in confused crowds across his path.
-
-“The devil knows! They’ve killed everybody! It’s all up now!”
-he was told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who
-understood what was happening as little as he did.
-
-“Kill the Germans!” shouted one.
-
-“May the devil take them—the traitors!”
-
-“Zum Henker diese Russen!” * muttered a German.
-
- * “Hang these Russians!”
-
-
-Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse, screams,
-and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing died down.
-Rostóv learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had been firing
-at one another.
-
-“My God! What does it all mean?” thought he. “And here, where at
-any moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a
-handful of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can’t be that, it
-can’t be! Only to get past them quicker, quicker!”
-
-The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostóv’s head. Though
-he saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights just where
-he had been ordered to look for the commander in chief, he could not,
-did not wish to, believe that.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-Rostóv had been ordered to look for Kutúzov and the Emperor near the
-village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer
-were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He
-urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but
-the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on
-which he had come out was thronged with calèches, carriages of all
-sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and
-some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the
-dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries
-stationed on the Pratzen Heights.
-
-“Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutúzov?” Rostóv kept asking
-everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.
-
-At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.
-
-“Eh, brother! They’ve all bolted long ago!” said the soldier,
-laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.
-
-Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostóv stopped the
-horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to
-question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a
-carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and
-that he was dangerously wounded.
-
-“It can’t be!” said Rostóv. “It must have been someone else.”
-
-“I saw him myself,” replied the man with a self-confident smile of
-derision. “I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I’ve
-seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat in
-the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black horses
-fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It’s time I knew the Imperial
-horses and Ilyá Iványch. I don’t think Ilyá drives anyone except
-the Tsar!”
-
-Rostóv let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a wounded
-officer passing by addressed him:
-
-“Who is it you want?” he asked. “The commander in chief? He was
-killed by a cannon ball—struck in the breast before our regiment.”
-
-“Not killed—wounded!” another officer corrected him.
-
-“Who? Kutúzov?” asked Rostóv.
-
-“Not Kutúzov, but what’s his name—well, never mind... there are
-not many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders
-are there,” said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek,
-and he walked on.
-
-Rostóv rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now
-going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible to
-doubt it now. Rostóv rode in the direction pointed out to him, in which
-he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now to say
-to the Tsar or to Kutúzov, even if they were alive and unwounded?
-
-“Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!” a
-soldier shouted to him. “They’d kill you there!”
-
-“Oh, what are you talking about?” said another. “Where is he to
-go? That way is nearer.”
-
-Rostóv considered, and then went in the direction where they said he
-would be killed.
-
-“It’s all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to
-save myself?” he thought. He rode on to the region where the greatest
-number of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The French had not
-yet occupied that region, and the Russians—the uninjured and slightly
-wounded—had left it long ago. All about the field, like heaps of
-manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to fifteen dead and wounded
-to each couple of acres. The wounded crept together in twos and threes
-and one could hear their distressing screams and groans, sometimes
-feigned—or so it seemed to Rostóv. He put his horse to a trot to
-avoid seeing all these suffering men, and he felt afraid—afraid not
-for his life, but for the courage he needed and which he knew would not
-stand the sight of these unfortunates.
-
-The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and
-wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an adjutant
-riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several shots. The
-sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the corpses around
-him merged in Rostóv’s mind into a single feeling of terror and pity
-for himself. He remembered his mother’s last letter. “What would she
-feel,” thought he, “if she saw me here now on this field with the
-cannon aimed at me?”
-
-In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from
-the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less
-disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry fire
-sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the battle
-was lost. No one whom Rostóv asked could tell him where the Emperor
-or Kutúzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was wounded was
-correct, others that it was not, and explained the false rumor that had
-spread by the fact that the Emperor’s carriage had really galloped
-from the field of battle with the pale and terrified Ober-Hofmarschal
-Count Tolstóy, who had ridden out to the battlefield with others in
-the Emperor’s suite. One officer told Rostóv that he had seen someone
-from headquarters behind the village to the left, and thither Rostóv
-rode, not hoping to find anyone but merely to ease his conscience. When
-he had ridden about two miles and had passed the last of the Russian
-troops, he saw, near a kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men
-on horseback facing the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed
-familiar to Rostóv; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which
-Rostóv fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his
-horse with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only
-a little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse’s hind hoofs.
-Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and deferentially
-addressed the horseman with the white plumes, evidently suggesting
-that he should do the same. The rider, whose figure seemed familiar
-to Rostóv and involuntarily riveted his attention, made a gesture of
-refusal with his head and hand and by that gesture Rostóv instantly
-recognized his lamented and adored monarch.
-
-“But it can’t be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!”
-thought Rostóv. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostóv
-saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory. The
-Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the charm,
-the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostóv was happy
-in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded were
-false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and even
-ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorúkov had ordered
-him to deliver.
-
-But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter the
-thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help or a
-chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and he is
-alone with her, so Rostóv, now that he had attained what he had longed
-for more than anything else in the world, did not know how to approach
-the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him why it would be
-inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.
-
-“What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of
-his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant or
-painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to him
-now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere sight
-of him?” Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the Emperor
-that he had composed in his imagination could he now recall. Those
-speeches were intended for quite other conditions, they were for the
-most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph, generally
-when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked him for heroic
-deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.
-
-“Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the right
-flank now that it is nearly four o’clock and the battle is lost?
-No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his
-reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind
-look or bad opinion from him,” Rostóv decided; and sorrowfully and
-with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at the
-Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.
-
-While Rostóv was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,
-Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the
-Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him
-to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling
-unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.
-Rostóv from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke
-long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,
-covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll’s hand.
-
-“And I might have been in his place!” thought Rostóv, and hardly
-restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter
-despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.
-
-His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness was
-the cause of his grief.
-
-He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the sovereign. It
-was a unique chance to show his devotion to the Emperor and he had not
-made use of it.... “What have I done?” thought he. And he turned
-round and galloped back to the place where he had seen the Emperor, but
-there was no one beyond the ditch now. Only some carts and carriages
-were passing by. From one of the drivers he learned that Kutúzov’s
-staff were not far off, in the village the vehicles were going to.
-Rostóv followed them. In front of him walked Kutúzov’s groom leading
-horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and behind that walked an old,
-bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.
-
-“Tit! I say, Tit!” said the groom.
-
-“What?” answered the old man absent-mindedly.
-
-“Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!”
-
-“Oh, you fool!” said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed
-in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.
-
-
-Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points. More
-than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.
-
-Przebyszéwski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other columns
-after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly confused
-masses.
-
-The remains of Langeron’s and Dokhtúrov’s mingled forces were
-crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of
-Augesd.
-
-After five o’clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot cannonade
-(delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from numerous
-batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights, directed at our
-retreating forces.
-
-In the rearguard, Dokhtúrov and others rallying some battalions kept up
-a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. It
-was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many years the
-old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap peacefully
-angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled up, handled the
-floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on that dam over which for
-so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and blue jackets had peacefully
-driven their two-horse carts loaded with wheat and had returned dusty
-with flour whitening their carts—on that narrow dam amid the wagons
-and the cannon, under the horses’ hoofs and between the wagon wheels,
-men disfigured by fear of death now crowded together, crushing one
-another, dying, stepping over the dying and killing one another, only to
-move on a few steps and be killed themselves in the same way.
-
-Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around, or
-a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and
-splashing with blood those near them.
-
-Dólokhov—now an officer—wounded in the arm, and on foot, with
-the regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,
-represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by the
-crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and, jammed in
-on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had fallen under a
-cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon ball killed someone
-behind them, another fell in front and splashed Dólokhov with blood.
-The crowd, pushing forward desperately, squeezed together, moved a few
-steps, and again stopped.
-
-“Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here
-another two minutes and it is certain death,” thought each one.
-
-Dólokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the edge
-of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto the
-slippery ice that covered the millpool.
-
-“Turn this way!” he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked
-under him; “turn this way!” he shouted to those with the gun. “It
-bears!...”
-
-The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it
-would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon even
-under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to the
-bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at the
-entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to address
-Dólokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd that
-everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general fell
-from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or thought of
-raising him.
-
-“Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don’t you hear? Go
-on!” innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck
-the general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were
-shouting.
-
-One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto the
-ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen pond.
-The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg slipped
-into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to his waist.
-The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped his horse, but
-from behind still came the shouts: “Onto the ice, why do you stop? Go
-on! Go on!” And cries of horror were heard in the crowd. The soldiers
-near the gun waved their arms and beat the horses to make them turn and
-move on. The horses moved off the bank. The ice, that had held under
-those on foot, collapsed in a great mass, and some forty men who were on
-it dashed, some forward and some back, drowning one another.
-
-Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop onto the
-ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd that covered
-the dam, the pond, and the bank.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his
-hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkónski bleeding profusely and unconsciously
-uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.
-
-Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did not know
-how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt that he was
-alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.
-
-“Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw
-today?” was his first thought. “And I did not know this suffering
-either,” he thought. “Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all
-till now. But where am I?”
-
-He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices
-speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same lofty
-sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher, and
-between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and did not
-see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had ridden up
-and stopped near him.
-
-It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding
-over the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the batteries
-firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and wounded left
-on the field.
-
-“Fine men!” remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian grenadier,
-who, with his face buried in the ground and a blackened nape, lay on his
-stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.
-
-“The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your
-Majesty,” said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were
-firing at Augesd.
-
-“Have some brought from the reserve,” said Napoleon, and having gone
-on a few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back with
-the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had already
-been taken by the French as a trophy.)
-
-“That’s a fine death!” said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkónski.
-
-Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was
-Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he
-heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not only
-did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at once
-forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to death,
-and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He knew it
-was Napoleon—his hero—but at that moment Napoleon seemed to him
-such a small, insignificant creature compared with what was passing now
-between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the clouds flying over
-it. At that moment it meant nothing to him who might be standing over
-him, or what was said of him; he was only glad that people were standing
-near him and only wished that they would help him and bring him back to
-life, which seemed to him so beautiful now that he had today learned to
-understand it so differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and
-utter a sound. He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly groan
-which aroused his own pity.
-
-“Ah! He is alive,” said Napoleon. “Lift this young man up and
-carry him to the dressing station.”
-
-Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who, hat in
-hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the victory.
-
-Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from the
-terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting while
-being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing station.
-He did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when with other
-wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the hospital.
-During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was able to look
-about him and even speak.
-
-The first words he heard on coming to his senses were those of a French
-convoy officer, who said rapidly: “We must halt here: the Emperor
-will pass here immediately; it will please him to see these gentlemen
-prisoners.”
-
-“There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army,
-that he is probably tired of them,” said another officer.
-
-“All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor
-Alexander’s Guards,” said the first one, indicating a Russian
-officer in the white uniform of the Horse Guards.
-
-Bolkónski recognized Prince Repnín whom he had met in Petersburg
-society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of
-the Horse Guards.
-
-Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse.
-
-“Which is the senior?” he asked, on seeing the prisoners.
-
-They named the colonel, Prince Repnín.
-
-“You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander’s regiment of Horse
-Guards?” asked Napoleon.
-
-“I commanded a squadron,” replied Repnín.
-
-“Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably,” said Napoleon.
-
-“The praise of a great commander is a soldier’s highest reward,”
-said Repnín.
-
-“I bestow it with pleasure,” said Napoleon. “And who is that young
-man beside you?”
-
-Prince Repnín named Lieutenant Sukhtélen.
-
-After looking at him Napoleon smiled.
-
-“He’s very young to come to meddle with us.”
-
-“Youth is no hindrance to courage,” muttered Sukhtélen in a failing
-voice.
-
-“A splendid reply!” said Napoleon. “Young man, you will go far!”
-
-Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the Emperor’s
-eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to attract his
-attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on the battlefield
-and, addressing him, again used the epithet “young man” that was
-connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.
-
-“Well, and you, young man,” said he. “How do you feel, mon
-brave?”
-
-Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few
-words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed
-straight on Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that moment
-seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so mean did his
-hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory appear,
-compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he had seen and
-understood, that he could not answer him.
-
-Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the
-stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood,
-suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into
-Napoleon’s eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of
-greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and
-the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one
-alive could understand or explain.
-
-The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to one of
-the officers as he went: “Have these gentlemen attended to and taken
-to my bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their wounds. Au revoir,
-Prince Repnín!” and he spurred his horse and galloped away.
-
-His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.
-
-The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the
-little gold icon Princess Mary had hung round her brother’s neck, but
-seeing the favor the Emperor showed the prisoners, they now hastened to
-return the holy image.
-
-Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the
-little icon with its thin gold chain suddenly appeared upon his chest
-outside his uniform.
-
-“It would be good,” thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon his
-sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence, “it
-would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to
-Mary. How good it would be to know where to seek for help in this life,
-and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm I
-should be if I could now say: ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’... But to
-whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable, incomprehensible,
-which I not only cannot address but which I cannot even express in
-words—the Great All or Nothing-” said he to himself, “or to
-that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary! There is nothing
-certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I
-understand, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but
-all-important.”
-
-The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable pain;
-his feverishness increased and he grew delirious. Visions of his father,
-wife, sister, and future son, and the tenderness he had felt the night
-before the battle, the figure of the insignificant little Napoleon, and
-above all this the lofty sky, formed the chief subjects of his delirious
-fancies.
-
-The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills presented
-itself to him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that
-little Napoleon had suddenly appeared with his unsympathizing look of
-shortsighted delight at the misery of others, and doubts and torments
-had followed, and only the heavens promised peace. Toward morning
-all these dreams melted and merged into the chaos and darkness of
-unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of Napoleon’s doctor,
-Larrey, was much more likely to end in death than in convalescence.
-
-“He is a nervous, bilious subject,” said Larrey, “and will not
-recover.”
-
-And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was left to the care of
-the inhabitants of the district.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK FOUR: 1806
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostóv returned home on leave. Denísov
-was going home to Vorónezh and Rostóv persuaded him to travel with him
-as far as Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a comrade at
-the last post station but one before Moscow, Denísov had drunk three
-bottles of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts across the
-snow-covered road, did not once wake up on the way to Moscow, but lay
-at the bottom of the sleigh beside Rostóv, who grew more and more
-impatient the nearer they got to Moscow.
-
-“How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets,
-shops, bakers’ signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!” thought
-Rostóv, when their leave permits had been passed at the town gate and
-they had entered Moscow.
-
-“Denísov! We’re here! He’s asleep,” he added, leaning forward
-with his whole body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed
-of the sleigh.
-
-Denísov gave no answer.
-
-“There’s the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhár,
-has his stand, and there’s Zakhár himself and still the same horse!
-And here’s the little shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can’t
-you hurry up? Now then!”
-
-“Which house is it?” asked the driver.
-
-“Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don’t you see?
-That’s our house,” said Rostóv. “Of course, it’s our house!
-Denísov, Denísov! We’re almost there!”
-
-Denísov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.
-
-“Dmítri,” said Rostóv to his valet on the box, “those lights are
-in our house, aren’t they?”
-
-“Yes, sir, and there’s a light in your father’s study.”
-
-“Then they’ve not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now,
-don’t forget to put out my new coat,” added Rostóv, fingering his
-new mustache. “Now then, get on,” he shouted to the driver. “Do
-wake up, Váska!” he went on, turning to Denísov, whose head
-was again nodding. “Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for
-vodka—get on!” Rostóv shouted, when the sleigh was only three
-houses from his door. It seemed to him the horses were not moving at
-all. At last the sleigh bore to the right, drew up at an entrance, and
-Rostóv saw overhead the old familiar cornice with a bit of plaster
-broken off, the porch, and the post by the side of the pavement. He
-sprang out before the sleigh stopped, and ran into the hall. The house
-stood cold and silent, as if quite regardless of who had come to it.
-There was no one in the hall. “Oh God! Is everyone all right?”
-he thought, stopping for a moment with a sinking heart, and then
-immediately starting to run along the hall and up the warped steps of
-the familiar staircase. The well-known old door handle, which always
-angered the countess when it was not properly cleaned, turned as loosely
-as ever. A solitary tallow candle burned in the anteroom.
-
-Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokófy, the footman, who was
-so strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat
-plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the opening
-door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly changed to one
-of delighted amazement.
-
-“Gracious heavens! The young count!” he cried, recognizing his
-young master. “Can it be? My treasure!” and Prokófy, trembling with
-excitement, rushed toward the drawing room door, probably in order to
-announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss the
-young man’s shoulder.
-
-“All well?” asked Rostóv, drawing away his arm.
-
-“Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They’ve just finished supper. Let me have
-a look at you, your excellency.”
-
-“Is everything quite all right?”
-
-“The Lord be thanked, yes!”
-
-Rostóv, who had completely forgotten Denísov, not wishing anyone to
-forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the
-large dark ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card
-tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had
-already seen the young master, and, before he had reached the drawing
-room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado and began
-hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the same
-kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging, more kissing,
-more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish which was
-Papa, which Natásha, and which Pétya. Everyone shouted, talked, and
-kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not there, he noticed
-that.
-
-“And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!...”
-
-“Here he is... our own... Kólya, * dear fellow... How he has
-changed!... Where are the candles?... Tea!...”
-
- * Nicholas.
-
-“And me, kiss me!”
-
-“Dearest... and me!”
-
-Sónya, Natásha, Pétya, Anna Mikháylovna, Véra, and the old count
-were all hugging him, and the serfs, men and maids, flocked into the
-room, exclaiming and oh-ing and ah-ing.
-
-Pétya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, “And me too!”
-
-Natásha, after she had pulled him down toward her and covered his face
-with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt of his coat, sprang away and
-pranced up and down in one place like a goat and shrieked piercingly.
-
-All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy, and all around
-were lips seeking a kiss.
-
-Sónya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant with bliss,
-looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the look for which she
-longed. Sónya now was sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at
-this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not taking
-her eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave her a
-grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for someone. The old
-countess had not yet come. But now steps were heard at the door, steps
-so rapid that they could hardly be his mother’s.
-
-Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not know, made since
-he had left. All the others let him go, and he ran to her. When they
-met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her face, but
-only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar’s jacket. Denísov,
-who had come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there and wiped
-his eyes at the sight.
-
-“Vasíli Denísov, your son’s friend,” he said, introducing
-himself to the count, who was looking inquiringly at him.
-
-“You are most welcome! I know, I know,” said the count, kissing and
-embracing Denísov. “Nicholas wrote us... Natásha, Véra, look! Here
-is Denísov!”
-
-The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of Denísov.
-
-“Darling Denísov!” screamed Natásha, beside herself with rapture,
-springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This
-escapade made everybody feel confused. Denísov blushed too, but smiled
-and, taking Natásha’s hand, kissed it.
-
-Denísov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostóvs all
-gathered round Nicholas in the sitting room.
-
-The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing it every
-moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round him, watched every
-movement, word, or look of his, never taking their blissfully adoring
-eyes off him. His brother and sisters struggled for the places nearest
-to him and disputed with one another who should bring him his tea,
-handkerchief, and pipe.
-
-Rostóv was very happy in the love they showed him; but the first
-moment of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed
-insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more.
-
-Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the travelers slept
-till ten o’clock.
-
-In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion of sabers,
-satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and dirty boots. Two freshly
-cleaned pairs with spurs had just been placed by the wall. The servants
-were bringing in jugs and basins, hot water for shaving, and their
-well-brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell of tobacco.
-
-“Hallo, Gwíska—my pipe!” came Vasíli Denísov’s husky voice.
-“Wostóv, get up!”
-
-Rostóv, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together, raised his
-disheveled head from the hot pillow.
-
-“Why, is it late?”
-
-“Late! It’s nearly ten o’clock,” answered Natásha’s voice.
-A rustle of starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of
-girls’ voices came from the adjoining room. The door was opened a
-crack and there was a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black hair,
-and merry faces. It was Natásha, Sónya, and Pétya, who had come to
-see whether they were getting up.
-
-“Nicholas! Get up!” Natásha’s voice was again heard at the door.
-
-“Directly!”
-
-Meanwhile, Pétya, having found and seized the sabers in the outer room,
-with the delight boys feel at the sight of a military elder brother, and
-forgetting that it was unbecoming for the girls to see men undressed,
-opened the bedroom door.
-
-“Is this your saber?” he shouted.
-
-The girls sprang aside. Denísov hid his hairy legs under the blanket,
-looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door, having let
-Pétya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from behind it.
-
-“Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!” said Natásha’s voice.
-
-“Is this your saber?” asked Pétya. “Or is it yours?” he said,
-addressing the black-mustached Denísov with servile deference.
-
-Rostóv hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing gown,
-and went out. Natásha had put on one spurred boot and was just getting
-her foot into the other. Sónya, when he came in, was twirling round and
-was about to expand her dresses into a balloon and sit down. They were
-dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and were both fresh, rosy, and
-bright. Sónya ran away, but Natásha, taking her brother’s arm, led
-him into the sitting room, where they began talking. They hardly gave
-one another time to ask questions and give replies concerning a thousand
-little matters which could not interest anyone but themselves. Natásha
-laughed at every word he said or that she said herself, not because what
-they were saying was amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable
-to control her joy which expressed itself by laughter.
-
-“Oh, how nice, how splendid!” she said to everything.
-
-Rostóv felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that
-childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he left
-home now for the first time after eighteen months again brightened his
-soul and his face.
-
-“No, but listen,” she said, “now you are quite a man, aren’t
-you? I’m awfully glad you’re my brother.” She touched his
-mustache. “I want to know what you men are like. Are you the same as
-we? No?”
-
-“Why did Sónya run away?” asked Rostóv.
-
-“Ah, yes! That’s a whole long story! How are you going to speak to
-her—thou or you?”
-
-“As may happen,” said Rostóv.
-
-“No, call her you, please! I’ll tell you all about it some other
-time. No, I’ll tell you now. You know Sónya’s my dearest friend.
-Such a friend that I burned my arm for her sake. Look here!”
-
-She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her long,
-slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is covered
-even by a ball dress.
-
-“I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in the
-fire and pressed it there!”
-
-Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what used
-to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natásha’s wildly bright
-eyes, Rostóv re-entered that world of home and childhood which had no
-meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the best joys of his life;
-and the burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of love did not seem
-to him senseless, he understood and was not surprised at it.
-
-“Well, and is that all?” he asked.
-
-“We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just
-nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does it
-for life, but I don’t understand that, I forget quickly.”
-
-“Well, what then?”
-
-“Well, she loves me and you like that.”
-
-Natásha suddenly flushed.
-
-“Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are to
-forget all that.... She says: ‘I shall love him always, but let him be
-free.’ Isn’t that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn’t it?”
-asked Natásha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that what
-she was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.
-
-Rostóv became thoughtful.
-
-“I never go back on my word,” he said. “Besides, Sónya is so
-charming that only a fool would renounce such happiness.”
-
-“No, no!” cried Natásha, “she and I have already talked it over.
-We knew you’d say so. But it won’t do, because you see, if you say
-that—if you consider yourself bound by your promise—it will seem as
-if she had not meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were marrying
-her because you must, and that wouldn’t do at all.”
-
-Rostóv saw that it had been well considered by them. Sónya had already
-struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when he had caught
-a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She was a charming girl
-of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with him (he did not doubt
-that for an instant). Why should he not love her now, and even marry
-her, Rostóv thought, but just now there were so many other pleasures
-and interests before him! “Yes, they have taken a wise decision,” he
-thought, “I must remain free.”
-
-“Well then, that’s excellent,” said he. “We’ll talk it over
-later on. Oh, how glad I am to have you!”
-
-“Well, and are you still true to Borís?” he continued.
-
-“Oh, what nonsense!” cried Natásha, laughing. “I don’t think
-about him or anyone else, and I don’t want anything of the kind.”
-
-“Dear me! Then what are you up to now?”
-
-“Now?” repeated Natásha, and a happy smile lit up her face. “Have
-you seen Duport?”
-
-“No.”
-
-“Not seen Duport—the famous dancer? Well then, you won’t
-understand. That’s what I’m up to.”
-
-Curving her arms, Natásha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran back
-a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply
-together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.
-
-“See, I’m standing! See!” she said, but could not maintain herself
-on her toes any longer. “So that’s what I’m up to! I’ll never
-marry anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don’t tell anyone.”
-
-Rostóv laughed so loud and merrily that Denísov, in his bedroom, felt
-envious and Natásha could not help joining in.
-
-“No, but don’t you think it’s nice?” she kept repeating.
-
-“Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Borís?”
-
-Natásha flared up. “I don’t want to marry anyone. And I’ll tell
-him so when I see him!”
-
-“Dear me!” said Rostóv.
-
-“But that’s all rubbish,” Natásha chattered on. “And is
-Denísov nice?” she asked.
-
-“Yes, indeed!”
-
-“Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible,
-Denísov?”
-
-“Why terrible?” asked Nicholas. “No, Váska is a splendid
-fellow.”
-
-“You call him Váska? That’s funny! And is he very nice?”
-
-“Very.”
-
-“Well then, be quick. We’ll all have breakfast together.”
-
-And Natásha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet
-dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When
-Rostóv met Sónya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know
-how to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of
-meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could not
-be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters, was
-looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave
-with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as
-you—Sónya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender
-kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by
-Natásha’s intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then
-thanked him for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his
-freedom and told her that one way or another he would never cease to
-love her, for that would be impossible.
-
-“How strange it is,” said Véra, selecting a moment when all were
-silent, “that Sónya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet
-like strangers.”
-
-Véra’s remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like
-most of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not
-only Sónya, Nicholas, and Natásha, but even the old countess,
-who—dreading this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making
-a brilliant match—blushed like a girl.
-
-Denísov, to Rostóv’s surprise, appeared in the drawing room with
-pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as
-he made himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the
-ladies and gentlemen than Rostóv had ever expected to see him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostóv was welcomed
-by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their darling
-Nikólenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and polite young
-man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good
-dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.
-
-The Rostóvs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough
-that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,
-acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the
-latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the
-latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,
-passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself
-to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be
-at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His
-despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money from
-Gavríl to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sónya on the sly—he now
-recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind.
-Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and
-wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in
-action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected racing
-men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a lady on one
-of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led the mazurka
-at the Arkhárovs’ ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal
-Kámenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate terms with a
-colonel of forty to whom Denísov had introduced him.
-
-His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But still, as
-he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him, he often spoke
-about him and about his love for him, letting it be understood that he
-had not told all and that there was something in his feelings for the
-Emperor not everyone could understand, and with his whole soul he shared
-the adoration then common in Moscow for the Emperor, who was spoken of
-as the “angel incarnate.”
-
-During Rostóv’s short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army, he
-did not draw closer to Sónya, but rather drifted away from her. She was
-very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he was
-at the period of youth when there seems so much to do that there is no
-time for that sort of thing and a young man fears to bind himself and
-prizes his freedom which he needs for so many other things. When he
-thought of Sónya, during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself,
-“Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such girls somewhere whom
-I do not yet know. There will be time enough to think about love when I
-want to, but now I have no time.” Besides, it seemed to him that the
-society of women was rather derogatory to his manhood. He went to balls
-and into ladies’ society with an affectation of doing so against his
-will. The races, the English Club, sprees with Denísov, and visits to
-a certain house—that was another matter and quite the thing for a
-dashing young hussar!
-
-At the beginning of March, old Count Ilyá Rostóv was very busy
-arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagratión at the English Club.
-
-The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving
-orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktíst, the club’s
-head cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and
-fish for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee
-of the club from the day it was founded. To him the club entrusted the
-arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagratión, for few men knew
-so well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale,
-and still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of
-their own resources what might be needed for the success of the fete.
-The club cook and the steward listened to the count’s orders with
-pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could they
-so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner costing
-several thousand rubles.
-
-“Well then, mind and have cocks’ comb in the turtle soup, you
-know!”
-
-“Shall we have three cold dishes then?” asked the cook.
-
-The count considered.
-
-“We can’t have less—yes, three... the mayonnaise, that’s one,”
-said he, bending down a finger.
-
-“Then am I to order those large sterlets?” asked the steward.
-
-“Yes, it can’t be helped if they won’t take less. Ah, dear me! I
-was forgetting. We must have another entrée. Ah, goodness gracious!”
-he clutched at his head. “Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmítri!
-Eh, Dmítri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate,” he said to the factotum
-who appeared at his call. “Hurry off and tell Maksím, the gardener,
-to set the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must
-be brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred pots
-here on Friday.”
-
-Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his “little
-countess” to have a rest, but remembering something else of
-importance, he returned again, called back the cook and the club
-steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep and the
-clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young count, handsome,
-rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made sleeker by
-his easy life in Moscow, entered the room.
-
-“Ah, my boy, my head’s in a whirl!” said the old man with a smile,
-as if he felt a little confused before his son. “Now, if you would
-only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own orchestra,
-but shouldn’t we get the gypsy singers as well? You military men like
-that sort of thing.”
-
-“Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagratión worried himself less before
-the battle of Schön Grabern than you do now,” said his son with a
-smile.
-
-The old count pretended to be angry.
-
-“Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!”
-
-And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and respectful
-expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the father and
-son.
-
-“What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktíst?” said
-he. “Laughing at us old fellows!”
-
-“That’s so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good
-dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that’s not their
-business!”
-
-“That’s it, that’s it!” exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing
-his son by both hands, he cried, “Now I’ve got you, so take the
-sleigh and pair at once, and go to Bezúkhov’s, and tell him ‘Count
-Ilyá has sent you to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.’ We
-can’t get them from anyone else. He’s not there himself, so you’ll
-have to go in and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the
-Rasgulyáy—the coachman Ipátka knows—and look up the gypsy
-Ilyúshka, the one who danced at Count Orlóv’s, you remember, in a
-white Cossack coat, and bring him along to me.”
-
-“And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?” asked Nicholas,
-laughing. “Dear, dear!...”
-
-At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the businesslike,
-preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never left her face, Anna
-Mikháylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon the count in his
-dressing gown every day, he invariably became confused and begged her to
-excuse his costume.
-
-“No matter at all, my dear count,” she said, meekly closing her
-eyes. “But I’ll go to Bezúkhov’s myself. Pierre has arrived, and
-now we shall get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him
-in any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Borís. Thank God, Borís
-is now on the staff.”
-
-The count was delighted at Anna Mikháylovna’s taking upon herself one
-of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.
-
-“Tell Bezúkhov to come. I’ll put his name down. Is his wife with
-him?” he asked.
-
-Anna Mikháylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was depicted
-on her face.
-
-“Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate,” she said. “If what
-we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing
-when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul
-as young Bezúkhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to give
-him what consolation I can.”
-
-“Wh-what is the matter?” asked both the young and old Rostóv.
-
-Anna Mikháylovna sighed deeply.
-
-“Dólokhov, Mary Ivánovna’s son,” she said in a mysterious
-whisper, “has compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him
-up, invited him to his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here
-and that daredevil after her!” said Anna Mikháylovna, wishing to show
-her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half smile
-betraying her sympathy for the “daredevil,” as she called Dólokhov.
-“They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune.”
-
-“Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the club—it will all blow
-over. It will be a tremendous banquet.”
-
-Next day, the third of March, soon after one o’clock, two hundred and
-fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting the
-guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagratión, to
-dinner.
-
-On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow had
-been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to victories
-that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not believe it,
-while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so strange an
-event. In the English Club, where all who were distinguished, important,
-and well informed foregathered when the news began to arrive in
-December, nothing was said about the war and the last battle, as
-though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The men who set the tone
-in conversation—Count Rostopchín, Prince Yúri Dolgorúkov, Valúev,
-Count Markóv, and Prince Vyázemski—did not show themselves at the
-club, but met in private houses in intimate circles, and the
-Moscovites who took their opinions from others—Ilyá Rostóv among
-them—remained for a while without any definite opinion on the subject
-of the war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt that something was
-wrong and that to discuss the bad news was difficult, and so it was best
-to be silent. But after a while, just as a jury comes out of its room,
-the bigwigs who guided the club’s opinion reappeared, and everybody
-began speaking clearly and definitely. Reasons were found for the
-incredible, unheard-of, and impossible event of a Russian defeat,
-everything became clear, and in all corners of Moscow the same things
-began to be said. These reasons were the treachery of the Austrians, a
-defective commissariat, the treachery of the Pole Przebyszéwski and of
-the Frenchman Langeron, Kutúzov’s incapacity, and (it was whispered)
-the youth and inexperience of the sovereign, who had trusted worthless
-and insignificant people. But the army, the Russian army, everyone
-declared, was extraordinary and had achieved miracles of valor. The
-soldiers, officers, and generals were heroes. But the hero of heroes was
-Prince Bagratión, distinguished by his Schön Grabern affair and by
-the retreat from Austerlitz, where he alone had withdrawn his column
-unbroken and had all day beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous
-as his own. What also conduced to Bagratión’s being selected as
-Moscow’s hero was the fact that he had no connections in the city
-and was a stranger there. In his person, honor was shown to a simple
-fighting Russian soldier without connections and intrigues, and to one
-who was associated by memories of the Italian campaign with the name of
-Suvórov. Moreover, paying such honor to Bagratión was the best way of
-expressing disapproval and dislike of Kutúzov.
-
-“Had there been no Bagratión, it would have been necessary to
-invent him,” said the wit Shinshín, parodying the words of Voltaire.
-Kutúzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers,
-calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.
-
-All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorúkov’s saying: “If you go on
-modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay,” suggesting
-consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and the
-words of Rostopchín, that French soldiers have to be incited to battle
-by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to show them
-that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but that Russian
-soldiers only need to be restrained and held back! On all sides, new and
-fresh anecdotes were heard of individual examples of heroism shown by
-our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a standard, another
-had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five cannon singlehanded.
-Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know him, as having, when
-wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the left, and gone
-forward. Of Bolkónski, nothing was said, and only those who knew him
-intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a pregnant wife
-with his eccentric father.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were filled
-with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in springtime.
-The members and guests of the club wandered hither and thither, sat,
-stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in evening dress,
-and a few here and there with powdered hair and in Russian kaftáns.
-Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and smart stockings,
-stood at every door anxiously noting visitors’ every movement in order
-to offer their services. Most of those present were elderly, respected
-men with broad, self-confident faces, fat fingers, and resolute gestures
-and voices. This class of guests and members sat in certain habitual
-places and met in certain habitual groups. A minority of those present
-were casual guests—chiefly young men, among whom were Denísov,
-Rostóv, and Dólokhov—who was now again an officer in the Semënov
-regiment. The faces of these young people, especially those who were
-military men, bore that expression of condescending respect for their
-elders which seems to say to the older generation, “We are prepared to
-respect and honor you, but all the same remember that the future belongs
-to us.”
-
-Nesvítski was there as an old member of the club. Pierre, who at his
-wife’s command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles,
-went about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull. Here,
-as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience to
-his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people, he
-treated them with absent-minded contempt.
-
-By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his wealth
-and connections he belonged to the groups of old and honored guests, and
-so he went from one group to another. Some of the most important old men
-were the center of groups which even strangers approached respectfully
-to hear the voices of well-known men. The largest circles formed round
-Count Rostopchín, Valúev, and Narýshkin. Rostopchín was describing
-how the Russians had been overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to
-force their way through them with bayonets.
-
-Valúev was confidentially telling that Uvárov had been sent from
-Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.
-
-In the third circle, Narýshkin was speaking of the meeting of the
-Austrian Council of War at which Suvórov crowed like a cock in reply to
-the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshín, standing close
-by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutúzov had evidently failed to
-learn from Suvórov even so simple a thing as the art of crowing like a
-cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the wit, making him
-feel that in that place and on that day, it was improper to speak so of
-Kutúzov.
-
-Count Ilyá Rostóv, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft
-boots between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the
-important and unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all
-equals, while his eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up
-young son, resting on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostóv
-stood at a window with Dólokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately
-made and highly valued. The old count came up to them and pressed
-Dólokhov’s hand.
-
-“Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been together
-out there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasíli Ignátovich...
-How d’ye do, old fellow?” he said, turning to an old man who was
-passing, but before he had finished his greeting there was a general
-stir, and a footman who had run in announced, with a frightened face:
-“He’s arrived!”
-
-Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and—like rye shaken together
-in a shovel—the guests who had been scattered about in different rooms
-came together and crowded in the large drawing room by the door of the
-ballroom.
-
-Bagratión appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or sword,
-which, in accord with the club custom, he had given up to the hall
-porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded whip
-over his shoulder, as when Rostóv had seen him on the eve of the battle
-of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian and foreign
-Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast. Evidently just
-before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and whiskers trimmed,
-which changed his appearance for the worse. There was something naïvely
-festive in his air, which, in conjunction with his firm and virile
-features, gave him a rather comical expression. Bekleshëv and Theodore
-Uvárov, who had arrived with him, paused at the doorway to allow him,
-as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagratión was embarrassed, not
-wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and this caused some delay
-at the doors, but after all he did at last enter first. He walked shyly
-and awkwardly over the parquet floor of the reception room, not knowing
-what to do with his hands; he was more accustomed to walk over a plowed
-field under fire, as he had done at the head of the Kursk regiment at
-Schön Grabern—and he would have found that easier. The committeemen
-met him at the first door and, expressing their delight at seeing such a
-highly honored guest, took possession of him as it were, without waiting
-for his reply, surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room. It was
-at first impossible to enter the drawing room door for the crowd of
-members and guests jostling one another and trying to get a good look
-at Bagratión over each other’s shoulders, as if he were some rare
-animal. Count Ilyá Rostóv, laughing and repeating the words, “Make
-way, dear boy! Make way, make way!” pushed through the crowd more
-energetically than anyone, led the guests into the drawing room, and
-seated them on the center sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members
-of the club, beset the new arrivals. Count Ilyá, again thrusting his
-way through the crowd, went out of the drawing room and reappeared a
-minute later with another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver
-which he presented to Prince Bagratión. On the salver lay some verses
-composed and printed in the hero’s honor. Bagratión, on seeing the
-salver, glanced around in dismay, as though seeking help. But all eyes
-demanded that he should submit. Feeling himself in their power, he
-resolutely took the salver with both hands and looked sternly and
-reproachfully at the count who had presented it to him. Someone
-obligingly took the dish from Bagratión (or he would, it seemed, have
-held it till evening and have gone in to dinner with it) and drew his
-attention to the verses.
-
-“Well, I will read them, then!” Bagratión seemed to say, and,
-fixing his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and
-serious expression. But the author himself took the verses and began
-reading them aloud. Bagratión bowed his head and listened:
-
- Bring glory then to Alexander’s reign
- And on the throne our Titus shield.
- A dreaded foe be thou, kindhearted as a man,
- A Rhipheus at home, a Caesar in the field!
- E’en fortunate Napoleon
- Knows by experience, now, Bagratión,
- And dare not Herculean Russians trouble...
-
-But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo announced
-that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the dining room came
-the resounding strains of the polonaise:
-
- Conquest’s joyful thunder waken,
- Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...
-
-and Count Rostóv, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading
-his verses, bowed to Bagratión. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner
-was more important than verses, and Bagratión, again preceding all the
-rest, went in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between
-two Alexanders—Bekleshëv and Narýshkin—which was a significant
-allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took their
-seats in the dining room, according to their rank and importance: the
-more important nearer to the honored guest, as naturally as water flows
-deepest where the land lies lowest.
-
-Just before dinner, Count Ilyá Rostóv presented his son to Bagratión,
-who recognized him and said a few words to him, disjointed and awkward,
-as were all the words he spoke that day, and Count Ilyá looked joyfully
-and proudly around while Bagratión spoke to his son.
-
-Nicholas Rostóv, with Denísov and his new acquaintance, Dólokhov, sat
-almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre, beside Prince
-Nesvítski. Count Ilyá Rostóv with the other members of the committee
-sat facing Bagratión and, as the very personification of Moscow
-hospitality, did the honors to the prince.
-
-His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and the
-other fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till the
-end of the meal. He winked at the butler, whispered directions to the
-footmen, and awaited each expected dish with some anxiety. Everything
-was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet (at sight of
-which Ilyá Rostóv blushed with self-conscious pleasure), the footmen
-began popping corks and filling the champagne glasses. After the fish,
-which made a certain sensation, the count exchanged glances with
-the other committeemen. “There will be many toasts, it’s time to
-begin,” he whispered, and taking up his glass, he rose. All were
-silent, waiting for what he would say.
-
-“To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!” he cried, and at the
-same moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and enthusiasm.
-The band immediately struck up “Conquest’s joyful thunder
-waken...” All rose and cried “Hurrah!” Bagratión also rose and
-shouted “Hurrah!” in exactly the same voice in which he had shouted
-it on the field at Schön Grabern. Young Rostóv’s ecstatic voice
-could be heard above the three hundred others. He nearly wept. “To the
-health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!” he roared, “Hurrah!” and
-emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to the floor. Many followed
-his example, and the loud shouting continued for a long time. When the
-voices subsided, the footmen cleared away the broken glass and everybody
-sat down again, smiling at the noise they had made and exchanging
-remarks. The old count rose once more, glanced at a note lying beside
-his plate, and proposed a toast, “To the health of the hero of our
-last campaign, Prince Peter Ivánovich Bagratión!” and again his blue
-eyes grew moist. “Hurrah!” cried the three hundred voices again,
-but instead of the band a choir began singing a cantata composed by Paul
-Ivánovich Kutúzov:
-
- Russians! O’er all barriers on!
- Courage conquest guarantees;
- Have we not Bagratión?
- He brings foemen to their knees,... etc.
-
-As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was proposed
-and Count Ilyá Rostóv became more and more moved, more glass was
-smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to Bekleshëv,
-Narýshkin, Uvárov, Dolgorúkov, Apráksin, Valúev, to the committee,
-to all the club members and to all the club guests, and finally to
-Count Ilyá Rostóv separately, as the organizer of the banquet. At that
-toast, the count took out his handkerchief and, covering his face, wept
-outright.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-Pierre sat opposite Dólokhov and Nicholas Rostóv. As usual, he ate and
-drank much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed that
-some great change had come over him that day. He was silent all through
-dinner and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed eyes and
-a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge of his
-nose. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed to see and hear
-nothing of what was going on around him and to be absorbed by some
-depressing and unsolved problem.
-
-The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by the
-princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dólokhov’s intimacy with
-his wife, and by an anonymous letter he had received that morning, which
-in the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters said that he saw
-badly through his spectacles, but that his wife’s connection with
-Dólokhov was a secret to no one but himself. Pierre absolutely
-disbelieved both the princess’ hints and the letter, but he feared
-now to look at Dólokhov, who was sitting opposite him. Every time
-he chanced to meet Dólokhov’s handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt
-something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul and turned quickly
-away. Involuntarily recalling his wife’s past and her relations with
-Dólokhov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might be
-true, or might at least seem to be true had it not referred to his wife.
-He involuntarily remembered how Dólokhov, who had fully recovered his
-former position after the campaign, had returned to Petersburg and come
-to him. Availing himself of his friendly relations with Pierre as a boon
-companion, Dólokhov had come straight to his house, and Pierre had put
-him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled how Hélène had smilingly
-expressed disapproval of Dólokhov’s living at their house, and how
-cynically Dólokhov had praised his wife’s beauty to him and from that
-time till they came to Moscow had not left them for a day.
-
-“Yes, he is very handsome,” thought Pierre, “and I know him. It
-would be particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule
-me, just because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended him,
-and helped him. I know and understand what a spice that would add to the
-pleasure of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it were true,
-but I do not believe it. I have no right to, and can’t, believe it.”
-He remembered the expression Dólokhov’s face assumed in his moments
-of cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and dropping them
-into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel without any
-reason, or shot a post-boy’s horse with a pistol. That expression
-was often on Dólokhov’s face when looking at him. “Yes, he is a
-bully,” thought Pierre, “to kill a man means nothing to him. It must
-seem to him that everyone is afraid of him, and that must please him.
-He must think that I, too, am afraid of him—and in fact I am afraid of
-him,” he thought, and again he felt something terrible and monstrous
-rising in his soul. Dólokhov, Denísov, and Rostóv were now sitting
-opposite Pierre and seemed very gay. Rostóv was talking merrily to his
-two friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar and the other a notorious
-duelist and rake, and every now and then he glanced ironically at
-Pierre, whose preoccupied, absent-minded, and massive figure was a very
-noticeable one at the dinner. Rostóv looked inimically at Pierre,
-first because Pierre appeared to his hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the
-husband of a beauty, and in a word—an old woman; and secondly because
-Pierre in his preoccupation and absent-mindedness had not recognized
-Rostóv and had not responded to his greeting. When the Emperor’s
-health was drunk, Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his
-glass.
-
-“What are you about?” shouted Rostóv, looking at him in an ecstasy
-of exasperation. “Don’t you hear it’s His Majesty the Emperor’s
-health?”
-
-Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting till
-all were seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostóv.
-
-“Why, I didn’t recognize you!” he said. But Rostóv was otherwise
-engaged; he was shouting “Hurrah!”
-
-“Why don’t you renew the acquaintance?” said Dólokhov to Rostóv.
-
-“Confound him, he’s a fool!” said Rostóv.
-
-“One should make up to the husbands of pretty women,” said Denísov.
-
-Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were talking
-about him. He reddened and turned away.
-
-“Well, now to the health of handsome women!” said Dólokhov, and
-with a serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of
-his mouth, he turned with his glass to Pierre.
-
-“Here’s to the health of lovely women, Peterkin—and their
-lovers!” he added.
-
-Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking at
-Dólokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing leaflets
-with Kutúzov’s cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of the
-principal guests. He was just going to take it when Dólokhov, leaning
-across, snatched it from his hand and began reading it. Pierre looked
-at Dólokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and monstrous
-that had tormented him all dinnertime rose and took possession of him.
-He leaned his whole massive body across the table.
-
-“How dare you take it?” he shouted.
-
-Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvítski and the
-neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezúkhov.
-
-“Don’t! Don’t! What are you about?” whispered their frightened
-voices.
-
-Dólokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that
-smile of his which seemed to say, “Ah! This is what I like!”
-
-“You shan’t have it!” he said distinctly.
-
-Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.
-
-“You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!” he ejaculated, and,
-pushing back his chair, he rose from the table.
-
-At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt
-that the question of his wife’s guilt which had been tormenting him
-the whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative.
-He hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denísov’s
-request that he would take no part in the matter, Rostóv agreed to be
-Dólokhov’s second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements for
-the duel with Nesvítski, Bezúkhov’s second. Pierre went home, but
-Rostóv with Dólokhov and Denísov stayed on at the club till late,
-listening to the gypsies and other singers.
-
-“Well then, till tomorrow at Sokólniki,” said Dólokhov, as he took
-leave of Rostóv in the club porch.
-
-“And do you feel quite calm?” Rostóv asked.
-
-Dólokhov paused.
-
-“Well, you see, I’ll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two
-words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write
-affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be
-killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the firm
-intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as possible, and
-then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostromá used to tell
-me. ‘Everyone fears a bear,’ he says, ‘but when you see one your
-fear’s all gone, and your only thought is not to let him get away!’
-And that’s how it is with me. À demain, mon cher.” *
-
- * Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.
-
-Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvítski drove to the
-Sokólniki forest and found Dólokhov, Denísov, and Rostóv already
-there. Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations which
-had no connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face was yellow.
-He had evidently not slept that night. He looked about distractedly and
-screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He was entirely absorbed
-by two considerations: his wife’s guilt, of which after his sleepless
-night he had not the slightest doubt, and the guiltlessness of
-Dólokhov, who had no reason to preserve the honor of a man who was
-nothing to him.... “I should perhaps have done the same thing in his
-place,” thought Pierre. “It’s even certain that I should have done
-the same, then why this duel, this murder? Either I shall kill him, or
-he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee. Can’t I go away from
-here, run away, bury myself somewhere?” passed through his mind. But
-just at moments when such thoughts occurred to him, he would ask in a
-particularly calm and absent-minded way, which inspired the respect of
-the onlookers, “Will it be long? Are things ready?”
-
-When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the barriers,
-and the pistols loaded, Nesvítski went up to Pierre.
-
-“I should not be doing my duty, Count,” he said in timid tones,
-“and should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done
-me in choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very
-grave, moment I did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no
-sufficient ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it....
-You were not right, not quite in the right, you were impetuous...”
-
-“Oh yes, it is horribly stupid,” said Pierre.
-
-“Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your opponent
-will accept them,” said Nesvítski (who like the others concerned in
-the affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not yet believe that
-the affair had come to an actual duel). “You know, Count, it is much
-more honorable to admit one’s mistake than to let matters become
-irreparable. There was no insult on either side. Allow me to
-convey....”
-
-“No! What is there to talk about?” said Pierre. “It’s all the
-same.... Is everything ready?” he added. “Only tell me where to go
-and where to shoot,” he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.
-
-He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of the
-trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand—a fact that he
-did not wish to confess.
-
-“Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot,” said he.
-
-“No apologies, none whatever,” said Dólokhov to Denísov (who on
-his side had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to
-the appointed place.
-
-The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road,
-where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine forest
-covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up during the
-last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at the farther
-edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces, left tracks in
-the deep wet snow between the place where they had been standing and
-Nesvítski’s and Dólokhov’s sabers, which were stuck into the
-ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and misty; at
-forty paces’ distance nothing could be seen. For three minutes all had
-been ready, but they still delayed and all were silent.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-“Well begin!” said Dólokhov.
-
-“All right,” said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling
-of dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly begun
-could no longer be averted but was taking its course independently of
-men’s will.
-
-Denísov first went to the barrier and announced: “As the
-adve’sawies have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your
-pistols, and at the word thwee begin to advance.
-
-“O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!” he shouted angrily and stepped aside.
-
-The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and nearer to
-one another, beginning to see one another through the mist. They had the
-right to fire when they liked as they approached the barrier. Dólokhov
-walked slowly without raising his pistol, looking intently with his
-bright, sparkling blue eyes into his antagonist’s face. His mouth wore
-its usual semblance of a smile.
-
-“So I can fire when I like!” said Pierre, and at the word
-“three,” he went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and
-stepping into the deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at
-arm’s length, apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left
-hand he held carefully back, because he wished to support his right
-hand with it and knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and
-strayed off the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet,
-then quickly glanced at Dólokhov and, bending his finger as he had been
-shown, fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre shuddered
-at the sound and then, smiling at his own sensations, stood still. The
-smoke, rendered denser by the mist, prevented him from seeing anything
-for an instant, but there was no second report as he had expected. He
-only heard Dólokhov’s hurried steps, and his figure came in view
-through the smoke. He was pressing one hand to his left side, while
-the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face was pale. Rostóv ran
-toward him and said something.
-
-“No-o-o!” muttered Dólokhov through his teeth, “no, it’s not
-over.” And after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the
-saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he wiped
-it on his coat and supported himself with it. His frowning face was
-pallid and quivered.
-
-“Plea...” began Dólokhov, but could not at first pronounce the
-word.
-
-“Please,” he uttered with an effort.
-
-Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dólokhov and
-was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dólokhov cried:
-
-“To your barrier!” and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by
-his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dólokhov lowered his head to
-the snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself,
-drew in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked
-and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but his eyes, still
-smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as he mustered his
-remaining strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.
-
-“Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!” ejaculated Nesvítski.
-
-“Cover yourself!” even Denísov cried to his adversary.
-
-Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs
-helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing
-Dólokhov and looked sorrowfully at him. Denísov, Rostóv, and
-Nesvítski closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report
-and Dólokhov’s angry cry.
-
-“Missed!” shouted Dólokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards
-on the snow.
-
-Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest,
-trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:
-
-“Folly... folly! Death... lies...” he repeated, puckering his face.
-
-Nesvítski stopped him and took him home.
-
-Rostóv and Denísov drove away with the wounded Dólokhov.
-
-The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not answer
-a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering Moscow he
-suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort, took Rostóv, who
-was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostóv was struck by the
-totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender expression on
-Dólokhov’s face.
-
-“Well? How do you feel?” he asked.
-
-“Bad! But it’s not that, my friend—” said Dólokhov with a
-gasping voice. “Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don’t matter,
-but I have killed her, killed... She won’t get over it! She won’t
-survive....”
-
-“Who?” asked Rostóv.
-
-“My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother,” and
-Dólokhov pressed Rostóv’s hand and burst into tears.
-
-When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostóv that he was
-living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not survive it.
-He implored Rostóv to go on and prepare her.
-
-Rostóv went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise
-learned that Dólokhov the brawler, Dólokhov the bully, lived in Moscow
-with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate
-of sons and brothers.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg and in
-Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after the
-duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained in his
-father’s room, that huge room in which Count Bezúkhov had died.
-
-He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that
-had happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,
-thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not fall
-asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace the
-room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early days of
-their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid, passionate look on
-her face, and then immediately he saw beside her Dólokhov’s handsome,
-insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen it at the banquet, and
-then that same face pale, quivering, and suffering, as it had been when
-he reeled and sank on the snow.
-
-“What has happened?” he asked himself. “I have killed her lover,
-yes, killed my wife’s lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come
-to do it?”—“Because you married her,” answered an inner voice.
-
-“But in what was I to blame?” he asked. “In marrying her without
-loving her; in deceiving yourself and her.” And he vividly recalled
-that moment after supper at Prince Vasíli’s, when he spoke those
-words he had found so difficult to utter: “I love you.” “It all
-comes from that! Even then I felt it,” he thought. “I felt then that
-it was not so, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out.”
-
-He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.
-Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection of
-how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into his
-study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his head
-steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and at
-his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing respectful
-understanding of his employer’s happiness.
-
-“But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic beauty
-and social tact,” thought he; “been proud of my house, in which she
-received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and beauty. So
-this is what I was proud of! I then thought that I did not understand
-her. How often when considering her character I have told myself that
-I was to blame for not understanding her, for not understanding that
-constant composure and complacency and lack of all interests or desires,
-and the whole secret lies in the terrible truth that she is a depraved
-woman. Now I have spoken that terrible word to myself all has become
-clear.
-
-“Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss her
-naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself be
-kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she replied
-with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous: ‘Let
-him do what he pleases,’ she used to say of me. One day I asked her if
-she felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed contemptuously and said
-she was not a fool to want to have children, and that she was not going
-to have any children by me.”
-
-Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and the
-vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though she had
-been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.
-
-“I’m not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous
-promener,” * she used to say. Often seeing the success she had with
-young and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did not
-love her.
-
- * “You clear out of this.”
-
-
-“Yes, I never loved her,” said he to himself; “I knew she was a
-depraved woman,” he repeated, “but dared not admit it to myself.
-And now there’s Dólokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and
-perhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!”
-
-Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of what
-is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their troubles. He
-digested his sufferings alone.
-
-“It is all, all her fault,” he said to himself; “but what of that?
-Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say ‘Je vous aime’ * to her,
-which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and must endure...
-what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that’s
-nonsense,” he thought. “The slur on my name and honor—that’s all
-apart from myself.”
-
- * I love you.
-
-“Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and a
-criminal,” came into Pierre’s head, “and from their point of
-view they were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a
-martyr’s death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being
-a despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are
-alive—live: tomorrow you’ll die as I might have died an hour ago.
-And is it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life
-in comparison with eternity?”
-
-But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such reflections,
-she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments when he had
-most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he felt the
-blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move about and break
-and tear whatever came to his hand. “Why did I tell her that ‘Je
-vous aime’?” he kept repeating to himself. And when he had said it
-for the tenth time, Molière’s words: “Mais que diable allait-il
-faire dans cette galère?” * occurred to him, and he began to laugh at
-himself.
-
- * “But what the devil was he doing in that galley?”
-
-
-In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to
-Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now. He
-resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of his
-intention to part from her forever.
-
-Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee, Pierre
-was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.
-
-He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled expression,
-unable to realize where he was.
-
-“The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at
-home,” said the valet.
-
-But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the countess
-herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with silver and with
-simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round her lovely head like
-a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic, except that there was
-a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent marble brow. With her
-imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in front of the valet.
-She knew of the duel and had come to speak about it. She waited till the
-valet had set down the coffee things and left the room. Pierre looked
-at her timidly over his spectacles, and like a hare surrounded by hounds
-who lays back her ears and continues to crouch motionless before her
-enemies, he tried to continue reading. But feeling this to be senseless
-and impossible, he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down
-but looked at him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to
-go.
-
-“Well, what’s this now? What have you been up to now, I should like
-to know?” she asked sternly.
-
-“I? What have I...?” stammered Pierre.
-
-“So it seems you’re a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel about?
-What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you.”
-
-Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth, but
-could not reply.
-
-“If you won’t answer, I’ll tell you...” Hélène went on. “You
-believe everything you’re told. You were told...” Hélène laughed,
-“that Dólokhov was my lover,” she said in French with her coarse
-plainness of speech, uttering the word amant as casually as any other
-word, “and you believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this
-duel prove? That you’re a fool, que vous êtes un sot, but everybody
-knew that. What will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock of
-all Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk and not knowing what
-you were about, challenged a man you are jealous of without cause.”
-Hélène raised her voice and became more and more excited, “A man
-who’s a better man than you in every way...”
-
-“Hm... Hm...!” growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her, and
-not moving a muscle.
-
-“And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like
-his company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should prefer
-yours.”
-
-“Don’t speak to me... I beg you,” muttered Pierre hoarsely.
-
-“Why shouldn’t I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you
-plainly that there are not many wives with husbands such as you who
-would not have taken lovers (des amants), but I have not done so,”
-said she.
-
-Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whose strange
-expression she did not understand, and lay down again. He was suffering
-physically at that moment, there was a weight on his chest and he could
-not breathe. He knew that he must do something to put an end to this
-suffering, but what he wanted to do was too terrible.
-
-“We had better separate,” he muttered in a broken voice.
-
-“Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune,” said
-Hélène. “Separate! That’s a thing to frighten me with!”
-
-Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.
-
-“I’ll kill you!” he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table
-with a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her
-brandishing the slab.
-
-Hélène’s face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His
-father’s nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and
-delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping
-down on her with outstretched hands shouted, “Get out!” in such a
-terrible voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knows what
-he would have done at that moment had Hélène not fled from the room.
-
-
-A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all his estates
-in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his property, and left
-for Petersburg alone.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz and
-the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite of the
-letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his body had
-not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What was worst of
-all for his relations was the fact that there was still a possibility of
-his having been picked up on the battlefield by the people of the
-place and that he might now be lying, recovering or dying, alone among
-strangers and unable to send news of himself. The gazettes from which
-the old prince first heard of the defeat at Austerlitz stated, as usual
-very briefly and vaguely, that after brilliant engagements the Russians
-had had to retreat and had made their withdrawal in perfect order. The
-old prince understood from this official report that our army had been
-defeated. A week after the gazette report of the battle of Austerlitz
-came a letter from Kutúzov informing the prince of the fate that had
-befallen his son.
-
-“Your son,” wrote Kutúzov, “fell before my eyes, a standard in
-his hand and at the head of a regiment—he fell as a hero, worthy of
-his father and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of the
-whole army it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort
-myself and you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise
-he would have been mentioned among the officers found on the field of
-battle, a list of whom has been sent me under flag of truce.”
-
-After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone in his
-study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next morning, but he
-was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the architect, and though
-he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone.
-
-When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at his
-lathe and, as usual, did not look round at her.
-
-“Ah, Princess Mary!” he said suddenly in an unnatural voice,
-throwing down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own
-impetus, and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that
-wheel, which merged in her memory with what followed.)
-
-She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her. Her
-eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father’s face, not sad, not
-crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging over
-her and about to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the worst
-in life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and
-incomprehensible—the death of one she loved.
-
-“Father! Andrew!”—said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such
-an indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her father
-could not bear her look but turned away with a sob.
-
-“Bad news! He’s not among the prisoners nor among the killed!
-Kutúzov writes...” and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to
-drive the princess away by that scream... “Killed!”
-
-The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but on
-hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in her
-beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy—a supreme joy apart from the
-joys and sorrows of this world—overflowed the great grief within her.
-She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took his hand, and
-drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy neck.
-
-“Father,” she said, “do not turn away from me, let us weep
-together.”
-
-“Scoundrels! Blackguards!” shrieked the old man, turning his face
-away from her. “Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why? Go,
-go and tell Lise.”
-
-The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father and
-wept. She saw her brother now as he had been at the moment when he took
-leave of her and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw him tender
-and amused as he was when he put on the little icon. “Did he believe?
-Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There in the realms
-of eternal peace and blessedness?” she thought.
-
-“Father, tell me how it happened,” she asked through her tears.
-
-“Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and
-Russia’s glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell
-Lise. I will follow.”
-
-When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat
-working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy calm
-peculiar to pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did not see
-Princess Mary but were looking within... into herself... at something
-joyful and mysterious taking place within her.
-
-“Mary,” she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and lying
-back, “give me your hand.” She took her sister-in-law’s hand and
-held it below her waist.
-
-Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained
-lifted in childlike happiness.
-
-Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the folds of her
-sister-in-law’s dress.
-
-“There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you know,
-Mary, I am going to love him very much,” said Lise, looking with
-bright and happy eyes at her sister-in-law.
-
-Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping.
-
-“What is the matter, Mary?”
-
-“Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew,” she said, wiping
-away her tears on her sister-in-law’s knee.
-
-Several times in the course of the morning Princess Mary began trying to
-prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry. Unobservant as
-was the little princess, these tears, the cause of which she did not
-understand, agitated her. She said nothing but looked about uneasily as
-if in search of something. Before dinner the old prince, of whom she was
-always afraid, came into her room with a peculiarly restless and malign
-expression and went out again without saying a word. She looked at
-Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a while with that expression of
-attention to something within her that is only seen in pregnant women,
-and suddenly began to cry.
-
-“Has anything come from Andrew?” she asked.
-
-“No, you know it’s too soon for news. But my father is anxious and I
-feel afraid.”
-
-“So there’s nothing?”
-
-“Nothing,” answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant
-eyes at her sister-in-law.
-
-She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her father to hide the
-terrible news from her till after her confinement, which was expected
-within a few days. Princess Mary and the old prince each bore and hid
-their grief in their own way. The old prince would not cherish any hope:
-he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had been killed, and though he
-sent an official to Austria to seek for traces of his son, he ordered a
-monument from Moscow which he intended to erect in his own garden to his
-memory, and he told everybody that his son had been killed. He tried not
-to change his former way of life, but his strength failed him. He walked
-less, ate less, slept less, and became weaker every day. Princess Mary
-hoped. She prayed for her brother as living and was always awaiting news
-of his return.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-“Dearest,” said the little princess after breakfast on the morning
-of the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit,
-but as sorrow was manifest in every smile, the sound of every word, and
-even every footstep in that house since the terrible news had come, so
-now the smile of the little princess—influenced by the general mood
-though without knowing its cause—was such as to remind one still more
-of the general sorrow.
-
-“Dearest, I’m afraid this morning’s fruschtique *—as Fóka the
-cook calls it—has disagreed with me.”
-
- * Frühstück: breakfast.
-
-“What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you
-are very pale!” said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft,
-ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.
-
-“Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdánovna be sent for?” said one
-of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdánovna was a midwife from the
-neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last fortnight.)
-
-“Oh yes,” assented Princess Mary, “perhaps that’s it. I’ll go.
-Courage, my angel.” She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room.
-
-“Oh, no, no!” And besides the pallor and the physical suffering
-on the little princess’ face, an expression of childish fear of
-inevitable pain showed itself.
-
-“No, it’s only indigestion?... Say it’s only indigestion, say so,
-Mary! Say...” And the little princess began to cry capriciously like
-a suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some
-affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch Mary
-Bogdánovna.
-
-“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!” she heard as she left the room.
-
-The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small, plump
-white hands with an air of calm importance.
-
-“Mary Bogdánovna, I think it’s beginning!” said Princess Mary
-looking at the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.
-
-“Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess,” said Mary Bogdánovna, not
-hastening her steps. “You young ladies should not know anything about
-it.”
-
-“But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?” said the
-princess. (In accordance with Lise’s and Prince Andrew’s wishes they
-had sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at
-any moment.)
-
-“No matter, Princess, don’t be alarmed,” said Mary Bogdánovna.
-“We’ll manage very well without a doctor.”
-
-Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy
-being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the
-large leather sofa from Prince Andrew’s study into the bedroom. On
-their faces was a quiet and solemn look.
-
-Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the
-house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and watching
-what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with quiet steps in
-and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and turned away. She did
-not venture to ask any questions, and shut the door again, now sitting
-down in her easy chair, now taking her prayer book, now kneeling before
-the icon stand. To her surprise and distress she found that her prayers
-did not calm her excitement. Suddenly her door opened softly and her old
-nurse, Praskóvya Sávishna, who hardly ever came to that room as the
-old prince had forbidden it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl
-round her head.
-
-“I’ve come to sit with you a bit, Másha,” said the nurse, “and
-here I’ve brought the prince’s wedding candles to light before his
-saint, my angel,” she said with a sigh.
-
-“Oh, nurse, I’m so glad!”
-
-“God is merciful, birdie.”
-
-The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by the door
-with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began reading. Only
-when footsteps or voices were heard did they look at one another, the
-princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging. Everyone in the
-house was dominated by the same feeling that Princess Mary experienced
-as she sat in her room. But owing to the superstition that the fewer
-the people who know of it the less a woman in travail suffers, everyone
-tried to pretend not to know; no one spoke of it, but apart from the
-ordinary staid and respectful good manners habitual in the prince’s
-household, a common anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a
-consciousness that something great and mysterious was being accomplished
-at that moment made itself felt.
-
-There was no laughter in the maids’ large hall. In the men servants’
-hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs’
-quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old
-prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study and sent
-Tíkhon to ask Mary Bogdánovna what news.—“Say only that ‘the
-prince told me to ask,’ and come and tell me her answer.”
-
-“Inform the prince that labor has begun,” said Mary Bogdánovna,
-giving the messenger a significant look.
-
-Tíkhon went and told the prince.
-
-“Very good!” said the prince closing the door behind him, and
-Tíkhon did not hear the slightest sound from the study after that.
-
-After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and, seeing
-the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his perturbed
-face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed him on the
-shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles or saying why he
-had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world continued its course.
-Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of suspense and softening of
-heart in the presence of the unfathomable did not lessen but increased.
-No one slept.
-
-It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume its
-sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A relay
-of horses had been sent up the highroad to meet the German doctor from
-Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on horseback with lanterns
-were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the country road with its
-hollows and snow-covered pools of water.
-
-Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her
-luminous eyes fixed on her nurse’s wrinkled face (every line of which
-she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from under the
-kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin.
-
-Nurse Sávishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely
-hearing or understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds of
-times before: how the late princess had given birth to Princess Mary
-in Kishenëv with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead of a
-midwife.
-
-“God is merciful, doctors are never needed,” she said.
-
-Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the
-window, from which the double frame had been removed (by order of the
-prince, one window frame was removed in each room as soon as the larks
-returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the damask
-curtain flapping and blew out the candle with its chill, snowy draft.
-Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the stocking she was
-knitting, went to the window and leaning out tried to catch the open
-casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her kerchief and her loose
-locks of gray hair.
-
-“Princess, my dear, there’s someone driving up the avenue!” she
-said, holding the casement and not closing it. “With lanterns. Most
-likely the doctor.”
-
-“Oh, my God! thank God!” said Princess Mary. “I must go and meet
-him, he does not know Russian.”
-
-Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the newcomer.
-As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the window a carriage
-with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went out on the stairs. On
-a banister post stood a tallow candle which guttered in the draft. On
-the landing below, Philip, the footman, stood looking scared and holding
-another candle. Still lower, beyond the turn of the staircase, one
-could hear the footstep of someone in thick felt boots, and a voice that
-seemed familiar to Princess Mary was saying something.
-
-“Thank God!” said the voice. “And Father?”
-
-“Gone to bed,” replied the voice of Demyán the house steward, who
-was downstairs.
-
-Then the voice said something more, Demyán replied, and the steps in
-the felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more rapidly.
-
-“It’s Andrew!” thought Princess Mary. “No it can’t be, that
-would be too extraordinary,” and at the very moment she thought this,
-the face and figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of
-which covered with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman
-stood with the candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed and
-strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up the
-stairs and embraced his sister.
-
-“You did not get my letter?” he asked, and not waiting for a
-reply—which he would not have received, for the princess was unable to
-speak—he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the
-doctor who had entered the hall after him (they had met at the last post
-station), and again embraced his sister.
-
-“What a strange fate, Másha darling!” And having taken off his
-cloak and felt boots, he went to the little princess’ apartment.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on her
-head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair lay round
-her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy mouth with its
-downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince Andrew entered
-and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on which she was lying.
-Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear and excitement, rested
-on him without changing their expression. “I love you all and have
-done no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so? Help me!” her look
-seemed to say. She saw her husband, but did not realize the significance
-of his appearance before her now. Prince Andrew went round the sofa and
-kissed her forehead.
-
-“My darling!” he said—a word he had never used to her before.
-“God is merciful....”
-
-She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.
-
-“I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!”
-said her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did
-not realize that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with
-her sufferings or with their relief. The pangs began again and Mary
-Bogdánovna advised Prince Andrew to leave the room.
-
-The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess Mary,
-again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk broke
-off at every moment. They waited and listened.
-
-“Go, dear,” said Princess Mary.
-
-Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room next
-to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and became
-confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with his hands
-and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless, animal moans came
-through the door. Prince Andrew got up, went to the door, and tried to
-open it. Someone was holding it shut.
-
-“You can’t come in! You can’t!” said a terrified voice from
-within.
-
-He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more seconds
-went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek—it could not be hers, she
-could not scream like that—came from the bedroom. Prince Andrew ran to
-the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of an infant.
-
-“What have they taken a baby in there for?” thought Prince Andrew in
-the first second. “A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or
-is the baby born?”
-
-Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail; tears
-choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill he began to cry,
-sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his shirt sleeves
-tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling jaw, came out
-of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor gave him a
-bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman rushed out and
-seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the threshold. He went into
-his wife’s room. She was lying dead, in the same position he had seen
-her in five minutes before and, despite the fixed eyes and the pallor of
-the cheeks, the same expression was on her charming childlike face with
-its upper lip covered with tiny black hair.
-
-“I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you
-done to me?”—said her charming, pathetic, dead face.
-
-In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and squealed
-in Mary Bogdánovna’s trembling white hands.
-
-
-Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his father’s
-room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing close to
-the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed like a vise
-round his son’s neck, and without a word he began to sob like a child.
-
-
-Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew went
-up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss.
-And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes.
-“Ah, what have you done to me?” it still seemed to say, and Prince
-Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty
-of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He could not weep. The
-old man too came up and kissed the waxen little hands that lay quietly
-crossed one on the other on her breast, and to him, too, her face seemed
-to say: “Ah, what have you done to me, and why?” And at the sight
-the old man turned angrily away.
-
-
-Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas Andréevich
-was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her chin, while
-the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy’s little red and
-wrinkled soles and palms.
-
-His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of dropping
-him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and handed him over
-to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat in another room,
-faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned in the font, and awaited
-the termination of the ceremony. He looked up joyfully at the baby when
-the nurse brought it to him and nodded approval when she told him that
-the wax with the baby’s hair had not sunk in the font but had floated.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-Rostóv’s share in Dólokhov’s duel with Bezúkhov was hushed up by
-the efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks
-as he expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of
-Moscow. As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of the
-family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties. Dólokhov
-recovered, and Rostóv became very friendly with him during his
-convalescence. Dólokhov lay ill at his mother’s who loved him
-passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivánovna, who had grown fond of
-Rostóv for his friendship to her Fédya, often talked to him about her
-son.
-
-“Yes, Count,” she would say, “he is too noble and pure-souled for
-our present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like
-a reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it
-honorable, of Bezúkhov? And Fédya, with his noble spirit, loved him
-and even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg
-when they played some tricks on a policeman, didn’t they do it
-together? And there! Bezúkhov got off scotfree, while Fédya had to
-bear the whole burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go through!
-It’s true he has been reinstated, but how could they fail to do that?
-I think there were not many such gallant sons of the fatherland out
-there as he. And now—this duel! Have these people no feeling, or
-honor? Knowing him to be an only son, to challenge him and shoot so
-straight! It’s well God had mercy on us. And what was it for? Who
-doesn’t have intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I see
-things he should have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for months.
-And then to call him out, reckoning on Fédya not fighting because he
-owed him money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you understand
-Fédya, my dear count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond of you. Few
-people do understand him. He is such a lofty, heavenly soul!”
-
-Dólokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostóv in a way no
-one would have expected of him.
-
-“I know people consider me a bad man!” he said. “Let them! I
-don’t care a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love,
-I love so that I would give my life for them, and the others I’d
-throttle if they stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother,
-and two or three friends—you among them—and as for the rest I only
-care about them in so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of
-them are harmful, especially the women. Yes, dear boy,” he continued,
-“I have met loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met
-any women—countesses or cooks—who were not venal. I have not yet met
-that divine purity and devotion I look for in women. If I found such a
-one I’d give my life for her! But those!...” and he made a gesture
-of contempt. “And believe me, if I still value my life it is
-only because I still hope to meet such a divine creature, who will
-regenerate, purify, and elevate me. But you don’t understand it.”
-
-“Oh, yes, I quite understand,” answered Rostóv, who was under his
-new friend’s influence.
-
-In the autumn the Rostóvs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter
-Denísov also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the
-winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostóv spent in Moscow, was one of the
-happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas brought
-many young men to his parents’ house. Véra was a handsome girl
-of twenty; Sónya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening
-flower; Natásha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly
-amusing, now girlishly enchanting.
-
-At that time in the Rostóvs’ house there prevailed an amorous
-atmosphere characteristic of homes where there are very young and very
-charming girls. Every young man who came to the house—seeing those
-impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own
-happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the fitful
-bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly prattle of
-young girls ready for anything and full of hope—experienced the same
-feeling; sharing with the young folk of the Rostóvs’ household a
-readiness to fall in love and an expectation of happiness.
-
-Among the young men introduced by Rostóv one of the first was
-Dólokhov, whom everyone in the house liked except Natásha. She almost
-quarreled with her brother about him. She insisted that he was a bad
-man, and that in the duel with Bezúkhov, Pierre was right and Dólokhov
-wrong, and further that he was disagreeable and unnatural.
-
-“There’s nothing for me to understand,” she cried out with
-resolute self-will, “he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like
-your Denísov though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so
-you see I do understand. I don’t know how to put it... with this one
-everything is calculated, and I don’t like that. But Denísov...”
-
-“Oh, Denísov is quite different,” replied Nicholas, implying that
-even Denísov was nothing compared to Dólokhov—“you must understand
-what a soul there is in Dólokhov, you should see him with his mother.
-What a heart!”
-
-“Well, I don’t know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And
-do you know he has fallen in love with Sónya?”
-
-“What nonsense...”
-
-“I’m certain of it; you’ll see.”
-
-Natásha’s prediction proved true. Dólokhov, who did not usually care
-for the society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the
-question for whose sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon
-settled. He came because of Sónya. And Sónya, though she would never
-have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time Dólokhov
-appeared.
-
-Dólokhov often dined at the Rostóvs’, never missed a performance at
-which they were present, and went to Iogel’s balls for young people
-which the Rostóvs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sónya
-and looked at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his
-glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natásha blushed
-when they saw his looks.
-
-It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the irresistible
-influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved another.
-
-Rostóv noticed something new in Dólokhov’s relations with Sónya,
-but he did not explain to himself what these new relations were.
-“They’re always in love with someone,” he thought of Sónya and
-Natásha. But he was not as much at ease with Sónya and Dólokhov as
-before and was less frequently at home.
-
-In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war with
-Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders were
-given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the regular army,
-and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the militia. Everywhere
-Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow nothing but the coming war
-was talked of. For the Rostóv family the whole interest of these
-preparations for war lay in the fact that Nicholas would not hear of
-remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the termination of Denísov’s
-furlough after Christmas to return with him to their regiment. His
-approaching departure did not prevent his amusing himself, but rather
-gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the greater part of his time away
-from home, at dinners, parties, and balls.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing he had
-rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he and Denísov
-were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany. About twenty people
-were present, including Dólokhov and Denísov.
-
-Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous
-atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostóvs’ house as at
-this holiday time. “Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved!
-That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one
-thing we are interested in here,” said the spirit of the place.
-
-Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without
-visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he had been invited,
-returned home just before dinner. As soon as he entered he noticed and
-felt the tension of the amorous air in the house, and also noticed a
-curious embarrassment among some of those present. Sónya, Dólokhov,
-and the old countess were especially disturbed, and to a lesser degree
-Natásha. Nicholas understood that something must have happened between
-Sónya and Dólokhov before dinner, and with the kindly sensitiveness
-natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both at dinner. On
-that same evening there was to be one of the balls that Iogel (the
-dancing master) gave for his pupils during the holidays.
-
-“Nicholas, will you come to Iogel’s? Please do!” said Natásha.
-“He asked you, and Vasíli Dmítrich * is also going.”
-
- * Denísov.
-
-“Where would I not go at the countess’ command!” said Denísov,
-who at the Rostóvs’ had jocularly assumed the role of Natásha’s
-knight. “I’m even weady to dance the pas de châle.”
-
-“If I have time,” answered Nicholas. “But I promised the
-Arkhárovs; they have a party.”
-
-“And you?” he asked Dólokhov, but as soon as he had asked the
-question he noticed that it should not have been put.
-
-“Perhaps,” coldly and angrily replied Dólokhov, glancing at Sónya,
-and, scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given Pierre
-at the club dinner.
-
-“There is something up,” thought Nicholas, and he was further
-confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that Dólokhov left immediately
-after dinner. He called Natásha and asked her what was the matter.
-
-“And I was looking for you,” said Natásha running out to him. “I
-told you, but you would not believe it,” she said triumphantly. “He
-has proposed to Sónya!”
-
-Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sónya of late, something
-seemed to give way within him at this news. Dólokhov was a suitable and
-in some respects a brilliant match for the dowerless, orphan girl. From
-the point of view of the old countess and of society it was out of the
-question for her to refuse him. And therefore Nicholas’ first feeling
-on hearing the news was one of anger with Sónya.... He tried to say,
-“That’s capital; of course she’ll forget her childish promises
-and accept the offer,” but before he had time to say it Natásha began
-again.
-
-“And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!” adding, after a
-pause, “she told him she loved another.”
-
-“Yes, my Sónya could not have done otherwise!” thought Nicholas.
-
-“Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won’t change
-once she has said...”
-
-“And Mamma pressed her!” said Nicholas reproachfully.
-
-“Yes,” said Natásha. “Do you know, Nicholas—don’t be
-angry—but I know you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but
-I know for certain that you won’t marry her.”
-
-“Now you don’t know that at all!” said Nicholas. “But I must
-talk to her. What a darling Sónya is!” he added with a smile.
-
-“Ah, she is indeed a darling! I’ll send her to you.”
-
-And Natásha kissed her brother and ran away.
-
-A minute later Sónya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared
-look. Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the first
-time since his return that they had talked alone and about their love.
-
-“Sophie,” he began, timidly at first and then more and more
-boldly, “if you wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and
-advantageous match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend...”
-
-Sónya interrupted him.
-
-“I have already refused,” she said hurriedly.
-
-“If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I...”
-
-Sónya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look.
-
-“Nicholas, don’t tell me that!” she said.
-
-“No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to say
-it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole truth. I
-love you, and I think I love you more than anyone else....”
-
-“That is enough for me,” said Sónya, blushing.
-
-“No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in
-love again, though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship,
-confidence, and love as I have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does
-not wish it. In a word, I make no promise. And I beg you to consider
-Dólokhov’s offer,” he said, articulating his friend’s name with
-difficulty.
-
-“Don’t say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and
-always shall, and I want nothing more.”
-
-“You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of
-misleading you.”
-
-And Nicholas again kissed her hand.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-Iogel’s were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers
-as they watched their young people executing their newly learned steps,
-and so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced till they
-were ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and women who
-came to these balls with an air of condescension and found them most
-enjoyable. That year two marriages had come of these balls. The two
-pretty young Princesses Gorchakóv met suitors there and were married
-and so further increased the fame of these dances. What distinguished
-them from others was the absence of host or hostess and the presence of
-the good-natured Iogel, flying about like a feather and bowing according
-to the rules of his art, as he collected the tickets from all his
-visitors. There was the fact that only those came who wished to dance
-and amuse themselves as girls of thirteen and fourteen do who are
-wearing long dresses for the first time. With scarcely any exceptions
-they all were, or seemed to be, pretty—so rapturous were their smiles
-and so sparkling their eyes. Sometimes the best of the pupils, of whom
-Natásha, who was exceptionally graceful, was first, even danced the pas
-de châle, but at this last ball only the écossaise, the anglaise, and
-the mazurka, which was just coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had
-taken a ballroom in Bezúkhov’s house, and the ball, as everyone said,
-was a great success. There were many pretty girls and the Rostóv girls
-were among the prettiest. They were both particularly happy and gay.
-That evening, proud of Dólokhov’s proposal, her refusal, and her
-explanation with Nicholas, Sónya twirled about before she left home
-so that the maid could hardly get her hair plaited, and she was
-transparently radiant with impulsive joy.
-
-Natásha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real
-ball was even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with pink
-ribbons.
-
-Natásha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She
-was not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever
-person she happened to look at she was in love with for that moment.
-
-“Oh, how delightful it is!” she kept saying, running up to Sónya.
-
-Nicholas and Denísov were walking up and down, looking with kindly
-patronage at the dancers.
-
-“How sweet she is—she will be a weal beauty!” said Denísov.
-
-“Who?”
-
-“Countess Natásha,” answered Denísov.
-
-“And how she dances! What gwace!” he said again after a pause.
-
-“Who are you talking about?”
-
-“About your sister,” ejaculated Denísov testily.
-
-Rostóv smiled.
-
-“My dear count, you were one of my best pupils—you must dance,”
-said little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. “Look how many charming young
-ladies—” He turned with the same request to Denísov who was also a
-former pupil of his.
-
-“No, my dear fellow, I’ll be a wallflower,” said Denísov.
-“Don’t you wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?”
-
-“Oh no!” said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. “You were only
-inattentive, but you had talent—oh yes, you had talent!”
-
-The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not
-refuse Iogel and asked Sónya to dance. Denísov sat down by the old
-ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot, told
-them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the young
-people dancing, Iogel with Natásha, his pride and his best pupil, were
-the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with his little
-feet in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with Natásha, who,
-though shy, went on carefully executing her steps. Denísov did not
-take his eyes off her and beat time with his saber in a way that clearly
-indicated that if he was not dancing it was because he would not and not
-because he could not. In the middle of a figure he beckoned to Rostóv
-who was passing:
-
-“This is not at all the thing,” he said. “What sort of Polish
-mazuwka is this? But she does dance splendidly.”
-
-Knowing that Denísov had a reputation even in Poland for the masterly
-way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to Natásha:
-
-“Go and choose Denísov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!” he said.
-
-When it came to Natásha’s turn to choose a partner, she rose and,
-tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran
-timidly to the corner where Denísov sat. She saw that everybody was
-looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denísov was refusing
-though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.
-
-“Please, Vasíli Dmítrich,” Natásha was saying, “do come!”
-
-“Oh no, let me off, Countess,” Denísov replied.
-
-“Now then, Váska,” said Nicholas.
-
-“They coax me as if I were Váska the cat!” said Denísov jokingly.
-
-“I’ll sing for you a whole evening,” said Natásha.
-
-“Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!” said Denísov, and
-he unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his
-partner’s hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot,
-waiting for the beat. Only on horse back and in the mazurka was
-Denísov’s short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow
-he felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked sideways
-at his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly stamped with
-one foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew round the room
-taking his partner with him. He glided silently on one foot half across
-the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs was dashing straight at
-them, when suddenly, clinking his spurs and spreading out his legs,
-he stopped short on his heels, stood so a second, stamped on the spot
-clanking his spurs, whirled rapidly round, and, striking his left heel
-against his right, flew round again in a circle. Natásha guessed what
-he meant to do, and abandoning herself to him followed his lead hardly
-knowing how. First he spun her round, holding her now with his left, now
-with his right hand, then falling on one knee he twirled her round him,
-and again jumping up, dashed so impetuously forward that it seemed as if
-he would rush through the whole suite of rooms without drawing breath,
-and then he suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected
-steps. When at last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her
-chair, he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natásha
-did not even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement,
-smiling as if she did not recognize him.
-
-“What does this mean?” she brought out.
-
-Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka, everyone
-was delighted with Denísov’s skill, he was asked again and again as
-a partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about Poland and the
-good old days. Denísov, flushed after the mazurka and mopping himself
-with his handkerchief, sat down by Natásha and did not leave her for
-the rest of the evening.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-For two days after that Rostóv did not see Dólokhov at his own or at
-Dólokhov’s home: on the third day he received a note from him:
-
-As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know
-of, and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell supper
-tonight to my friends—come to the English Hotel.
-
-About ten o’clock Rostóv went to the English Hotel straight from the
-theater, where he had been with his family and Denísov. He was at once
-shown to the best room, which Dólokhov had taken for that evening. Some
-twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dólokhov sat between
-two candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper money, and he
-was keeping the bank. Rostóv had not seen him since his proposal and
-Sónya’s refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought of how they
-would meet.
-
-Dólokhov’s clear, cold glance met Rostóv as soon as he entered the
-door, as though he had long expected him.
-
-“It’s a long time since we met,” he said. “Thanks for coming.
-I’ll just finish dealing, and then Ilyúshka will come with his
-chorus.”
-
-“I called once or twice at your house,” said Rostóv, reddening.
-
-Dólokhov made no reply.
-
-“You may punt,” he said.
-
-Rostóv recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once had
-with Dólokhov. “None but fools trust to luck in play,” Dólokhov
-had then said.
-
-“Or are you afraid to play with me?” Dólokhov now asked as if
-guessing Rostóv’s thought.
-
-Beneath his smile Rostóv saw in him the mood he had shown at the club
-dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he had felt
-a need to escape from it by some strange, and usually cruel, action.
-
-Rostóv felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke with
-which to reply to Dólokhov’s words. But before he had thought of
-anything, Dólokhov, looking straight in his face, said slowly and
-deliberately so that everyone could hear:
-
-“Do you remember we had a talk about cards... ‘He’s a fool who
-trusts to luck, one should make certain,’ and I want to try.”
-
-“To try his luck or the certainty?” Rostóv asked himself.
-
-“Well, you’d better not play,” Dólokhov added, and springing a
-new pack of cards said: “Bank, gentlemen!”
-
-Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostóv sat down by his
-side and at first did not play. Dólokhov kept glancing at him.
-
-“Why don’t you play?” he asked.
-
-And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up a
-card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play.
-
-“I have no money with me,” he said.
-
-“I’ll trust you.”
-
-Rostóv staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and again
-lost. Dólokhov “killed,” that is, beat, ten cards of Rostóv’s
-running.
-
-“Gentlemen,” said Dólokhov after he had dealt for some time.
-“Please place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the
-reckoning.”
-
-One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.
-
-“Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I
-ask you to put the money on your cards,” replied Dólokhov. “Don’t
-stint yourself, we’ll settle afterwards,” he added, turning to
-Rostóv.
-
-The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.
-
-All Rostóv’s cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles scored
-up against him. He wrote “800 rubles” on a card, but while the
-waiter filled his glass he changed his mind and altered it to his usual
-stake of twenty rubles.
-
-“Leave it,” said Dólokhov, though he did not seem to be even
-looking at Rostóv, “you’ll win it back all the sooner. I lose to
-the others but win from you. Or are you afraid of me?” he asked again.
-
-Rostóv submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a seven
-of hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the floor. He
-well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the seven of hearts,
-on which with a broken bit of chalk he had written “800 rubles” in
-clear upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm champagne that was
-handed him, smiled at Dólokhov’s words, and with a sinking heart,
-waiting for a seven to turn up, gazed at Dólokhov’s hands which held
-the pack. Much depended on Rostóv’s winning or losing on that seven
-of hearts. On the previous Sunday the old count had given his son
-two thousand rubles, and though he always disliked speaking of money
-difficulties had told Nicholas that this was all he could let him have
-till May, and asked him to be more economical this time. Nicholas had
-replied that it would be more than enough for him and that he gave his
-word of honor not to take anything more till the spring. Now only twelve
-hundred rubles was left of that money, so that this seven of hearts
-meant for him not only the loss of sixteen hundred rubles, but the
-necessity of going back on his word. With a sinking heart he watched
-Dólokhov’s hands and thought, “Now then, make haste and let me have
-this card and I’ll take my cap and drive home to supper with Denísov,
-Natásha, and Sónya, and will certainly never touch a card again.” At
-that moment his home life, jokes with Pétya, talks with Sónya, duets
-with Natásha, piquet with his father, and even his comfortable bed
-in the house on the Povarskáya rose before him with such vividness,
-clearness, and charm that it seemed as if it were all a lost and
-unappreciated bliss, long past. He could not conceive that a stupid
-chance, letting the seven be dealt to the right rather than to the left,
-might deprive him of all this happiness, newly appreciated and newly
-illumined, and plunge him into the depths of unknown and undefined
-misery. That could not be, yet he awaited with a sinking heart the
-movement of Dólokhov’s hands. Those broad, reddish hands, with hairy
-wrists visible from under the shirt cuffs, laid down the pack and took
-up a glass and a pipe that were handed him.
-
-“So you are not afraid to play with me?” repeated Dólokhov, and as
-if about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in his
-chair, and began deliberately with a smile:
-
-“Yes, gentlemen, I’ve been told there’s a rumor going about Moscow
-that I’m a sharper, so I advise you to be careful.”
-
-“Come now, deal!” exclaimed Rostóv.
-
-“Oh, those Moscow gossips!” said Dólokhov, and he took up the cards
-with a smile.
-
-“Aah!” Rostóv almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The
-seven he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He had
-lost more than he could pay.
-
-“Still, don’t ruin yourself!” said Dólokhov with a side glance at
-Rostóv as he continued to deal.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-An hour and a half later most of the players were but little interested
-in their own play.
-
-The whole interest was concentrated on Rostóv. Instead of sixteen
-hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him,
-which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he vaguely
-supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it already
-exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dólokhov was no longer listening to
-stories or telling them, but followed every movement of Rostóv’s
-hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against him. He had
-decided to play until that score reached forty-three thousand. He
-had fixed on that number because forty-three was the sum of his and
-Sónya’s joint ages. Rostóv, leaning his head on both hands, sat at
-the table which was scrawled over with figures, wet with spilled wine,
-and littered with cards. One tormenting impression did not leave him:
-that those broad-boned reddish hands with hairy wrists visible from
-under the shirt sleeves, those hands which he loved and hated, held him
-in their power.
-
-“Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back’s
-impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or
-quits... it can’t be!... And why is he doing this to me?” Rostóv
-pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dólokhov refused to
-accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him, and at
-one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at the bridge
-over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came first to hand
-from the crumpled heap under the table would save him, now counted the
-cords on his coat and took a card with that number and tried staking the
-total of his losses on it, then he looked round for aid from the other
-players, or peered at the now cold face of Dólokhov and tried to read
-what was passing in his mind.
-
-“He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can’t want my
-ruin. Wasn’t he my friend? Wasn’t I fond of him? But it’s not his
-fault. What’s he to do if he has such luck?... And it’s not my fault
-either,” he thought to himself, “I have done nothing wrong. Have I
-killed anyone, or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a terrible
-misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little while ago I came to
-this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to buy that
-casket for Mamma’s name day and then going home. I was so happy, so
-free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I was! When did
-that end and when did this new, terrible state of things begin? What
-marked the change? I sat all the time in this same place at this table,
-chose and placed cards, and watched those broad-boned agile hands in the
-same way. When did it happen and what has happened? I am well and strong
-and still the same and in the same place. No, it can’t be! Surely it
-will all end in nothing!”
-
-He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not hot.
-His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its helpless
-efforts to seem calm.
-
-The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three thousand.
-Rostóv had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of which he
-meant to double the three thousand just put down to his score, when
-Dólokhov, slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside and began
-rapidly adding up the total of Rostóv’s debt, breaking the chalk as
-he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.
-
-“Supper, it’s time for supper! And here are the gypsies!”
-
-Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold outside
-and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas understood that it
-was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:
-
-“Well, won’t you go on? I had a splendid card all ready,” as if it
-were the fun of the game which interested him most.
-
-“It’s all up! I’m lost!” thought he. “Now a bullet through my
-brain—that’s all that’s left me!” And at the same time he said
-in a cheerful voice:
-
-“Come now, just this one more little card!”
-
-“All right!” said Dólokhov, having finished the addition. “All
-right! Twenty-one rubles,” he said, pointing to the figure twenty-one
-by which the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three thousand; and
-taking up a pack he prepared to deal. Rostóv submissively unbent the
-corner of his card and, instead of the six thousand he had intended,
-carefully wrote twenty-one.
-
-“It’s all the same to me,” he said. “I only want to see whether
-you will let me win this ten, or beat it.”
-
-Dólokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostóv detested at that
-moment those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy wrists,
-which held him in their power.... The ten fell to him.
-
-“You owe forty-three thousand, Count,” said Dólokhov, and
-stretching himself he rose from the table. “One does get tired sitting
-so long,” he added.
-
-“Yes, I’m tired too,” said Rostóv.
-
-Dólokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for him to
-jest.
-
-“When am I to receive the money, Count?”
-
-Rostóv, flushing, drew Dólokhov into the next room.
-
-“I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?” he said.
-
-“I say, Rostóv,” said Dólokhov clearly, smiling and looking
-Nicholas straight in the eyes, “you know the saying, ‘Lucky in love,
-unlucky at cards.’ Your cousin is in love with you, I know.”
-
-“Oh, it’s terrible to feel oneself so in this man’s power,”
-thought Rostóv. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father and
-mother by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be to
-escape it all, and felt that Dólokhov knew that he could save him from
-all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a cat does
-with a mouse.
-
-“Your cousin...” Dólokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted
-him.
-
-“My cousin has nothing to do with this and it’s not necessary to
-mention her!” he exclaimed fiercely.
-
-“Then when am I to have it?”
-
-“Tomorrow,” replied Rostóv and left the room.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-To say “tomorrow” and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult,
-but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father,
-confess and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word of
-honor, was terrible.
-
-At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after returning
-from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round the clavichord.
-As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that poetic atmosphere
-of love which pervaded the Rostóv household that winter and, now after
-Dólokhov’s proposal and Iogel’s ball, seemed to have grown thicker
-round Sónya and Natásha as the air does before a thunderstorm. Sónya
-and Natásha, in the light-blue dresses they had worn at the theater,
-looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing by the clavichord,
-happy and smiling. Véra was playing chess with Shinshín in the drawing
-room. The old countess, waiting for the return of her husband and son,
-sat playing patience with the old gentlewoman who lived in their house.
-Denísov, with sparkling eyes and ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord
-striking chords with his short fingers, his legs thrown back and his
-eyes rolling as he sang, with his small, husky, but true voice, some
-verses called “Enchantress,” which he had composed, and to which he
-was trying to fit music:
-
- Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre
- What magic power is this recalls me still?
- What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,
- What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?
-
-He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with his sparkling
-black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natásha.
-
-“Splendid! Excellent!” exclaimed Natásha. “Another verse,” she
-said, without noticing Nicholas.
-
-“Everything’s still the same with them,” thought Nicholas,
-glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Véra and his mother with
-the old lady.
-
-“Ah, and here’s Nicholas!” cried Natásha, running up to him.
-
-“Is Papa at home?” he asked.
-
-“I am so glad you’ve come!” said Natásha, without answering him.
-“We are enjoying ourselves! Vasíli Dmítrich is staying a day longer
-for my sake! Did you know?”
-
-“No, Papa is not back yet,” said Sónya.
-
-“Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!” called the old countess
-from the drawing room.
-
-Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently at her
-table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the dancing
-room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to persuade
-Natásha to sing.
-
-“All wight! All wight!” shouted Denísov. “It’s no good making
-excuses now! It’s your turn to sing the ba’cawolla—I entweat
-you!”
-
-The countess glanced at her silent son.
-
-“What is the matter?” she asked.
-
-“Oh, nothing,” said he, as if weary of being continually asked the
-same question. “Will Papa be back soon?”
-
-“I expect so.”
-
-“Everything’s the same with them. They know nothing about it! Where
-am I to go?” thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing room
-where the clavichord stood.
-
-Sónya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to
-Denísov’s favorite barcarolle. Natásha was preparing to sing.
-Denísov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.
-
-Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.
-
-“Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There’s
-nothing to be happy about!” thought he.
-
-Sónya struck the first chord of the prelude.
-
-“My God, I’m a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my brain
-is the only thing left me—not singing!” his thoughts ran on. “Go
-away? But where to? It’s one—let them sing!”
-
-He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denísov and the
-girls and avoiding their eyes.
-
-“Nikólenka, what is the matter?” Sónya’s eyes fixed on him
-seemed to ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.
-
-Nicholas turned away from her. Natásha too, with her quick instinct,
-had instantly noticed her brother’s condition. But, though she noticed
-it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from
-sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself
-as young people often do. “No, I am too happy now to spoil my
-enjoyment by sympathy with anyone’s sorrow,” she felt, and she said
-to herself: “No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as
-I am.”
-
-“Now, Sónya!” she said, going to the very middle of the room, where
-she considered the resonance was best.
-
-Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as ballet
-dancers do, Natásha, rising energetically from her heels to her toes,
-stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.
-
-“Yes, that’s me!” she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with
-which Denísov followed her.
-
-“And what is she so pleased about?” thought Nicholas, looking at his
-sister. “Why isn’t she dull and ashamed?”
-
-Natásha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose,
-her eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her
-surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may
-produce at the same intervals and hold for the same time, but which
-leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill
-you and make you weep.
-
-Natásha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing seriously,
-mainly because Denísov so delighted in her singing. She no longer sang
-as a child, there was no longer in her singing that comical, childish,
-painstaking effect that had been in it before; but she did not yet sing
-well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her said: “It is not trained,
-but it is a beautiful voice that must be trained.” Only they generally
-said this some time after she had finished singing. While that untrained
-voice, with its incorrect breathing and labored transitions, was
-sounding, even the connoisseurs said nothing, but only delighted in
-it and wished to hear it again. In her voice there was a virginal
-freshness, an unconsciousness of her own powers, and an as yet untrained
-velvety softness, which so mingled with her lack of art in singing that
-it seemed as if nothing in that voice could be altered without spoiling
-it.
-
-“What is this?” thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely
-opened eyes. “What has happened to her? How she is singing today!”
-And suddenly the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the
-next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world was divided into
-three beats: “Oh mio crudele affetto.”... One, two, three... one,
-two, three... One... “Oh mio crudele affetto.”... One, two, three...
-One. “Oh, this senseless life of ours!” thought Nicholas. “All
-this misery, and money, and Dólokhov, and anger, and honor—it’s all
-nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natásha, now then, dearest!
-Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She’s taken it! Thank
-God!” And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si
-he sung a second, a third below the high note. “Ah, God! How fine! Did
-I really take it? How fortunate!” he thought.
-
-Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was finest
-in Rostóv’s soul! And this something was apart from everything else
-in the world and above everything in the world. “What were losses, and
-Dólokhov, and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob
-and yet be happy....”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-It was long since Rostóv had felt such enjoyment from music as he
-did that day. But no sooner had Natásha finished her barcarolle than
-reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and went
-downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old count
-came in from his club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing him
-drive up, went to meet him.
-
-“Well—had a good time?” said the old count, smiling gaily and
-proudly at his son.
-
-Nicholas tried to say “Yes,” but could not: and he nearly burst into
-sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son’s
-condition.
-
-“Ah, it can’t be avoided!” thought Nicholas, for the first and
-last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him feel
-ashamed of himself, he said, as if merely asking his father to let him
-have the carriage to drive to town:
-
-“Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting. I
-need some money.”
-
-“Dear me!” said his father, who was in a specially good humor. “I
-told you it would not be enough. How much?”
-
-“Very much,” said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless
-smile, for which he was long unable to forgive himself, “I have lost a
-little, I mean a good deal, a great deal—forty three thousand.”
-
-“What! To whom?... Nonsense!” cried the count, suddenly reddening
-with an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.
-
-“I promised to pay tomorrow,” said Nicholas.
-
-“Well!...” said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking
-helplessly on the sofa.
-
-“It can’t be helped! It happens to everyone!” said the son, with
-a bold, free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as a
-worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his crime. He
-longed to kiss his father’s hands and kneel to beg his forgiveness,
-but said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it happens to
-everyone!
-
-The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son’s words and began
-bustlingly searching for something.
-
-“Yes, yes,” he muttered, “it will be difficult, I fear, difficult
-to raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?”
-
-And with a furtive glance at his son’s face, the count went out of the
-room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at all
-expected this.
-
-“Papa! Pa-pa!” he called after him, sobbing, “forgive me!” And
-seizing his father’s hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into
-tears.
-
-While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and
-daughter were having one not less important. Natásha came running to
-her mother, quite excited.
-
-“Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me...”
-
-“Made what?”
-
-“Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!” she exclaimed.
-
-The countess did not believe her ears. Denísov had proposed. To whom?
-To this chit of a girl, Natásha, who not so long ago was playing with
-dolls and who was still having lessons.
-
-“Don’t, Natásha! What nonsense!” she said, hoping it was a joke.
-
-“Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact,” said Natásha
-indignantly. “I come to ask you what to do, and you call it
-‘nonsense!’”
-
-The countess shrugged her shoulders.
-
-“If it is true that Monsieur Denísov has made you a proposal, tell
-him he is a fool, that’s all!”
-
-“No, he’s not a fool!” replied Natásha indignantly and seriously.
-
-“Well then, what do you want? You’re all in love nowadays. Well,
-if you are in love, marry him!” said the countess, with a laugh of
-annoyance. “Good luck to you!”
-
-“No, Mamma, I’m not in love with him, I suppose I’m not in love
-with him.”
-
-“Well then, tell him so.”
-
-“Mamma, are you cross? Don’t be cross, dear! Is it my fault?”
-
-“No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?”
-said the countess smiling.
-
-“No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It’s all very
-well for you,” said Natásha, with a responsive smile. “You should
-have seen how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came
-out accidently.”
-
-“Well, all the same, you must refuse him.”
-
-“No, I mustn’t. I am so sorry for him! He’s so nice.”
-
-“Well then, accept his offer. It’s high time for you to be
-married,” answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.
-
-“No, Mamma, but I’m so sorry for him. I don’t know how I’m to
-say it.”
-
-“And there’s nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself,”
-said the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this
-little Natásha as grown up.
-
-“No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you’ll listen
-at the door,” and Natásha ran across the drawing room to the dancing
-hall, where Denísov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord
-with his face in his hands.
-
-He jumped up at the sound of her light step.
-
-“Nataly,” he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, “decide my
-fate. It is in your hands.”
-
-“Vasíli Dmítrich, I’m so sorry for you!... No, but you are so
-nice... but it won’t do...not that... but as a friend, I shall always
-love you.”
-
-Denísov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did not
-understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this instant, they
-heard the quick rustle of the countess’ dress. She came up to them.
-
-“Vasíli Dmítrich, I thank you for the honor,” she said, with an
-embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denísov—“but my
-daughter is so young, and I thought that, as my son’s friend, you
-would have addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would not
-have obliged me to give this refusal.”
-
-“Countess...” said Denísov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face.
-He tried to say more, but faltered.
-
-Natásha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She began
-to sob aloud.
-
-“Countess, I have done w’ong,” Denísov went on in an unsteady
-voice, “but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family
-that I would give my life twice over...” He looked at the countess,
-and seeing her severe face said: “Well, good-by, Countess,” and
-kissing her hand, he left the room with quick resolute strides, without
-looking at Natásha.
-
-
-Next day Rostóv saw Denísov off. He did not wish to stay another
-day in Moscow. All Denísov’s Moscow friends gave him a farewell
-entertainment at the gypsies’, with the result that he had no
-recollection of how he was put in the sleigh or of the first three
-stages of his journey.
-
-After Denísov’s departure, Rostóv spent another fortnight in Moscow,
-without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could
-not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls’ room.
-
-Sónya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she
-wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her
-love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of
-her.
-
-He filled the girls’ albums with verses and music, and having at last
-sent Dólokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and received his
-receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking leave of any of
-his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which was already in Poland.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the
-Torzhók post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster
-would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,
-he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big
-feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.
-
-“Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and
-tea?” asked his valet.
-
-Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had
-begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same
-question—one so important that he took no notice of what went
-on around him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to
-Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at this
-station, but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it was a
-matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few hours or for
-the rest of his life.
-
-The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling
-Torzhók embroidery came into the room offering their services.
-Without changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his
-spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could go on
-living without having solved the problems that so absorbed him. He had
-been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day he returned from
-Sokólniki after the duel and had spent that first agonizing, sleepless
-night. But now, in the solitude of the journey, they seized him with
-special force. No matter what he thought about, he always returned to
-these same questions which he could not solve and yet could not cease to
-ask himself. It was as if the thread of the chief screw which held his
-life together were stripped, so that the screw could not get in or out,
-but went on turning uselessly in the same place.
-
-The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his excellency to
-wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let his excellency
-have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying and only wanted
-to get more money from the traveler.
-
-“Is this good or bad?” Pierre asked himself. “It is good for me,
-bad for another traveler, and for himself it’s unavoidable, because
-he needs money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a
-thrashing for letting a private traveler have the courier horses.
-But the officer thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as
-possible. And I,” continued Pierre, “shot Dólokhov because I
-considered myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they
-considered him a criminal, and a year later they executed those who
-executed him—also for some reason. What is bad? What is good? What
-should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am I?
-What is life, and what is death? What power governs all?”
-
-There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that
-not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was:
-“You’ll die and all will end. You’ll die and know all, or cease
-asking.” But dying was also dreadful.
-
-The Torzhók peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering her
-wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. “I have hundreds of
-rubles I don’t know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered
-cloak looking timidly at me,” he thought. “And what does she
-want the money for? As if that money could add a hair’s breadth to
-happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me
-less a prey to evil and death?—death which ends all and must come
-today or tomorrow—at any rate, in an instant as compared with
-eternity.” And again he twisted the screw with the stripped thread,
-and again it turned uselessly in the same place.
-
-His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters, by
-Madame de Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous
-struggles of a certain Emilie de Mansfeld. “And why did she resist
-her seducer when she loved him?” he thought. “God could not have put
-into her heart an impulse that was against His will. My wife—as she
-once was—did not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has been
-found out, nothing discovered,” Pierre again said to himself. “All
-we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of human
-wisdom.”
-
-Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and
-repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre
-found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.
-
-“I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this
-gentleman,” said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another
-traveler, also detained for lack of horses.
-
-The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old
-man, with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite
-grayish color.
-
-Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a bed that
-had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the newcomer, who,
-with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off his wraps with the
-aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With a pair of felt boots
-on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn, nankeen-covered, sheepskin
-coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa, leaned back his big head with
-its broad temples and close-cropped hair, and looked at Bezúkhov. The
-stern, shrewd, and penetrating expression of that look struck Pierre. He
-felt a wish to speak to the stranger, but by the time he had made up his
-mind to ask him a question about the roads, the traveler had closed his
-eyes. His shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of
-them Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a
-death’s head. The stranger sat without stirring, either resting or, as
-it seemed to Pierre, sunk in profound and calm meditation. His servant
-was also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache,
-evidently not because he was shaven but because they had never grown.
-This active old servant was unpacking the traveler’s canteen and
-preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything was
-ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled a
-tumbler with tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to whom
-he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the
-need, even the inevitability, of entering into conversation with this
-stranger.
-
-The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down, * with an
-unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be
-wanted.
-
- * To indicate he did not want more tea.
-
-“No. Give me the book,” said the stranger.
-
-The servant handed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional work,
-and the traveler became absorbed in it. Pierre looked at him. All at
-once the stranger closed the book, putting in a marker, and again,
-leaning with his arms on the back of the sofa, sat in his former
-position with his eyes shut. Pierre looked at him and had not time
-to turn away when the old man, opening his eyes, fixed his steady and
-severe gaze straight on Pierre’s face.
-
-Pierre felt confused and wished to avoid that look, but the bright old
-eyes attracted him irresistibly.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-“I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezúkhov, if I am not
-mistaken,” said the stranger in a deliberate and loud voice.
-
-Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his spectacles.
-
-“I have heard of you, my dear sir,” continued the stranger, “and
-of your misfortune.” He seemed to emphasize the last word, as if to
-say—“Yes, misfortune! Call it what you please, I know that what
-happened to you in Moscow was a misfortune.”—“I regret it very
-much, my dear sir.”
-
-Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from the bed, bent
-forward toward the old man with a forced and timid smile.
-
-“I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir, but for
-greater reasons.”
-
-He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on the sofa by way
-of inviting the other to take a seat beside him. Pierre felt reluctant
-to enter into conversation with this old man, but, submitting to him
-involuntarily, came up and sat down beside him.
-
-“You are unhappy, my dear sir,” the stranger continued. “You
-are young and I am old. I should like to help you as far as lies in my
-power.”
-
-“Oh, yes!” said Pierre, with a forced smile. “I am very grateful
-to you. Where are you traveling from?”
-
-The stranger’s face was not genial, it was even cold and severe, but
-in spite of this, both the face and words of his new acquaintance were
-irresistibly attractive to Pierre.
-
-“But if for any reason you don’t feel inclined to talk to me,”
-said the old man, “say so, my dear sir.” And he suddenly smiled, in
-an unexpected and tenderly paternal way.
-
-“Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to make your
-acquaintance,” said Pierre. And again, glancing at the stranger’s
-hands, he looked more closely at the ring, with its skull—a Masonic
-sign.
-
-“Allow me to ask,” he said, “are you a Mason?”
-
-“Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons,” said the
-stranger, looking deeper and deeper into Pierre’s eyes. “And in
-their name and my own I hold out a brotherly hand to you.”
-
-“I am afraid,” said Pierre, smiling, and wavering between the
-confidence the personality of the Freemason inspired in him and his own
-habit of ridiculing the Masonic beliefs—“I am afraid I am very far
-from understanding—how am I to put it?—I am afraid my way of looking
-at the world is so opposed to yours that we shall not understand one
-another.”
-
-“I know your outlook,” said the Mason, “and the view of life you
-mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts,
-is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit
-of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if I
-had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of life is a
-regrettable delusion.”
-
-“Just as I may suppose you to be deluded,” said Pierre, with a faint
-smile.
-
-“I should never dare to say that I know the truth,” said the Mason,
-whose words struck Pierre more and more by their precision and firmness.
-“No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone
-with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our
-forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be
-a worthy dwelling place of the Great God,” he added, and closed his
-eyes.
-
-“I ought to tell you that I do not believe... do not believe in
-God,” said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort, feeling it
-essential to speak the whole truth.
-
-The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man with
-millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he, poor
-man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy.
-
-“Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir,” said the Mason. “You
-cannot know Him. You do not know Him and that is why you are unhappy.”
-
-“Yes, yes, I am unhappy,” assented Pierre. “But what am I to
-do?”
-
-“You know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very unhappy. You do
-not know Him, but He is here, He is in me, He is in my words, He is in
-thee, and even in those blasphemous words thou hast just uttered!”
-pronounced the Mason in a stern and tremulous voice.
-
-He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm himself.
-
-“If He were not,” he said quietly, “you and I would not be
-speaking of Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we speaking? Whom
-hast thou denied?” he suddenly asked with exulting austerity and
-authority in his voice. “Who invented Him, if He did not exist? Whence
-came thy conception of the existence of such an incomprehensible Being?
-didst thou, and why did the whole world, conceive the idea of the
-existence of such an incomprehensible Being, a Being all-powerful,
-eternal, and infinite in all His attributes?...”
-
-He stopped and remained silent for a long time.
-
-Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence.
-
-“He exists, but to understand Him is hard,” the Mason began again,
-looking not at Pierre but straight before him, and turning the leaves
-of his book with his old hands which from excitement he could not keep
-still. “If it were a man whose existence thou didst doubt I could
-bring him to thee, could take him by the hand and show him to thee. But
-how can I, an insignificant mortal, show His omnipotence, His infinity,
-and all His mercy to one who is blind, or who shuts his eyes that he may
-not see or understand Him and may not see or understand his own vileness
-and sinfulness?” He paused again. “Who art thou? Thou dreamest that
-thou art wise because thou couldst utter those blasphemous words,” he
-went on, with a somber and scornful smile. “And thou art more foolish
-and unreasonable than a little child, who, playing with the parts of a
-skillfully made watch, dares to say that, as he does not understand
-its use, he does not believe in the master who made it. To know Him is
-hard.... For ages, from our forefather Adam to our own day, we labor to
-attain that knowledge and are still infinitely far from our aim; but
-in our lack of understanding we see only our weakness and His
-greatness....”
-
-Pierre listened with swelling heart, gazing into the Mason’s face with
-shining eyes, not interrupting or questioning him, but believing with
-his whole soul what the stranger said. Whether he accepted the wise
-reasoning contained in the Mason’s words, or believed as a child
-believes, in the speaker’s tone of conviction and earnestness, or
-the tremor of the speaker’s voice—which sometimes almost broke—or
-those brilliant aged eyes grown old in this conviction, or the calm
-firmness and certainty of his vocation, which radiated from his whole
-being (and which struck Pierre especially by contrast with his own
-dejection and hopelessness)—at any rate, Pierre longed with his whole
-soul to believe and he did believe, and felt a joyful sense of comfort,
-regeneration, and return to life.
-
-“He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life,” said the
-Mason.
-
-“I do not understand,” said Pierre, feeling with dismay doubts
-reawakening. He was afraid of any want of clearness, any weakness, in
-the Mason’s arguments; he dreaded not to be able to believe in him.
-“I don’t understand,” he said, “how it is that the mind of man
-cannot attain the knowledge of which you speak.”
-
-The Mason smiled with his gentle fatherly smile.
-
-“The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish
-to imbibe,” he said. “Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure
-vessel and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of myself
-can I retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive.”
-
-“Yes, yes, that is so,” said Pierre joyfully.
-
-“The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those
-worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into
-which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one.
-The highest wisdom has but one science—the science of the whole—the
-science explaining the whole creation and man’s place in it. To
-receive that science it is necessary to purify and renew one’s inner
-self, and so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to
-perfect one’s self. And to attain this end, we have the light called
-conscience that God has implanted in our souls.”
-
-“Yes, yes,” assented Pierre.
-
-“Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit, and ask
-thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained
-relying on reason only? What art thou? You are young, you are rich, you
-are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all these
-good gifts? Are you content with yourself and with your life?”
-
-“No, I hate my life,” Pierre muttered, wincing.
-
-“Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself; and as thou art
-purified, thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life, my dear sir.
-How have you spent it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, receiving
-everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have become
-the possessor of wealth. How have you used it? What have you done
-for your neighbor? Have you ever thought of your tens of thousands
-of slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally? No! You have
-profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That is what you have
-done. Have you chosen a post in which you might be of service to your
-neighbor? No! You have spent your life in idleness. Then you married, my
-dear sir—took on yourself responsibility for the guidance of a young
-woman; and what have you done? You have not helped her to find the way
-of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an abyss of deceit and
-misery. A man offended you and you shot him, and you say you do not
-know God and hate your life. There is nothing strange in that, my dear
-sir!”
-
-After these words, the Mason, as if tired by his long discourse, again
-leaned his arms on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Pierre
-looked at that aged, stern, motionless, almost lifeless face and moved
-his lips without uttering a sound. He wished to say, “Yes, a vile,
-idle, vicious life!” but dared not break the silence.
-
-The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and called his
-servant.
-
-“How about the horses?” he asked, without looking at Pierre.
-
-“The exchange horses have just come,” answered the servant. “Will
-you not rest here?”
-
-“No, tell them to harness.”
-
-“Can he really be going away leaving me alone without having told me
-all, and without promising to help me?” thought Pierre, rising with
-downcast head; and he began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at
-the Mason. “Yes, I never thought of it, but I have led a contemptible
-and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not want to,”
-thought Pierre. “But this man knows the truth and, if he wished to,
-could disclose it to me.”
-
-Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare to. The
-traveler, having packed his things with his practiced hands, began
-fastening his coat. When he had finished, he turned to Bezúkhov, and
-said in a tone of indifferent politeness:
-
-“Where are you going to now, my dear sir?”
-
-“I?... I’m going to Petersburg,” answered Pierre, in a childlike,
-hesitating voice. “I thank you. I agree with all you have said. But
-do not suppose me to be so bad. With my whole soul I wish to be what you
-would have me be, but I have never had help from anyone.... But it is
-I, above all, who am to blame for everything. Help me, teach me, and
-perhaps I may...”
-
-Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away.
-
-The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently considering.
-
-“Help comes from God alone,” he said, “but such measure of help as
-our Order can bestow it will render you, my dear sir. You are going to
-Petersburg. Hand this to Count Willarski” (he took out his notebook
-and wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded in four).
-“Allow me to give you a piece of advice. When you reach the capital,
-first of all devote some time to solitude and self-examination and do
-not resume your former way of life. And now I wish you a good journey,
-my dear sir,” he added, seeing that his servant had entered... “and
-success.”
-
-The traveler was Joseph Alexéevich Bazdéev, as Pierre saw from the
-postmaster’s book. Bazdéev had been one of the best-known Freemasons
-and Martinists, even in Novíkov’s time. For a long while after he had
-gone, Pierre did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and down
-the room, pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous sense
-of beginning anew pictured to himself the blissful, irreproachable,
-virtuous future that seemed to him so easy. It seemed to him that he had
-been vicious only because he had somehow forgotten how good it is to
-be virtuous. Not a trace of his former doubts remained in his soul. He
-firmly believed in the possibility of the brotherhood of men united in
-the aim of supporting one another in the path of virtue, and that is how
-Freemasonry presented itself to him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his arrival,
-he went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas à Kempis, whose
-book had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing he continually
-realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto unknown to him,
-of believing in the possibility of attaining perfection, and in the
-possibility of active brotherly love among men, which Joseph Alexéevich
-had revealed to him. A week after his arrival, the young Polish count,
-Willarski, whom Pierre had known slightly in Petersburg society, came
-into his room one evening in the official and ceremonious manner in
-which Dólokhov’s second had called on him, and, having closed the
-door behind him and satisfied himself that there was nobody else in the
-room, addressed Pierre.
-
-“I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count,” he
-said without sitting down. “A person of very high standing in our
-Brotherhood has made application for you to be received into our Order
-before the usual term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I
-consider it a sacred duty to fulfill that person’s wishes. Do you wish
-to enter the Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?”
-
-The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always before met
-at balls, amiably smiling in the society of the most brilliant women,
-surprised Pierre.
-
-“Yes, I do wish it,” said he.
-
-Willarski bowed his head.
-
-“One more question, Count,” he said, “which I beg you to answer
-in all sincerity—not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you
-renounced your former convictions—do you believe in God?”
-
-Pierre considered.
-
-“Yes... yes, I believe in God,” he said.
-
-“In that case...” began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted him.
-
-“Yes, I do believe in God,” he repeated.
-
-“In that case we can go,” said Willarski. “My carriage is at your
-service.”
-
-Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre’s inquiries as
-to what he must do and how he should answer, Willarski only replied that
-brothers more worthy than he would test him and that Pierre had only to
-tell the truth.
-
-Having entered the courtyard of a large house where the Lodge had its
-headquarters, and having ascended a dark staircase, they entered a small
-well-lit anteroom where they took off their cloaks without the aid of
-a servant. From there they passed into another room. A man in strange
-attire appeared at the door. Willarski, stepping toward him, said
-something to him in French in an undertone and then went up to a small
-wardrobe in which Pierre noticed garments such as he had never seen
-before. Having taken a kerchief from the cupboard, Willarski bound
-Pierre’s eyes with it and tied it in a knot behind, catching some
-hairs painfully in the knot. Then he drew his face down, kissed him, and
-taking him by the hand led him forward. The hairs tied in the knot hurt
-Pierre and there were lines of pain on his face and a shamefaced smile.
-His huge figure, with arms hanging down and with a puckered, though
-smiling face, moved after Willarski with uncertain, timid steps.
-
-Having led him about ten paces, Willarski stopped.
-
-“Whatever happens to you,” he said, “you must bear it all manfully
-if you have firmly resolved to join our Brotherhood.” (Pierre nodded
-affirmatively.) “When you hear a knock at the door, you will uncover
-your eyes,” added Willarski. “I wish you courage and success,”
-and, pressing Pierre’s hand, he went out.
-
-Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once or twice
-he shrugged his shoulders and raised his hand to the kerchief, as if
-wishing to take it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent
-with his eyes bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb,
-his legs almost gave way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He
-experienced a variety of most complex sensations. He felt afraid of what
-would happen to him and still more afraid of showing his fear. He felt
-curious to know what was going to happen and what would be revealed to
-him; but most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had come when he
-would at last start on that path of regeneration and on the actively
-virtuous life of which he had been dreaming since he met Joseph
-Alexéevich. Loud knocks were heard at the door. Pierre took the bandage
-off his eyes and glanced around him. The room was in black darkness,
-only a small lamp was burning inside something white. Pierre went nearer
-and saw that the lamp stood on a black table on which lay an open book.
-The book was the Gospel, and the white thing with the lamp inside was a
-human skull with its cavities and teeth. After reading the first words
-of the Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with
-God,” Pierre went round the table and saw a large open box filled
-with something. It was a coffin with bones inside. He was not at all
-surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter on an entirely new life quite
-unlike the old one, he expected everything to be unusual, even more
-unusual than what he was seeing. A skull, a coffin, the Gospel—it
-seemed to him that he had expected all this and even more. Trying
-to stimulate his emotions he looked around. “God, death, love, the
-brotherhood of man,” he kept saying to himself, associating these
-words with vague yet joyful ideas. The door opened and someone came in.
-
-By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed, he
-saw a rather short man. Having evidently come from the light into the
-darkness, the man paused, then moved with cautious steps toward the
-table and placed on it his small leather-gloved hands.
-
-This short man had on a white leather apron which covered his chest and
-part of his legs; he had on a kind of necklace above which rose a high
-white ruffle, outlining his rather long face which was lit up from
-below.
-
-“For what have you come hither?” asked the newcomer, turning in
-Pierre’s direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. “Why have
-you, who do not believe in the truth of the light and who have not
-seen the light, come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue,
-enlightenment?”
-
-At the moment the door opened and the stranger came in, Pierre felt a
-sense of awe and veneration such as he had experienced in his boyhood at
-confession; he felt himself in the presence of one socially a complete
-stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of man. With bated
-breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor (by which name the
-brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the Brotherhood was
-known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor a man he knew,
-Smolyanínov, and it mortified him to think that the newcomer was an
-acquaintance—he wished him simply a brother and a virtuous instructor.
-For a long time he could not utter a word, so that the Rhetor had to
-repeat his question.
-
-“Yes... I... I... desire regeneration,” Pierre uttered with
-difficulty.
-
-“Very well,” said Smolyanínov, and went on at once: “Have you any
-idea of the means by which our holy Order will help you to reach your
-aim?” said he quietly and quickly.
-
-“I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration,” said Pierre,
-with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his
-excitement and to being unaccustomed to speak of abstract matters in
-Russian.
-
-“What is your conception of Freemasonry?”
-
-“I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men who
-have virtuous aims,” said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the inadequacy
-of his words for the solemnity of the moment, as he spoke. “I
-imagine...”
-
-“Good!” said the Rhetor quickly, apparently satisfied with
-this answer. “Have you sought for means of attaining your aim in
-religion?”
-
-“No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it,” said Pierre,
-so softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked him what he was
-saying. “I have been an atheist,” answered Pierre.
-
-“You are seeking for truth in order to follow its laws in your life,
-therefore you seek wisdom and virtue. Is that not so?” said the
-Rhetor, after a moment’s pause.
-
-“Yes, yes,” assented Pierre.
-
-The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands on his breast,
-and began to speak.
-
-“Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order,” he said,
-“and if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood
-with profit. The first and chief object of our Order, the foundation on
-which it rests and which no human power can destroy, is the preservation
-and handing on to posterity of a certain important mystery... which
-has come down to us from the remotest ages, even from the first man—a
-mystery on which perhaps the fate of mankind depends. But since this
-mystery is of such a nature that nobody can know or use it unless he be
-prepared by long and diligent self-purification, not everyone can hope
-to attain it quickly. Hence we have a secondary aim, that of preparing
-our members as much as possible to reform their hearts, to purify and
-enlighten their minds, by means handed on to us by tradition from those
-who have striven to attain this mystery, and thereby to render them
-capable of receiving it.
-
-“By purifying and regenerating our members we try, thirdly, to improve
-the whole human race, offering it in our members an example of piety
-and virtue, and thereby try with all our might to combat the evil which
-sways the world. Think this over and I will come to you again.”
-
-“To combat the evil which sways the world...” Pierre repeated, and a
-mental image of his future activity in this direction rose in his mind.
-He imagined men such as he had himself been a fortnight ago, and he
-addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself
-vicious and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and deed,
-imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the three
-objects mentioned by the Rhetor, this last, that of improving mankind,
-especially appealed to Pierre. The important mystery mentioned by the
-Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem to him essential,
-and the second aim, that of purifying and regenerating himself, did not
-much interest him because at that moment he felt with delight that he
-was already perfectly cured of his former faults and was ready for all
-that was good.
-
-Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the seeker of the
-seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon’s temple,
-which every Freemason should cultivate in himself. These virtues were:
-1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order. 2. Obedience to
-those of higher ranks in the Order. 3. Morality. 4. Love of mankind. 5.
-Courage. 6. Generosity. 7. The love of death.
-
-“In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of death,” the
-Rhetor said, “to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but
-as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue
-from this distressful life, and leads it to its place of recompense and
-peace.”
-
-“Yes, that must be so,” thought Pierre, when after these words the
-Rhetor went away, leaving him to solitary meditation. “It must be so,
-but I am still so weak that I love my life, the meaning of which is only
-now gradually opening before me.” But five of the other virtues which
-Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt already in his
-soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind, and especially
-obedience—which did not even seem to him a virtue, but a joy. (He now
-felt so glad to be free from his own lawlessness and to submit his will
-to those who knew the indubitable truth.) He forgot what the seventh
-virtue was and could not recall it.
-
-The third time the Rhetor came back more quickly and asked Pierre
-whether he was still firm in his intention and determined to submit to
-all that would be required of him.
-
-“I am ready for everything,” said Pierre.
-
-“I must also inform you,” said the Rhetor, “that our Order
-delivers its teaching not in words only but also by other means, which
-may perhaps have a stronger effect on the sincere seeker after wisdom
-and virtue than mere words. This chamber with what you see therein
-should already have suggested to your heart, if it is sincere, more than
-words could do. You will perhaps also see in your further initiation a
-like method of enlightenment. Our Order imitates the ancient societies
-that explained their teaching by hieroglyphics. A hieroglyph,” said
-the Rhetor, “is an emblem of something not cognizable by the senses
-but which possesses qualities resembling those of the symbol.”
-
-Pierre knew very well what a hieroglyph was, but dared not speak. He
-listened to the Rhetor in silence, feeling from all he said that his
-ordeal was about to begin.
-
-“If you are resolved, I must begin your initiation,” said the Rhetor
-coming closer to Pierre. “In token of generosity I ask you to give me
-all your valuables.”
-
-“But I have nothing here,” replied Pierre, supposing that he was
-asked to give up all he possessed.
-
-“What you have with you: watch, money, rings....”
-
-Pierre quickly took out his purse and watch, but could not manage for
-some time to get the wedding ring off his fat finger. When that had been
-done, the Rhetor said:
-
-“In token of obedience, I ask you to undress.”
-
-Pierre took off his coat, waistcoat, and left boot according to the
-Rhetor’s instructions. The Mason drew the shirt back from Pierre’s
-left breast, and stooping down pulled up the left leg of his trousers
-to above the knee. Pierre hurriedly began taking off his right boot also
-and was going to tuck up the other trouser leg to save this stranger the
-trouble, but the Mason told him that was not necessary and gave him
-a slipper for his left foot. With a childlike smile of embarrassment,
-doubt, and self-derision, which appeared on his face against his will,
-Pierre stood with his arms hanging down and legs apart, before his
-brother Rhetor, and awaited his further commands.
-
-“And now, in token of candor, I ask you to reveal to me your chief
-passion,” said the latter.
-
-“My passion! I have had so many,” replied Pierre.
-
-“That passion which more than all others caused you to waver on the
-path of virtue,” said the Mason.
-
-Pierre paused, seeking a reply.
-
-“Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Irritability? Anger? Women?”
-He went over his vices in his mind, not knowing to which of them to give
-the pre-eminence.
-
-“Women,” he said in a low, scarcely audible voice.
-
-The Mason did not move and for a long time said nothing after this
-answer. At last he moved up to Pierre and, taking the kerchief that lay
-on the table, again bound his eyes.
-
-“For the last time I say to you—turn all your attention upon
-yourself, put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness, not in
-passion but in your own heart. The source of blessedness is not without
-us but within....”
-
-Pierre had already long been feeling in himself that refreshing source
-of blessedness which now flooded his heart with glad emotion.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch Pierre, not
-the Rhetor but Pierre’s sponsor, Willarski, whom he recognized by his
-voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his resolution Pierre
-replied: “Yes, yes, I agree,” and with a beaming, childlike smile,
-his fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and timidly in one slippered
-and one booted foot, he advanced, while Willarski held a sword to his
-bare chest. He was conducted from that room along passages that turned
-backwards and forwards and was at last brought to the doors of the
-Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was answered by the Masonic knock with
-mallets, the doors opened before them. A bass voice (Pierre was still
-blindfolded) questioned him as to who he was, when and where he was
-born, and so on. Then he was again led somewhere still blindfolded,
-and as they went along he was told allegories of the toils of his
-pilgrimage, of holy friendship, of the Eternal Architect of the
-universe, and of the courage with which he should endure toils and
-dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre noticed that he was spoken
-of now as the “Seeker,” now as the “Sufferer,” and now as the
-“Postulant,” to the accompaniment of various knockings with
-mallets and swords. As he was being led up to some object he noticed a
-hesitation and uncertainty among his conductors. He heard those around
-him disputing in whispers and one of them insisting that he should be
-led along a certain carpet. After that they took his right hand, placed
-it on something, and told him to hold a pair of compasses to his left
-breast with the other hand and to repeat after someone who read aloud
-an oath of fidelity to the laws of the Order. The candles were then
-extinguished and some spirit lighted, as Pierre knew by the smell, and
-he was told that he would now see the lesser light. The bandage was
-taken off his eyes and, by the faint light of the burning spirit,
-Pierre, as in a dream, saw several men standing before him, wearing
-aprons like the Rhetor’s and holding swords in their hands pointed at
-his breast. Among them stood a man whose white shirt was stained with
-blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved forward with his breast toward the
-swords, meaning them to pierce it. But the swords were drawn back from
-him and he was at once blindfolded again.
-
-“Now thou hast seen the lesser light,” uttered a voice. Then the
-candles were relit and he was told that he would see the full light; the
-bandage was again removed and more than ten voices said together: “Sic
-transit gloria mundi.”
-
-Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the room
-and at the people in it. Round a long table covered with black sat some
-twelve men in garments like those he had already seen. Some of them
-Pierre had met in Petersburg society. In the President’s chair sat a
-young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from his
-neck. On his right sat the Italian abbé whom Pierre had met at
-Anna Pávlovna’s two years before. There were also present a very
-distinguished dignitary and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the
-Kurágins’. All maintained a solemn silence, listening to the words
-of the President, who held a mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was
-a star-shaped light. At one side of the table was a small carpet with
-various figures worked upon it, at the other was something resembling an
-altar on which lay a Testament and a skull. Round it stood seven large
-candlesticks like those used in churches. Two of the brothers led Pierre
-up to the altar, placed his feet at right angles, and bade him lie down,
-saying that he must prostrate himself at the Gates of the Temple.
-
-“He must first receive the trowel,” whispered one of the brothers.
-
-“Oh, hush, please!” said another.
-
-Pierre, perplexed, looked round with his shortsighted eyes without
-obeying, and suddenly doubts arose in his mind. “Where am I? What am
-I doing? Aren’t they laughing at me? Shan’t I be ashamed to remember
-this?” But these doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at
-the serious faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone
-through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He was aghast
-at his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling,
-prostrated himself before the Gates of the Temple. And really, the
-feeling of devotion returned to him even more strongly than before. When
-he had lain there some time, he was told to get up, and a white leather
-apron, such as the others wore, was put on him: he was given a trowel
-and three pairs of gloves, and then the Grand Master addressed him. He
-told him that he should try to do nothing to stain the whiteness of that
-apron, which symbolized strength and purity; then of the unexplained
-trowel, he told him to toil with it to cleanse his own heart from vice,
-and indulgently to smooth with it the heart of his neighbor. As to the
-first pair of gloves, a man’s, he said that Pierre could not know
-their meaning but must keep them. The second pair of man’s gloves
-he was to wear at the meetings, and finally of the third, a pair of
-women’s gloves, he said: “Dear brother, these woman’s gloves are
-intended for you too. Give them to the woman whom you shall honor most
-of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity of heart to her whom
-you select to be your worthy helpmeet in Masonry.” And after a pause,
-he added: “But beware, dear brother, that these gloves do not deck
-hands that are unclean.” While the Grand Master said these last words
-it seemed to Pierre that he grew embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still
-more confused, blushed like a child till tears came to his eyes, began
-looking about him uneasily, and an awkward pause followed.
-
-This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led Pierre up to the
-rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation of
-all the figures on it: the sun, the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a
-trowel, a rough stone and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows, and
-so on. Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs of
-the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted to sit down.
-The Grand Master began reading the statutes. They were very long, and
-Pierre, from joy, agitation, and embarrassment, was not in a state to
-understand what was being read. He managed to follow only the last words
-of the statutes and these remained in his mind.
-
-“In our temples we recognize no other distinctions,” read the Grand
-Master, “but those between virtue and vice. Beware of making any
-distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother’s aid
-whoever he may be, exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that falleth,
-never bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and courteous.
-Kindle in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share thy happiness with thy
-neighbor, and may envy never dim the purity of that bliss. Forgive thy
-enemy, do not avenge thyself except by doing him good. Thus fulfilling
-the highest law thou shalt regain traces of the ancient dignity which
-thou hast lost.”
-
-He finished and, getting up, embraced and kissed Pierre, who, with tears
-of joy in his eyes, looked round him, not knowing how to answer the
-congratulations and greetings from acquaintances that met him on all
-sides. He acknowledged no acquaintances but saw in all these men only
-brothers, and burned with impatience to set to work with them.
-
-The Grand Master rapped with his mallet. All the Masons sat down in
-their places, and one of them read an exhortation on the necessity of
-humility.
-
-The Grand Master proposed that the last duty should be performed,
-and the distinguished dignitary who bore the title of “Collector
-of Alms” went round to all the brothers. Pierre would have liked
-to subscribe all he had, but fearing that it might look like pride
-subscribed the same amount as the others.
-
-The meeting was at an end, and on reaching home Pierre felt as if he had
-returned from a long journey on which he had spent dozens of years, had
-become completely changed, and had quite left behind his former habits
-and way of life.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre was sitting at
-home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance of the Square,
-one side of which symbolized God, another moral things, a third
-physical things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now and then
-his attention wandered from the book and the Square and he formed in
-imagination a new plan of life. On the previous evening at the Lodge, he
-had heard that a rumor of his duel had reached the Emperor and that it
-would be wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre proposed going to his
-estates in the south and there attending to the welfare of his serfs.
-He was joyfully planning this new life, when Prince Vasíli suddenly
-entered the room.
-
-“My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you
-quarreled with Hélène, mon cher? You are under a delusion,” said
-Prince Vasíli, as he entered. “I know all about it, and I can tell
-you positively that Hélène is as innocent before you as Christ was
-before the Jews.”
-
-Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasíli interrupted him.
-
-“And why didn’t you simply come straight to me as to a friend? I
-know all about it and understand it all,” he said. “You behaved as
-becomes a man who values his honor, perhaps too hastily, but we won’t
-go into that. But consider the position in which you are placing her and
-me in the eyes of society, and even of the court,” he added, lowering
-his voice. “She is living in Moscow and you are here. Remember,
-dear boy,” and he drew Pierre’s arm downwards, “it is simply a
-misunderstanding. I expect you feel it so yourself. Let us write her
-a letter at once, and she’ll come here and all will be explained, or
-else, my dear boy, let me tell you it’s quite likely you’ll have to
-suffer for it.”
-
-Prince Vasíli gave Pierre a significant look.
-
-“I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress is taking a
-keen interest in the whole affair. You know she is very gracious to
-Hélène.”
-
-Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasíli
-did not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to
-speak in the tone of decided refusal and disagreement in which he had
-firmly resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words of the
-Masonic statutes, “be kindly and courteous,” recurred to him. He
-blinked, went red, got up and sat down again, struggling with himself
-to do what was for him the most difficult thing in life—to say an
-unpleasant thing to a man’s face, to say what the other, whoever
-he might be, did not expect. He was so used to submitting to Prince
-Vasíli’s tone of careless self-assurance that he felt he would be
-unable to withstand it now, but he also felt that on what he said now
-his future depended—whether he would follow the same old road, or that
-new path so attractively shown him by the Masons, on which he firmly
-believed he would be reborn to a new life.
-
-“Now, dear boy,” said Prince Vasíli playfully, “say ‘yes,’
-and I’ll write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf.”
-
-But before Prince Vasíli had finished his playful speech, Pierre,
-without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that made him like his
-father, muttered in a whisper:
-
-“Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!” And he jumped up
-and opened the door for him.
-
-“Go!” he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see the look of
-confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince Vasíli’s face.
-
-“What’s the matter with you? Are you ill?”
-
-“Go!” the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasíli had to go
-without receiving any explanation.
-
-A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the Masons,
-and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went away to his
-estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and Odessa Masons
-and promised to write to him and guide him in his new activity.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-The duel between Pierre and Dólokhov was hushed up and, in spite of
-the Emperor’s severity regarding duels at that time, neither the
-principals nor their seconds suffered for it. But the story of the duel,
-confirmed by Pierre’s rupture with his wife, was the talk of society.
-Pierre who had been regarded with patronizing condescension when he was
-an illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was the best
-match in Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society after his
-marriage—when the marriageable daughters and their mothers had nothing
-to hope from him—especially as he did not know how, and did not
-wish, to court society’s favor. Now he alone was blamed for what had
-happened, he was said to be insanely jealous and subject like his
-father to fits of bloodthirsty rage. And when after Pierre’s
-departure Hélène returned to Petersburg, she was received by all her
-acquaintances not only cordially, but even with a shade of deference
-due to her misfortune. When conversation turned on her husband Hélène
-assumed a dignified expression, which with characteristic tact she had
-acquired though she did not understand its significance. This expression
-suggested that she had resolved to endure her troubles uncomplainingly
-and that her husband was a cross laid upon her by God. Prince Vasíli
-expressed his opinion more openly. He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre
-was mentioned and, pointing to his forehead, remarked:
-
-“A bit touched—I always said so.”
-
-“I said from the first,” declared Anna Pávlovna referring to
-Pierre, “I said at the time and before anyone else” (she insisted
-on her priority) “that that senseless young man was spoiled by the
-depraved ideas of these days. I said so even at the time when everybody
-was in raptures about him, when he had just returned from abroad, and
-when, if you remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my soirees.
-And how has it ended? I was against this marriage even then and foretold
-all that has happened.”
-
-Anna Pávlovna continued to give on free evenings the same kind of
-soirees as before—such as she alone had the gift of arranging—at
-which was to be found “the cream of really good society, the bloom
-of the intellectual essence of Petersburg,” as she herself put it.
-Besides this refined selection of society Anna Pávlovna’s receptions
-were also distinguished by the fact that she always presented some new
-and interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the
-state of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court
-society so dearly and distinctly indicated.
-
-Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon’s
-destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstädt and the
-surrender of most of the Prussian fortresses had been received, when our
-troops had already entered Prussia and our second war with Napoleon
-was beginning, Anna Pávlovna gave one of her soirees. The “cream of
-really good society” consisted of the fascinating Hélène, forsaken
-by her husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte who had
-just returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a young man
-referred to in that drawing room as “a man of great merit” (un homme
-de beaucoup de mérite), a newly appointed maid of honor and her mother,
-and several other less noteworthy persons.
-
-The novelty Anna Pávlovna was setting before her guests that evening
-was Borís Drubetskóy, who had just arrived as a special messenger from
-the Prussian army and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage.
-
-The temperature shown by the political thermometer to the company that
-evening was this:
-
-“Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders may do to
-countenance Bonaparte, and to cause me, and us in general, annoyance and
-mortification, our opinion of Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not cease
-to express our sincere views on that subject, and can only say to the
-King of Prussia and others: ‘So much the worse for you. Tu l’as
-voulu, George Dandin,’ that’s all we have to say about it!”
-
-When Borís, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the drawing
-room, almost all the company had assembled, and the conversation, guided
-by Anna Pávlovna, was about our diplomatic relations with Austria and
-the hope of an alliance with her.
-
-Borís, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and self-possessed,
-entered the drawing room elegantly dressed in the uniform of an
-aide-de-camp and was duly conducted to pay his respects to the aunt and
-then brought back to the general circle.
-
-Anna Pávlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss and introduced him to
-several persons whom he did not know, giving him a whispered description
-of each.
-
-“Prince Hippolyte Kurágin—charming young fellow; M.
-Kronq,—chargé d’affaires from Copenhagen—a profound intellect,”
-and simply, “Mr. Shítov—a man of great merit”—this of the man
-usually so described.
-
-Thanks to Anna Mikháylovna’s efforts, his own tastes, and the
-peculiarities of his reserved nature, Borís had managed during his
-service to place himself very advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a
-very important personage, had been sent on a very important mission to
-Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special messenger. He had
-become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with which he had
-been so pleased at Olmütz and according to which an ensign might rank
-incomparably higher than a general, and according to which what was
-needed for success in the service was not effort or work, or courage, or
-perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to get on with those who can
-grant rewards, and he was himself often surprised at the rapidity of his
-success and at the inability of others to understand these things.
-In consequence of this discovery his whole manner of life, all
-his relations with old friends, all his plans for his future, were
-completely altered. He was not rich, but would spend his last groat to
-be better dressed than others, and would rather deprive himself of many
-pleasures than allow himself to be seen in a shabby equipage or appear
-in the streets of Petersburg in an old uniform. He made friends with
-and sought the acquaintance of only those above him in position and
-who could therefore be of use to him. He liked Petersburg and despised
-Moscow. The remembrance of the Rostóvs’ house and of his childish
-love for Natásha was unpleasant to him and he had not once been to see
-the Rostóvs since the day of his departure for the army. To be in Anna
-Pávlovna’s drawing room he considered an important step up in the
-service, and he at once understood his role, letting his hostess make
-use of whatever interest he had to offer. He himself carefully scanned
-each face, appraising the possibilities of establishing intimacy with
-each of those present, and the advantages that might accrue. He took
-the seat indicated to him beside the fair Hélène and listened to the
-general conversation.
-
-“Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable
-that not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure
-them, and she doubts the means we have of gaining them. That is the
-actual phrase used by the Vienna cabinet,” said the Danish chargé
-d’affaires.
-
-“The doubt is flattering,” said “the man of profound intellect,”
-with a subtle smile.
-
-“We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and the Emperor of
-Austria,” said Mortemart. “The Emperor of Austria can never have
-thought of such a thing, it is only the cabinet that says it.”
-
-“Ah, my dear vicomte,” put in Anna Pávlovna, “L’Urope” (for
-some reason she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined
-French pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing with
-a Frenchman), “L’Urope ne sera jamais notre alliée sincère.” *
-
- * “Europe will never be our sincere ally.”
-
-
-After that Anna Pávlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the King
-of Prussia, in order to draw Borís into the conversation.
-
-Borís listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his turn,
-but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his neighbor, the
-beautiful Hélène, whose eyes several times met those of the handsome
-young aide-de-camp with a smile.
-
-Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pávlovna very naturally asked
-Borís to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state he
-found the Prussian army. Borís, speaking with deliberation, told them
-in pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies and
-the court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of his
-own about the facts he was recounting. For some time he engrossed the
-general attention, and Anna Pávlovna felt that the novelty she had
-served up was received with pleasure by all her visitors. The greatest
-attention of all to Borís’ narrative was shown by Hélène. She asked
-him several questions about his journey and seemed greatly interested in
-the state of the Prussian army. As soon as he had finished she turned to
-him with her usual smile.
-
-“You absolutely must come and see me,” she said in a tone that
-implied that, for certain considerations he could not know of, this was
-absolutely necessary.
-
-“On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure.”
-
-Borís promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a
-conversation with her, when Anna Pávlovna called him away on the
-pretext that her aunt wished to hear him.
-
-“You know her husband, of course?” said Anna Pávlovna, closing her
-eyes and indicating Hélène with a sorrowful gesture. “Ah, she is
-such an unfortunate and charming woman! Don’t mention him before
-her—please don’t! It is too painful for her!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-When Borís and Anna Pávlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte
-had the ear of the company.
-
-Bending forward in his armchair he said: “Le Roi de Prusse!” and
-having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.
-
-“Le Roi de Prusse?” Hippolyte said interrogatively, again laughing,
-and then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna Pávlovna
-waited for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to say no more
-she began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious Bonaparte had stolen the
-sword of Frederick the Great.
-
-“It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I...” she began, but
-Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: “Le Roi de Prusse...” and
-again, as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and said no
-more.
-
-Anna Pávlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte’s friend, addressed him
-firmly.
-
-“Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?”
-
-Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.
-
-“Oh, it’s nothing. I only wished to say...” (he wanted to repeat
-a joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that
-evening to get in) “I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight
-pour le Roi de Prusse!”
-
-Borís smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical
-or appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody
-laughed.
-
-“Your joke is too bad, it’s witty but unjust,” said Anna
-Pávlovna, shaking her little shriveled finger at him.
-
-“We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right principles.
-Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!” she said.
-
-The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on the
-political news. It became particularly animated toward the end of the
-evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were mentioned.
-
-“You know N— N— received a snuffbox with the portrait last
-year?” said “the man of profound intellect.” “Why shouldn’t
-S— S— get the same distinction?”
-
-“Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor’s portrait is a reward but
-not a distinction,” said the diplomatist—“a gift, rather.”
-
-“There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg.”
-
-“It’s impossible,” replied another.
-
-“Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter....”
-
-When everybody rose to go, Hélène who had spoken very little all
-the evening again turned to Borís, asking him in a tone of caressing
-significant command to come to her on Tuesday.
-
-“It is of great importance to me,” she said, turning with a smile
-toward Anna Pávlovna, and Anna Pávlovna, with the same sad smile with
-which she spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Hélène’s wish.
-
-It seemed as if from some words Borís had spoken that evening about the
-Prussian army, Hélène had suddenly found it necessary to see him.
-She seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he came on
-Tuesday.
-
-But on Tuesday evening, having come to Hélène’s splendid salon,
-Borís received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for
-him to come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to
-him, and only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said unexpectedly
-and in a whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face: “Come to dinner
-tomorrow... in the evening. You must come.... Come!”
-
-During that stay in Petersburg, Borís became an intimate in the
-countess’ house.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier. Everywhere one
-heard curses on Bonaparte, “the enemy of mankind.” Militiamen and
-recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and from the seat of
-war came contradictory news, false as usual and therefore variously
-interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkónski, Prince Andrew, and
-Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805.
-
-In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief
-then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout Russia.
-Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly noticeable
-since the time when he thought his son had been killed, he did not think
-it right to refuse a duty to which he had been appointed by the Emperor
-himself, and this fresh opportunity for action gave him new energy
-and strength. He was continually traveling through the three provinces
-entrusted to him, was pedantic in the fulfillment of his duties, severe
-to cruel with his subordinates, and went into everything down to the
-minutest details himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in
-mathematics from her father, and when the old prince was at home went
-to his study with the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas (as his
-grandfather called him). The baby Prince Nicholas lived with his wet
-nurse and nurse Sávishna in the late princess’ rooms and Princess
-Mary spent most of the day in the nursery, taking a mother’s place to
-her little nephew as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed
-passionately fond of the boy, and Princess Mary often deprived herself
-to give her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel—as she
-called her nephew—and playing with him.
-
-Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over the
-tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble monument
-brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread wings ready to
-fly upwards. The angel’s upper lip was slightly raised as though
-about to smile, and once on coming out of the chapel Prince Andrew and
-Princess Mary admitted to one another that the angel’s face reminded
-them strangely of the little princess. But what was still stranger,
-though of this Prince Andrew said nothing to his sister, was that in the
-expression the sculptor had happened to give the angel’s face, Prince
-Andrew read the same mild reproach he had read on the face of his dead
-wife: “Ah, why have you done this to me?”
-
-Soon after Prince Andrew’s return the old prince made over to him a
-large estate, Boguchárovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald Hills.
-Partly because of the depressing memories associated with Bald Hills,
-partly because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal to bearing with
-his father’s peculiarities, and partly because he needed solitude,
-Prince Andrew made use of Boguchárovo, began building and spent most of
-his time there.
-
-After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved not
-to continue his military service, and when the war recommenced
-and everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the
-recruitment so as to avoid active service. The old prince and his son
-seemed to have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old man,
-roused by activity, expected the best results from the new campaign,
-while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the war and
-secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.
-
-On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits.
-Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father’s
-absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman who
-had driven the old prince to town returned bringing papers and letters
-for Prince Andrew.
-
-Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the
-letters to Princess Mary’s apartments, but did not find him there. He
-was told that the prince had gone to the nursery.
-
-“If you please, your excellency, Pétrusha has brought some papers,”
-said one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting on a
-child’s little chair while, frowning and with trembling hands, he
-poured drops from a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of water.
-
-“What is it?” he said crossly, and, his hand shaking
-unintentionally, he poured too many drops into the glass. He threw the
-mixture onto the floor and asked for some more water. The maid brought
-it.
-
-There were in the room a child’s cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a
-table, a child’s table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew
-was sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was burning on
-the table, screened by a bound music book so that the light did not fall
-on the cot.
-
-“My dear,” said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside
-the cot where she was standing, “better wait a bit... later...”
-
-“Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things
-off—and this is what comes of it!” said Prince Andrew in an
-exasperated whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister.
-
-“My dear, really... it’s better not to wake him... he’s asleep,”
-said the princess in a tone of entreaty.
-
-Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed, wineglass
-in hand.
-
-“Perhaps we’d really better not wake him,” he said hesitating.
-
-“As you please... really... I think so... but as you please,” said
-Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion
-had prevailed. She drew her brother’s attention to the maid who was
-calling him in a whisper.
-
-It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the boy
-who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their household
-doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town, they had
-been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by sleeplessness
-and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one another and
-reproached and disputed with each other.
-
-“Pétrusha has come with papers from your father,” whispered the
-maid.
-
-Prince Andrew went out.
-
-“Devil take them!” he muttered, and after listening to the verbal
-instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his
-father’s letter, he returned to the nursery.
-
-“Well?” he asked.
-
-“Still the same. Wait, for heaven’s sake. Karl Ivánich always says
-that sleep is more important than anything,” whispered Princess Mary
-with a sigh.
-
-Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.
-
-“Confound you and your Karl Ivánich!” He took the glass with the
-drops and again went up to the cot.
-
-“Andrew, don’t!” said Princess Mary.
-
-But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his eyes,
-and stooped glass in hand over the infant.
-
-“But I wish it,” he said. “I beg you—give it him!”
-
-Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively
-and calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed
-hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and sat
-down on a sofa in the next room.
-
-He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them mechanically he
-began reading. The old prince, now and then using abbreviations, wrote
-in his large elongated hand on blue paper as follows:
-
-Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful
-news—if it’s not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete
-victory over Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing,
-and the rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a
-German—I congratulate him! I can’t make out what the commander at
-Kórchevo—a certain Khandrikóv—is up to; till now the additional
-men and provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and
-say I’ll have his head off if everything is not here in a week.
-Have received another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle
-from Pétenka—he took part in it—and it’s all true. When
-mischief-makers don’t meddle even a German beats Buonaparte. He is
-said to be fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop off to Kórchevo
-without delay and carry out instructions!
-
-Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It was
-a closely written letter of two sheets from Bilíbin. He folded it up
-without reading it and reread his father’s letter, ending with the
-words: “Gallop off to Kórchevo and carry out instructions!”
-
-“No, pardon me, I won’t go now till the child is better,” thought
-he, going to the door and looking into the nursery.
-
-Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the baby.
-
-“Ah yes, and what else did he say that’s unpleasant?” thought
-Prince Andrew, recalling his father’s letter. “Yes, we have gained
-a victory over Bonaparte, just when I’m not serving. Yes, yes, he’s
-always poking fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!” And he began reading
-Bilíbin’s letter which was written in French. He read without
-understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a moment, what
-he had too long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of all
-else.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-Bilíbin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and
-though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms,
-he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and
-self-derision genuinely Russian. Bilíbin wrote that the obligation of
-diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in Prince
-Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the bile he
-had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the army.
-The letter was old, having been written before the battle at
-Preussisch-Eylau.
-
-“Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz,” wrote
-Bilíbin, “as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I
-have certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for me;
-what I have seen during these last three months is incredible.
-
-“I begin ab ovo. ‘The enemy of the human race,’ as you know,
-attacks the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have
-only betrayed us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but
-it turns out that ‘the enemy of the human race’ pays no heed to
-our fine speeches and in his rude and savage way throws himself on the
-Prussians without giving them time to finish the parade they had begun,
-and in two twists of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and installs
-himself in the palace at Potsdam.
-
-“‘I most ardently desire,’ writes the King of Prussia to
-Bonaparte, ‘that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my
-palace in a manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as circumstances
-allowed, I have hastened to take all steps to that end. May I have
-succeeded!’ The Prussian generals pride themselves on being polite to
-the French and lay down their arms at the first demand.
-
-“The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the
-King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender.... All
-this is absolutely true.
-
-“In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude,
-it turns out that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more,
-in war on our own frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have
-everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely,
-a commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success
-might have been more decisive had the commander in chief not been so
-young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozoróvski
-and Kámenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us,
-Suvórov-like, in a kibítka, and is received with acclamations of joy
-and triumph.
-
-“On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails
-are taken to the field marshal’s room, for he likes to do everything
-himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those meant
-for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters addressed
-to him. We search, but none are to be found. The field marshal grows
-impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters from the Emperor
-to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts into one of his wild
-furies and rages at everyone and everything, seizes the letters, opens
-them, and reads those from the Emperor addressed to others. ‘Ah! So
-that’s the way they treat me! No confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep
-an eye on me! Very well then! Get along with you!’ So he writes the
-famous order of the day to General Bennigsen:
-
-“‘I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the
-army. You have brought your army corps to Pultúsk, routed: here it is
-exposed, and without fuel or forage, so something must be done, and, as
-you yourself reported to Count Buxhöwden yesterday, you must think of
-retreating to our frontier—which do today.’
-
-“‘From all my riding,’ he writes to the Emperor, ‘I have got a
-saddle sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite prevents
-my riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on the
-command to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhöwden, having sent
-him my whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising him if there is
-a lack of bread, to move farther into the interior of Prussia, for only
-one day’s ration of bread remains, and in some regiments none at all,
-as reported by the division commanders, Ostermann and Sedmorétzki, and
-all that the peasants had has been eaten up. I myself will remain in
-hospital at Ostrolenka till I recover. In regard to which I humbly
-submit my report, with the information that if the army remains in its
-present bivouac another fortnight there will not be a healthy man left
-in it by spring.
-
-“‘Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is
-already in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great and
-glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most gracious
-permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play the part of a
-secretary rather than commander in the army. My removal from the army
-does not produce the slightest stir—a blind man has left it. There are
-thousands such as I in Russia.’
-
-“The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all,
-isn’t it logical?
-
-“This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly
-interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal’s departure
-it appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle.
-Buxhöwden is commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen
-does not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who
-are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the opportunity
-to fight a battle ‘on his own hand’ as the Germans say. He does so.
-This is the battle of Pultúsk, which is considered a great victory but
-in my opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as you know, have
-a very bad way of deciding whether a battle was won or lost. Those who
-retreat after a battle have lost it is what we say; and according to
-that it is we who lost the battle of Pultúsk. In short, we retreat
-after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg with news of a
-victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive from Petersburg the
-post of commander in chief as a reward for his victory, does not give up
-the command of the army to General Buxhöwden. During this interregnum
-we begin a very original and interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is
-no longer, as it should be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to
-avoid General Buxhöwden who by right of seniority should be our chief.
-So energetically do we pursue this aim that after crossing an unfordable
-river we burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our enemy, who at
-the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhöwden. General Buxhöwden was all
-but attacked and captured by a superior enemy force as a result of one
-of these maneuvers that enabled us to escape him. Buxhöwden pursues
-us—we scuttle. He hardly crosses the river to our side before we
-recross to the other. At last our enemy, Buxhöwden, catches us and
-attacks. Both generals are angry, and the result is a challenge on
-Buxhöwden’s part and an epileptic fit on Bennigsen’s. But at the
-critical moment the courier who carried the news of our victory at
-Pultúsk to Petersburg returns bringing our appointment as commander in
-chief, and our first foe, Buxhöwden, is vanquished; we can now turn
-our thoughts to the second, Bonaparte. But as it turns out, just at
-that moment a third enemy rises before us—namely the Orthodox Russian
-soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat, biscuits, fodder, and whatnot!
-The stores are empty, the roads impassable. The Orthodox begin looting,
-and in a way of which our last campaign can give you no idea. Half the
-regiments form bands and scour the countryside and put everything
-to fire and sword. The inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals
-overflow with sick, and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even
-attack our headquarters, and the commander in chief has to ask for a
-battalion to disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off
-my empty portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give
-all commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much
-fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other.”
-
-At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while,
-in spite of himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust
-Bilíbin), what he had read began to interest him more and more. When he
-had read thus far, he crumpled the letter up and threw it away. It was
-not what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life out
-there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his eyes,
-rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what he
-had read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly he
-thought he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized with
-alarm lest something should have happened to the child while he was
-reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and opened it.
-
-Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from him
-with a scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the cot.
-
-“My dear,” he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind
-him.
-
-As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was
-seized by an unreasoning panic—it occurred to him that the child was
-dead. All that he saw and heard seemed to confirm this terror.
-
-“All is over,” he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his
-forehead. He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find it
-empty and that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He drew the
-curtain aside and for some time his frightened, restless eyes could not
-find the baby. At last he saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about till he
-lay across the bed with his head lower than the pillow, and was smacking
-his lips in his sleep and breathing evenly.
-
-Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if he had
-already lost him. He bent over him and, as his sister had taught him,
-tried with his lips whether the child was still feverish. The soft
-forehead was moist. Prince Andrew touched the head with his hand; even
-the hair was wet, so profusely had the child perspired. He was not dead,
-but evidently the crisis was over and he was convalescent. Prince Andrew
-longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his heart, this helpless
-little creature, but dared not do so. He stood over him, gazing at his
-head and at the little arms and legs which showed under the blanket. He
-heard a rustle behind him and a shadow appeared under the curtain of
-the cot. He did not look round, but still gazing at the infant’s face
-listened to his regular breathing. The dark shadow was Princess Mary,
-who had come up to the cot with noiseless steps, lifted the curtain,
-and dropped it again behind her. Prince Andrew recognized her without
-looking and held out his hand to her. She pressed it.
-
-“He has perspired,” said Prince Andrew.
-
-“I was coming to tell you so.”
-
-The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his forehead
-against the pillow.
-
-Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the curtain her
-luminous eyes shone more brightly than usual from the tears of joy that
-were in them. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him, slightly
-catching the curtain of the cot. Each made the other a warning gesture
-and stood still in the dim light beneath the curtain as if not wishing
-to leave that seclusion where they three were shut off from all the
-world. Prince Andrew was the first to move away, ruffling his hair
-against the muslin of the curtain.
-
-“Yes, this is the one thing left me now,” he said with a sigh.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went to the
-Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs, taking with
-him full directions which he had written down for his own guidance as to
-what he should do on his estates.
-
-When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office
-and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that steps
-would be taken immediately to free his serfs—and that till then they
-were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their babies
-were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to the serfs,
-punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and hospitals,
-asylums, and schools were to be established on all the estates. Some of
-the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among them) listened with
-alarm, supposing these words to mean that the young count was displeased
-with their management and embezzlement of money, some after their first
-fright were amused by Pierre’s lisp and the new words they had not
-heard before, others simply enjoyed hearing how the master talked, while
-the cleverest among them, including the chief steward, understood from
-this speech how they could best handle the master for their own ends.
-
-The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre’s intentions,
-but remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go into
-the general state of affairs which was far from satisfactory.
-
-Despite Count Bezúkhov’s enormous wealth, since he had come into an
-income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a year,
-Pierre felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him
-an allowance of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the
-following budget:
-
-About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank, about
-30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town house,
-and the allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was given in
-pensions and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was sent to
-the countess; about 70,000 went for interest on debts. The building of a
-new church, previously begun, had cost about 10,000 in each of the last
-two years, and he did not know how the rest, about 100,000 rubles, was
-spent, and almost every year he was obliged to borrow. Besides this the
-chief steward wrote every year telling him of fires and bad harvests,
-or of the necessity of rebuilding factories and workshops. So the first
-task Pierre had to face was one for which he had very little aptitude or
-inclination—practical business.
-
-He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But
-he felt that this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these
-consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with
-them or make them move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the state
-of things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the necessity of
-paying off the debts and undertaking new activities with serf labor,
-to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand, Pierre demanded that
-steps should be taken to liberate the serfs, which the steward met by
-showing the necessity of first paying off the loans from the Land Bank,
-and the consequent impossibility of a speedy emancipation.
-
-The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested selling
-the forests in the province of Kostromá, the land lower down the river,
-and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all of which
-operations according to him were connected with such complicated
-measures—the removal of injunctions, petitions, permits, and so
-on—that Pierre became quite bewildered and only replied:
-
-“Yes, yes, do so.”
-
-Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled him
-to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only tried
-to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The steward
-for his part tried to pretend to the count that he considered these
-consultations very valuable for the proprietor and troublesome to
-himself.
-
-In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened to make
-his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer, the
-largest landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre’s greatest
-weakness—the one to which he had confessed when admitted to the
-Lodge—were so strong that he could not resist them. Again whole days,
-weeks, and months of his life passed in as great a rush and were as much
-occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches, and balls, giving him
-no time for reflection, as in Petersburg. Instead of the new life he had
-hoped to lead he still lived the old life, only in new surroundings.
-
-Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized that he did not
-fulfill the one which enjoined every Mason to set an example of moral
-life, and that of the seven virtues he lacked two—morality and the
-love of death. He consoled himself with the thought that he fulfilled
-another of the precepts—that of reforming the human race—and had
-other virtues—love of his neighbor, and especially generosity.
-
-In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg. On the way he
-intended to visit all his estates and see for himself how far his orders
-had been carried out and in what state were the serfs whom God had
-entrusted to his care and whom he intended to benefit.
-
-The chief steward, who considered the young count’s attempts almost
-insane—unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the serfs—made
-some concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation of the serfs
-as impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large
-buildings—schools, hospitals, and asylums—on all the estates
-before the master arrived. Everywhere preparations were made not for
-ceremonious welcomes (which he knew Pierre would not like), but for just
-such gratefully religious ones, with offerings of icons and the bread
-and salt of hospitality, as, according to his understanding of his
-master, would touch and delude him.
-
-The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in a Vienna
-carriage, and the solitude of the road, all had a gladdening effect on
-Pierre. The estates he had not before visited were each more picturesque
-than the other; the serfs everywhere seemed thriving and touchingly
-grateful for the benefits conferred on them. Everywhere were receptions,
-which though they embarrassed Pierre awakened a joyful feeling in the
-depth of his heart. In one place the peasants presented him with bread
-and salt and an icon of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, asking permission,
-as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits he had conferred on them,
-to build a new chantry to the church at their own expense in honor
-of Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In another place the women with
-infants in arms met him to thank him for releasing them from hard
-work. On a third estate the priest, bearing a cross, came to meet
-him surrounded by children whom, by the count’s generosity, he was
-instructing in reading, writing, and religion. On all his estates Pierre
-saw with his own eyes brick buildings erected or in course of erection,
-all on one plan, for hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were soon
-to be opened. Everywhere he saw the stewards’ accounts, according to
-which the serfs’ manorial labor had been diminished, and heard the
-touching thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue
-coats.
-
-What Pierre did not know was that the place where they presented him
-with bread and salt and wished to build a chantry in honor of Peter and
-Paul was a market village where a fair was held on St. Peter’s day,
-and that the richest peasants (who formed the deputation) had begun
-the chantry long before, but that nine tenths of the peasants in that
-villages were in a state of the greatest poverty. He did not know that
-since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to work on his land, they
-did still harder work on their own land. He did not know that the priest
-who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by his exactions, and
-that the pupils’ parents wept at having to let him take their children
-and secured their release by heavy payments. He did not know that the
-brick buildings, built to plan, were being built by serfs whose manorial
-labor was thus increased, though lessened on paper. He did not know
-that where the steward had shown him in the accounts that the serfs’
-payments had been diminished by a third, their obligatory manorial work
-had been increased by a half. And so Pierre was delighted with his visit
-to his estates and quite recovered the philanthropic mood in which
-he had left Petersburg, and wrote enthusiastic letters to his
-“brother-instructor” as he called the Grand Master.
-
-“How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good,”
-thought Pierre, “and how little attention we pay to it!”
-
-He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at
-receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do
-for these simple, kindly people.
-
-The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly
-through the naïve and intelligent count and played with him as with
-a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre,
-pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above all
-the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it was.
-
-Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be
-difficult to imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would
-happen to them when they were free, but he insisted, though reluctantly,
-on what he thought right. The steward promised to do all in his power to
-carry out the count’s wishes, seeing clearly that not only would the
-count never be able to find out whether all measures had been taken for
-the sale of the land and forests and to release them from the Land Bank,
-but would probably never even inquire and would never know that the
-newly erected buildings were standing empty and that the serfs continued
-to give in money and work all that other people’s serfs gave—that is
-to say, all that could be got out of them.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest state
-of mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of visiting his
-friend Bolkónski, whom he had not seen for two years.
-
-Boguchárovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among
-fields and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The
-house lay behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and
-with banks still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that
-stretched along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which were
-a few fir trees.
-
-The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables, a
-bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular façade
-still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly laid
-out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps and a
-water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were straight,
-the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore an impress of
-tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre met, in reply
-to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a small newly
-built lodge close to the pond. Antón, a man who had looked after Prince
-Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage, said that the
-prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little anteroom.
-
-Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house after
-the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend in
-Petersburg.
-
-He quickly entered the small reception room with its still-unplastered
-wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone farther, but Antón
-ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.
-
-“Well, what is it?” came a sharp, unpleasant voice.
-
-“A visitor,” answered Antón.
-
-“Ask him to wait,” and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed
-back.
-
-Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to
-face with Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre
-embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek
-and looked at him closely.
-
-“Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad,” said Prince Andrew.
-
-Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with surprise. He
-was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly and there was a
-smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and lifeless and in
-spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give them a joyous
-and glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had grown thinner, paler, and more
-manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre till he got used
-to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow indicating prolonged
-concentration on some one thought.
-
-As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged separation,
-it was long before their conversation could settle on anything. They
-put questions and gave brief replies about things they knew ought to
-be talked over at length. At last the conversation gradually settled on
-some of the topics at first lightly touched on: their past life, plans
-for the future, Pierre’s journeys and occupations, the war, and so
-on. The preoccupation and despondency which Pierre had noticed in his
-friend’s look was now still more clearly expressed in the smile
-with which he listened to Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful
-animation of the past or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would
-have liked to sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not.
-The latter began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his
-enthusiasms, dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince
-Andrew’s presence. He was ashamed to express his new Masonic views,
-which had been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour.
-He checked himself, fearing to seem naïve, yet he felt an irresistible
-desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a quite
-different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.
-
-“I can’t tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly
-know myself again.”
-
-“Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then,” said Prince
-Andrew.
-
-“Well, and you? What are your plans?”
-
-“Plans!” repeated Prince Andrew ironically. “My plans?” he said,
-as if astonished at the word. “Well, you see, I’m building. I mean
-to settle here altogether next year....”
-
-Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andrew’s face,
-which had grown much older.
-
-“No, I meant to ask...” Pierre began, but Prince Andrew interrupted
-him.
-
-“But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your travels
-and all you have been doing on your estates.”
-
-Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as far
-as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had been
-made. Prince Andrew several times prompted Pierre’s story of what he
-had been doing, as though it were all an old-time story, and he listened
-not only without interest but even as if ashamed of what Pierre was
-telling him.
-
-Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend’s company
-and at last became silent.
-
-“I’ll tell you what, my dear fellow,” said Prince Andrew, who
-evidently also felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, “I am
-only bivouacking here and have just come to look round. I am going back
-to my sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of course you know
-her already,” he said, evidently trying to entertain a visitor with
-whom he now found nothing in common. “We will go after dinner. And
-would you now like to look round my place?”
-
-They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the political
-news and common acquaintances like people who do not know each other
-intimately. Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and interest only of
-the new homestead he was constructing and its buildings, but even here,
-while on the scaffolding, in the midst of a talk explaining the future
-arrangements of the house, he interrupted himself:
-
-“However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and then
-we’ll set off.”
-
-At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre’s marriage.
-
-“I was very much surprised when I heard of it,” said Prince Andrew.
-
-Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned, and said
-hurriedly: “I will tell you some time how it all happened. But you
-know it is all over, and forever.”
-
-“Forever?” said Prince Andrew. “Nothing’s forever.”
-
-“But you know how it all ended, don’t you? You heard of the duel?”
-
-“And so you had to go through that too!”
-
-“One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man,” said
-Pierre.
-
-“Why so?” asked Prince Andrew. “To kill a vicious dog is a very
-good thing really.”
-
-“No, to kill a man is bad—wrong.”
-
-“Why is it wrong?” urged Prince Andrew. “It is not given to man
-to know what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will
-err, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.”
-
-“What does harm to another is wrong,” said Pierre, feeling with
-pleasure that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was
-roused, had begun to talk, and wanted to express what had brought him to
-his present state.
-
-“And who has told you what is bad for another man?” he asked.
-
-“Bad! Bad!” exclaimed Pierre. “We all know what is bad for
-ourselves.”
-
-“Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is
-something I cannot inflict on others,” said Prince Andrew, growing
-more and more animated and evidently wishing to express his new outlook
-to Pierre. He spoke in French. “I only know two very real evils in
-life: remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of those evils.
-To live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole philosophy
-now.”
-
-“And love of one’s neighbor, and self-sacrifice?” began Pierre.
-“No, I can’t agree with you! To live only so as not to do evil and
-not to have to repent is not enough. I lived like that, I lived for
-myself and ruined my life. And only now when I am living, or at least
-trying” (Pierre’s modesty made him correct himself) “to live for
-others, only now have I understood all the happiness of life. No, I
-shall not agree with you, and you do not really believe what you are
-saying.” Prince Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic smile.
-
-“When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you’ll get on with her,”
-he said. “Perhaps you are right for yourself,” he added after
-a short pause, “but everyone lives in his own way. You lived for
-yourself and say you nearly ruined your life and only found happiness
-when you began living for others. I experienced just the reverse. I
-lived for glory.—And after all what is glory? The same love of others,
-a desire to do something for them, a desire for their approval.—So I
-lived for others, and not almost, but quite, ruined my life. And I have
-become calmer since I began to live only for myself.”
-
-“But what do you mean by living only for yourself?” asked Pierre,
-growing excited. “What about your son, your sister, and your
-father?”
-
-“But that’s just the same as myself—they are not others,”
-explained Prince Andrew. “The others, one’s neighbors, le prochain,
-as you and Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and
-evil. Le prochain—your Kiev peasants to whom you want to do good.”
-
-And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He
-evidently wished to draw him on.
-
-“You are joking,” replied Pierre, growing more and more excited.
-“What error or evil can there be in my wishing to do good, and even
-doing a little—though I did very little and did it very badly? What
-evil can there be in it if unfortunate people, our serfs, people like
-ourselves, were growing up and dying with no idea of God and truth
-beyond ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed in
-a comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and
-consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying
-of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be
-rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum
-for the aged? And is it not a palpable, unquestionable good if a
-peasant, or a woman with a baby, has no rest day or night and I give
-them rest and leisure?” said Pierre, hurrying and lisping. “And
-I have done that though badly and to a small extent; but I have done
-something toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a good
-action, and more than that, you can’t make me believe that you do not
-think so yourself. And the main thing is,” he continued, “that I
-know, and know for certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is the
-only sure happiness in life.”
-
-“Yes, if you put it like that it’s quite a different matter,” said
-Prince Andrew. “I build a house and lay out a garden, and you build
-hospitals. The one and the other may serve as a pastime. But what’s
-right and what’s good must be judged by one who knows all, but not by
-us. Well, you want an argument,” he added, “come on then.”
-
-They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance porch which served
-as a veranda.
-
-“Come, let’s argue then,” said Prince Andrew, “You talk of
-schools,” he went on, crooking a finger, “education and so forth;
-that is, you want to raise him” (pointing to a peasant who passed by
-them taking off his cap) “from his animal condition and awaken in him
-spiritual needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only
-happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him of.
-I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him my
-means. Then you say, ‘lighten his toil.’ But as I see it, physical
-labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his existence, as
-mental activity is to you or me. You can’t help thinking. I go to bed
-after two in the morning, thoughts come and I can’t sleep but toss
-about till dawn, because I think and can’t help thinking, just as
-he can’t help plowing and mowing; if he didn’t, he would go to the
-drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand his terrible physical
-labor but should die of it in a week, so he could not stand my physical
-idleness, but would grow fat and die. The third thing—what else was
-it you talked about?” and Prince Andrew crooked a third finger. “Ah,
-yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit, he is dying, and you come and
-bleed him and patch him up. He will drag about as a cripple, a burden to
-everybody, for another ten years. It would be far easier and simpler for
-him to die. Others are being born and there are plenty of them as it is.
-It would be different if you grudged losing a laborer—that’s how I
-regard him—but you want to cure him from love of him. And he does not
-want that. And besides, what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone!
-Killed them, yes!” said he, frowning angrily and turning away from
-Pierre.
-
-Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that it was
-evident he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he spoke
-readily and rapidly like a man who has not talked for a long time. His
-glance became more animated as his conclusions became more hopeless.
-
-“Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!” said Pierre. “I don’t
-understand how one can live with such ideas. I had such moments
-myself not long ago, in Moscow and when traveling, but at such times I
-collapsed so that I don’t live at all—everything seems hateful to
-me... myself most of all. Then I don’t eat, don’t wash... and how is
-it with you?...”
-
-“Why not wash? That is not cleanly,” said Prince Andrew; “on the
-contrary one must try to make one’s life as pleasant as possible.
-I’m alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best I
-can without hurting others.”
-
-“But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would sit
-without moving, undertaking nothing....”
-
-“Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do
-nothing, but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me the
-honor to choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to get
-out of it. They could not understand that I have not the necessary
-qualifications for it—the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness
-necessary for the position. Then there’s this house, which must be
-built in order to have a nook of one’s own in which to be quiet. And
-now there’s this recruiting.”
-
-“Why aren’t you serving in the army?”
-
-“After Austerlitz!” said Prince Andrew gloomily. “No, thank you
-very much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active
-Russian army. And I won’t—not even if Bonaparte were here at
-Smolénsk threatening Bald Hills—even then I wouldn’t serve in the
-Russian army! Well, as I was saying,” he continued, recovering his
-composure, “now there’s this recruiting. My father is chief in
-command of the Third District, and my only way of avoiding active
-service is to serve under him.”
-
-“Then you are serving?”
-
-“I am.”
-
-He paused a little while.
-
-“And why do you serve?”
-
-“Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men of
-his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he has too
-energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited power that he is
-terrible, and now he has this authority of a commander in chief of
-the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had been two hours late
-a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster’s clerk at Yúkhnovna
-hanged,” said Prince Andrew with a smile. “So I am serving because
-I alone have any influence with my father, and now and then can save him
-from actions which would torment him afterwards.”
-
-“Well, there you see!”
-
-“Yes, but it is not as you imagine,” Prince Andrew continued. “I
-did not, and do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk
-who had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been
-very glad to see him hanged, but I was sorry for my father—that again
-is for myself.”
-
-Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered feverishly
-while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there was no
-desire to do good to his neighbor.
-
-“There now, you wish to liberate your serfs,” he continued; “that
-is a very good thing, but not for you—I don’t suppose you ever had
-anyone flogged or sent to Siberia—and still less for your serfs. If
-they are beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, I don’t suppose they are
-any the worse off. In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and the
-stripes on their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it is
-a good thing for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon
-themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being
-able to inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people I
-pity, and for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You
-may not have seen, but I have seen, how good men brought up in those
-traditions of unlimited power, in time when they grow more irritable,
-become cruel and harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot restrain
-themselves and grow more and more miserable.”
-
-Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking
-that these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his
-father’s case.
-
-He did not reply.
-
-“So that’s what I’m sorry for—human dignity, peace of mind,
-purity, and not the serfs’ backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave
-as you may, always remain the same backs and foreheads.”
-
-“No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you,” said
-Pierre.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and drove to
-Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the silence now and
-then with remarks which showed that he was in a good temper.
-
-Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making in
-his husbandry.
-
-Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and
-apparently immersed in his own thoughts.
-
-He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did not
-see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to aid, enlighten, and
-raise him. But as soon as he thought of what he should say, he felt that
-Prince Andrew with one word, one argument, would upset all his teaching,
-and he shrank from beginning, afraid of exposing to possible ridicule
-what to him was precious and sacred.
-
-“No, but why do you think so?” Pierre suddenly began, lowering his
-head and looking like a bull about to charge, “why do you think so?
-You should not think so.”
-
-“Think? What about?” asked Prince Andrew with surprise.
-
-“About life, about man’s destiny. It can’t be so. I myself thought
-like that, and do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don’t
-smile. Freemasonry is not a religious ceremonial sect, as I thought
-it was: Freemasonry is the best expression of the best, the eternal,
-aspects of humanity.”
-
-And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it to Prince
-Andrew. He said that Freemasonry is the teaching of Christianity freed
-from the bonds of State and Church, a teaching of equality, brotherhood,
-and love.
-
-“Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all the rest
-is a dream,” said Pierre. “Understand, my dear fellow, that outside
-this union all is filled with deceit and falsehood and I agree with you
-that nothing is left for an intelligent and good man but to live out
-his life, like you, merely trying not to harm others. But make our
-fundamental convictions your own, join our brotherhood, give yourself up
-to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once feel yourself, as I
-have felt myself, a part of that vast invisible chain the beginning of
-which is hidden in heaven,” said Pierre.
-
-Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened in silence to
-Pierre’s words. More than once, when the noise of the wheels prevented
-his catching what Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it, and by the
-peculiar glow that came into Prince Andrew’s eyes and by his silence,
-Pierre saw that his words were not in vain and that Prince Andrew would
-not interrupt him or laugh at what he said.
-
-They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and which they had to
-cross by ferry. While the carriage and horses were being placed on it,
-they also stepped on the raft.
-
-Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed silently at
-the flooding waters glittering in the setting sun.
-
-“Well, what do you think about it?” Pierre asked. “Why are you
-silent?”
-
-“What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It’s all very
-well.... You say: join our brotherhood and we will show you the aim of
-life, the destiny of man, and the laws which govern the world. But who
-are we? Men. How is it you know everything? Why do I alone not see what
-you see? You see a reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I don’t
-see it.”
-
-Pierre interrupted him.
-
-“Do you believe in a future life?” he asked.
-
-“A future life?” Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no
-time to reply, took the repetition for a denial, the more readily as he
-knew Prince Andrew’s former atheistic convictions.
-
-“You say you can’t see a reign of goodness and truth on earth. Nor
-could I, and it cannot be seen if one looks on our life here as the end
-of everything. On earth, here on this earth” (Pierre pointed to
-the fields), “there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the
-universe, in the whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we who
-are now the children of earth are—eternally—children of the
-whole universe. Don’t I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast
-harmonious whole? Don’t I feel that I form one link, one step, between
-the lower and higher beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of
-beings in whom the Deity—the Supreme Power if you prefer the term—is
-manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to man,
-why should I suppose it breaks off at me and does not go farther and
-farther? I feel that I cannot vanish, since nothing vanishes in this
-world, but that I shall always exist and always have existed. I feel
-that beyond me and above me there are spirits, and that in this world
-there is truth.”
-
-“Yes, that is Herder’s theory,” said Prince Andrew, “but it is
-not that which can convince me, dear friend—life and death are what
-convince. What convinces is when one sees a being dear to one, bound
-up with one’s own life, before whom one was to blame and had hoped to
-make it right” (Prince Andrew’s voice trembled and he turned away),
-“and suddenly that being is seized with pain, suffers, and ceases to
-exist.... Why? It cannot be that there is no answer. And I believe there
-is.... That’s what convinces, that is what has convinced me,” said
-Prince Andrew.
-
-“Yes, yes, of course,” said Pierre, “isn’t that what I’m
-saying?”
-
-“No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the
-necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with
-someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere, and
-you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have looked
-in....”
-
-“Well, that’s it then! You know that there is a there and there is a
-Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is—God.”
-
-Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses had long since been
-taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The sun had sunk half
-below the horizon and an evening frost was starring the puddles near
-the ferry, but Pierre and Andrew, to the astonishment of the footmen,
-coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on the raft and talked.
-
-“If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and
-man’s highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must
-live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on
-this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live forever, there, in
-the Whole,” said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.
-
-Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening to
-Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of the
-sun gleaming on the blue waters. There was perfect stillness. Pierre
-became silent. The raft had long since stopped and only the waves of the
-current beat softly against it below. Prince Andrew felt as if the sound
-of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre’s words, whispering:
-
-“It is true, believe it.”
-
-He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at
-Pierre’s face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his superior
-friend.
-
-“Yes, if it only were so!” said Prince Andrew. “However, it is
-time to get on,” he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up
-at the sky to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since
-Austerlitz saw that high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on
-that battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering, something
-that was best within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and youthful, in his
-soul. It vanished as soon as he returned to the customary conditions
-of his life, but he knew that this feeling which he did not know how to
-develop existed within him. His meeting with Pierre formed an epoch in
-Prince Andrew’s life. Though outwardly he continued to live in the
-same old way, inwardly he began a new life.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre drove up to the front
-entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the house,
-Prince Andrew with a smile drew Pierre’s attention to a commotion
-going on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a wallet on her
-back, and a short, long-haired, young man in a black garment had rushed
-back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up. Two women ran out
-after them, and all four, looking round at the carriage, ran in dismay
-up the steps of the back porch.
-
-“Those are Mary’s ‘God’s folk,’” said Prince Andrew. “They
-have mistaken us for my father. This is the one matter in which she
-disobeys him. He orders these pilgrims to be driven away, but she
-receives them.”
-
-“But what are ‘God’s folk’?” asked Pierre.
-
-Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet them,
-and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was expected back
-soon.
-
-The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any minute.
-
-Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which were always kept
-in perfect order and readiness for him in his father’s house; he
-himself went to the nursery.
-
-“Let us go and see my sister,” he said to Pierre when he returned.
-“I have not found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her
-‘God’s folk.’ It will serve her right, she will be confused, but
-you will see her ‘God’s folk.’ It’s really very curious.”
-
-“What are ‘God’s folk’?” asked Pierre.
-
-“Come, and you’ll see for yourself.”
-
-Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches came on her face
-when they went in. In her snug room, with lamps burning before the icon
-stand, a young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing a monk’s
-cassock, sat on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near them, in an
-armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek expression on
-her childlike face.
-
-“Andrew, why didn’t you warn me?” said the princess, with mild
-reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her
-chickens.
-
-“Charmée de vous voir. Je suis très contente de vous voir,” * she
-said to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child, and
-now his friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife, and above
-all his kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward him. She
-looked at him with her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to say, “I
-like you very much, but please don’t laugh at my people.” After
-exchanging the first greetings, they sat down.
-
- * “Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you.”
-
-
-“Ah, and Ivánushka is here too!” said Prince Andrew, glancing with
-a smile at the young pilgrim.
-
-“Andrew!” said Princess Mary, imploringly. “Il faut que vous
-sachiez que c’est une femme,” * said Prince Andrew to Pierre.
-
-“Andrew, au nom de Dieu!” *(2) Princess Mary repeated.
-
- * “You must know that this is a woman.”
-
- * (2) “For heaven’s sake.”
-
-
-It was evident that Prince Andrew’s ironical tone toward the pilgrims
-and Princess Mary’s helpless attempts to protect them were their
-customary long-established relations on the matter.
-
-“Mais, ma bonne amie,” said Prince Andrew, “vous devriez au
-contraire m’être reconnaissante de ce que j’explique à Pierre
-votre intimité avec ce jeune homme.” *
-
- * “But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to
- me for explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this young
- man.”
-
-
-“Really?” said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and
-seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him) into
-Ivánushka’s face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about, looked
-round at them all with crafty eyes.
-
-Princess Mary’s embarrassment on her people’s account was quite
-unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed. The old woman, lowering
-her eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had turned her cup
-upside down and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside it, and sat
-quietly in her armchair, though hoping to be offered another cup of tea.
-Ivánushka, sipping out of her saucer, looked with sly womanish eyes
-from under her brows at the young men.
-
-“Where have you been? To Kiev?” Prince Andrew asked the old woman.
-
-“I have, good sir,” she answered garrulously. “Just at
-Christmastime I was deemed worthy to partake of the holy and heavenly
-sacrament at the shrine of the saint. And now I’m from Kolyázin,
-master, where a great and wonderful blessing has been revealed.”
-
-“And was Ivánushka with you?”
-
-“I go by myself, benefactor,” said Ivánushka, trying to speak in a
-bass voice. “I only came across Pelagéya in Yúkhnovo....”
-
-Pelagéya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell what
-she had seen.
-
-“In Kolyázin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed.”
-
-“What is it? Some new relics?” asked Prince Andrew.
-
-“Andrew, do leave off,” said Princess Mary. “Don’t tell him,
-Pelagéya.”
-
-“No... why not, my dear, why shouldn’t I? I like him. He is kind,
-he is one of God’s chosen, he’s a benefactor, he once gave me ten
-rubles, I remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he’s
-one of God’s own and goes barefoot summer and winter), he says,
-‘Why are you not going to the right place? Go to Kolyázin where a
-wonder-working icon of the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.’ On
-hearing those words I said good-by to the holy folk and went.”
-
-All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones,
-drawing in her breath.
-
-“So I come, master, and the people say to me: ‘A great blessing has
-been revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks of our blessed Mother,
-the Holy Virgin Mother of God.’...”
-
-“All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards,” said Princess
-Mary, flushing.
-
-“Let me ask her,” said Pierre. “Did you see it yourselves?” he
-inquired.
-
-“Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness on the face
-like the light of heaven, and from the blessed Mother’s cheek it drops
-and drops....”
-
-“But, dear me, that must be a fraud!” said Pierre, naïvely, who had
-listened attentively to the pilgrim.
-
-“Oh, master, what are you saying?” exclaimed the horrified
-Pelagéya, turning to Princess Mary for support.
-
-“They impose on the people,” he repeated.
-
-“Lord Jesus Christ!” exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing herself.
-“Oh, don’t speak so, master! There was a general who did not
-believe, and said, ‘The monks cheat,’ and as soon as he’d said it
-he went blind. And he dreamed that the Holy Virgin Mother of the Kiev
-catacombs came to him and said, ‘Believe in me and I will make you
-whole.’ So he begged: ‘Take me to her, take me to her.’ It’s the
-real truth I’m telling you, I saw it myself. So he was brought, quite
-blind, straight to her, and he goes up to her and falls down and says,
-‘Make me whole,’ says he, ‘and I’ll give thee what the Tsar
-bestowed on me.’ I saw it myself, master, the star is fixed into the
-icon. Well, and what do you think? He received his sight! It’s a sin
-to speak so. God will punish you,” she said admonishingly, turning to
-Pierre.
-
-“How did the star get into the icon?” Pierre asked.
-
-“And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?” said
-Prince Andrew, with a smile.
-
-Pelagéya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her hands.
-
-“Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!” she began,
-her pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. “Master, what have you
-said? God forgive you!” And she crossed herself. “Lord forgive him!
-My dear, what does it mean?...” she asked, turning to Princess
-Mary. She got up and, almost crying, began to arrange her wallet. She
-evidently felt frightened and ashamed to have accepted charity in a
-house where such things could be said, and was at the same time sorry to
-have now to forgo the charity of this house.
-
-“Now, why need you do it?” said Princess Mary. “Why did you come
-to me?...”
-
-“Come, Pelagéya, I was joking,” said Pierre. “Princesse, ma
-parole, je n’ai pas voulu l’offenser. * I did not mean anything,
-I was only joking,” he said, smiling shyly and trying to efface his
-offense. “It was all my fault, and Andrew was only joking.”
-
- * “Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her.”
-
-
-Pelagéya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre’s face there was such a
-look of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew glanced so meekly now at
-her and now at Pierre, that she was gradually reassured.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged to talk, gave a
-long account of Father Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his
-hands smelled of incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some monks
-she knew let her have the keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking
-some dried bread with her, had spent two days in the catacombs with
-the saints. “I’d pray awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go on to
-another. I’d sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the relics, and
-there was such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don’t want
-to come out, even into the light of heaven again.”
-
-Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince Andrew went out
-of the room, and then, leaving “God’s folk” to finish their tea,
-Princess Mary took Pierre into the drawing room.
-
-“You are very kind,” she said to him.
-
-“Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I understand them so
-well and have the greatest respect for them.”
-
-Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled affectionately.
-
-“I have known you a long time, you see, and am as fond of you as of a
-brother,” she said. “How do you find Andrew?” she added hurriedly,
-not giving him time to reply to her affectionate words. “I am very
-anxious about him. His health was better in the winter, but last spring
-his wound reopened and the doctor said he ought to go away for a
-cure. And I am also very much afraid for him spiritually. He has not a
-character like us women who, when we suffer, can weep away our sorrows.
-He keeps it all within him. Today he is cheerful and in good spirits,
-but that is the effect of your visit—he is not often like that. If
-you could persuade him to go abroad. He needs activity, and this quiet
-regular life is very bad for him. Others don’t notice it, but I see
-it.”
-
-Toward ten o’clock the men servants rushed to the front door, hearing
-the bells of the old prince’s carriage approaching. Prince Andrew and
-Pierre also went out into the porch.
-
-“Who’s that?” asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as he got out
-of the carriage.
-
-“Ah! Very glad! Kiss me,” he said, having learned who the young
-stranger was.
-
-The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious to Pierre.
-
-Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father’s study, found
-him disputing hotly with his visitor. Pierre was maintaining that a time
-would come when there would be no more wars. The old prince disputed it
-chaffingly, but without getting angry.
-
-“Drain the blood from men’s veins and put in water instead, then
-there will be no more war! Old women’s nonsense—old women’s
-nonsense!” he repeated, but still he patted Pierre affectionately
-on the shoulder, and then went up to the table where Prince Andrew,
-evidently not wishing to join in the conversation, was looking over the
-papers his father had brought from town. The old prince went up to him
-and began to talk business.
-
-“The marshal, a Count Rostóv, hasn’t sent half his contingent. He
-came to town and wanted to invite me to dinner—I gave him a pretty
-dinner!... And there, look at this.... Well, my boy,” the old prince
-went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. “A
-fine fellow—your friend—I like him! He stirs me up. Another says
-clever things and one doesn’t care to listen, but this one talks
-rubbish yet stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps I’ll
-come and sit with you at supper. We’ll have another dispute. Make
-friends with my little fool, Princess Mary,” he shouted after Pierre,
-through the door.
-
-Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the
-strength and charm of his friendship with Prince Andrew. That charm was
-not expressed so much in his relations with him as with all his family
-and with the household. With the stern old prince and the gentle, timid
-Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre at once felt
-like an old friend. They were all fond of him already. Not only Princess
-Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with the pilgrims, gave him her
-most radiant looks, but even the one-year-old “Prince Nicholas” (as
-his grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and let himself be taken
-in his arms, and Michael Ivánovich and Mademoiselle Bourienne looked at
-him with pleasant smiles when he talked to the old prince.
-
-The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on Pierre’s
-account. And during the two days of the young man’s visit he was
-extremely kind to him and told him to visit them again.
-
-When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met together, they
-began to express their opinions of him as people always do after a new
-acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one said anything but
-what was good of him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-When returning from his leave, Rostóv felt, for the first time, how
-close was the bond that united him to Denísov and the whole regiment.
-
-On approaching it, Rostóv felt as he had done when approaching his home
-in Moscow. When he saw the first hussar with the unbuttoned uniform
-of his regiment, when he recognized red-haired Deméntyev and saw the
-picket ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrúshka gleefully shouted to
-his master, “The count has come!” and Denísov, who had been asleep
-on his bed, ran all disheveled out of the mud hut to embrace him,
-and the officers collected round to greet the new arrival, Rostóv
-experienced the same feeling as when his mother, his father, and his
-sister had embraced him, and tears of joy choked him so that he could
-not speak. The regiment was also a home, and as unalterably dear and
-precious as his parents’ house.
-
-When he had reported himself to the commander of the regiment and had
-been reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had gone
-out foraging, when he had again entered into all the little interests
-of the regiment and felt himself deprived of liberty and bound in one
-narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense of peace, of
-moral support, and the same sense of being at home here in his own
-place, as he had felt under the parental roof. But here was none of
-all that turmoil of the world at large, where he did not know his right
-place and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sónya with whom he
-ought, or ought not, to have an explanation; here was no possibility of
-going there or not going there; here there were not twenty-four hours
-in the day which could be spent in such a variety of ways; there was not
-that innumerable crowd of people of whom not one was nearer to him or
-farther from him than another; there were none of those uncertain and
-undefined money relations with his father, and nothing to recall that
-terrible loss to Dólokhov. Here, in the regiment, all was clear and
-simple. The whole world was divided into two unequal parts: one, our
-Pávlograd regiment; the other, all the rest. And the rest was no
-concern of his. In the regiment, everything was definite: who was
-lieutenant, who captain, who was a good fellow, who a bad one, and most
-of all, who was a comrade. The canteenkeeper gave one credit, one’s
-pay came every four months, there was nothing to think out or decide,
-you had only to do nothing that was considered bad in the Pávlograd
-regiment and, when given an order, to do what was clearly, distinctly,
-and definitely ordered—and all would be well.
-
-Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this regimental
-life, Rostóv felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on lying down to
-rest. Life in the regiment, during this campaign, was all the pleasanter
-for him, because, after his loss to Dólokhov (for which, in spite
-of all his family’s efforts to console him, he could not forgive
-himself), he had made up his mind to atone for his fault by serving,
-not as he had done before, but really well, and by being a perfectly
-first-rate comrade and officer—in a word, a splendid man altogether, a
-thing which seemed so difficult out in the world, but so possible in the
-regiment.
-
-After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt to his parents
-in five years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now resolved
-to take only two thousand and leave the rest to repay the debt to his
-parents.
-
-Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at Pultúsk
-and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It was awaiting
-the Emperor’s arrival and the beginning of a new campaign.
-
-The Pávlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the army which had
-served in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in
-Russia, and arrived too late to take part in the first actions of the
-campaign. It had been neither at Pultúsk nor at Preussisch-Eylau and,
-when it joined the army in the field in the second half of the campaign,
-was attached to Plátov’s division.
-
-Plátov’s division was acting independently of the main army. Several
-times parts of the Pávlograd regiment had exchanged shots with
-the enemy, had taken prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal
-Oudinot’s carriages. In April the Pávlograds were stationed immovably
-for some weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German village.
-
-A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river broke,
-and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions for the
-men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no transports could
-arrive, the men dispersed about the abandoned and deserted villages,
-searching for potatoes, but found few even of these.
-
-Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled—if any
-remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be taken
-from them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead of taking
-anything from them, often gave them the last of their rations.
-
-The Pávlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but had
-lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the hospitals,
-death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or the swelling
-that came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and hardly able
-to drag their legs went to the front rather than to the hospitals.
-When spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just showing out of the
-ground that looked like asparagus, which, for some reason, they called
-“Máshka’s sweet root.” It was very bitter, but they wandered
-about the fields seeking it and dug it out with their sabers and ate it,
-though they were ordered not to do so, as it was a noxious plant. That
-spring a new disease broke out among the soldiers, a swelling of the
-arms, legs, and face, which the doctors attributed to eating this root.
-But in spite of all this, the soldiers of Denísov’s squadron fed
-chiefly on “Máshka’s sweet root,” because it was the second week
-that the last of the biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a
-pound a man and the last potatoes received had sprouted and frozen.
-
-The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the thatched
-roofs and had become terribly thin, though still covered with tufts of
-felty winter hair.
-
-Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living just
-as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms, the
-hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed their
-horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the thatched roofs in
-place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the caldrons from which
-they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food and their hunger. As
-usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires, steamed themselves before
-them naked; smoked, picked out and baked sprouting rotten potatoes, told
-and listened to stories of Potëmkin’s and Suvórov’s campaigns, or
-to legends of Alësha the Sly, or the priest’s laborer Mikólka.
-
-The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless,
-half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes and,
-in general, food for the men. The younger ones occupied themselves as
-before, some playing cards (there was plenty of money, though there was
-no food), some with more innocent games, such as quoits and skittles.
-The general trend of the campaign was rarely spoken of, partly because
-nothing certain was known about it, partly because there was a vague
-feeling that in the main it was going badly.
-
-Rostóv lived, as before, with Denísov, and since their furlough they
-had become more friendly than ever. Denísov never spoke of Rostóv’s
-family, but by the tender friendship his commander showed him, Rostóv
-felt that the elder hussar’s luckless love for Natásha played a part
-in strengthening their friendship. Denísov evidently tried to expose
-Rostóv to danger as seldom as possible, and after an action greeted his
-safe return with evident joy. On one of his foraging expeditions, in
-a deserted and ruined village to which he had come in search of
-provisions, Rostóv found a family consisting of an old Pole and his
-daughter with an infant in arms. They were half clad, hungry, too weak
-to get away on foot and had no means of obtaining a conveyance. Rostóv
-brought them to his quarters, placed them in his own lodging, and
-kept them for some weeks while the old man was recovering. One of his
-comrades, talking of women, began chaffing Rostóv, saying that he was
-more wily than any of them and that it would not be a bad thing if he
-introduced to them the pretty Polish girl he had saved. Rostóv took
-the joke as an insult, flared up, and said such unpleasant things to the
-officer that it was all Denísov could do to prevent a duel. When
-the officer had gone away, Denísov, who did not himself know what
-Rostóv’s relations with the Polish girl might be, began to upbraid
-him for his quickness of temper, and Rostóv replied:
-
-“Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can’t tell
-you how it offended me... because... well, for that reason....”
-
-Denísov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room
-without looking at Rostóv, as was his way at moments of deep feeling.
-
-“Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostóvs are!” he muttered, and Rostóv
-noticed tears in his eyes.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor’s arrival,
-but Rostóv had no chance of being present at the review he held at
-Bartenstein, as the Pávlograds were at the outposts far beyond that
-place.
-
-They were bivouacking. Denísov and Rostóv were living in an earth hut,
-dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and turf. The
-hut was made in the following manner, which had then come into vogue. A
-trench was dug three and a half feet wide, four feet eight inches deep,
-and eight feet long. At one end of the trench, steps were cut out and
-these formed the entrance and vestibule. The trench itself was the room,
-in which the lucky ones, such as the squadron commander, had a board,
-lying on piles at the end opposite the entrance, to serve as a table. On
-each side of the trench, the earth was cut out to a breadth of about two
-and a half feet, and this did duty for bedsteads and couches. The roof
-was so constructed that one could stand up in the middle of the trench
-and could even sit up on the beds if one drew close to the table.
-Denísov, who was living luxuriously because the soldiers of his
-squadron liked him, had also a board in the roof at the farther end,
-with a piece of (broken but mended) glass in it for a window. When it
-was very cold, embers from the soldiers’ campfire were placed on
-a bent sheet of iron on the steps in the “reception room”—as
-Denísov called that part of the hut—and it was then so warm that the
-officers, of whom there were always some with Denísov and Rostóv, sat
-in their shirt sleeves.
-
-In April, Rostóv was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and
-eight, returning after a sleepless night, he sent for embers, changed
-his rain-soaked underclothes, said his prayers, drank tea, got warm,
-then tidied up the things on the table and in his own corner, and,
-his face glowing from exposure to the wind and with nothing on but his
-shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under his head. He was
-pleasantly considering the probability of being promoted in a few days
-for his last reconnoitering expedition, and was awaiting Denísov, who
-had gone out somewhere and with whom he wanted a talk.
-
-Suddenly he heard Denísov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the hut,
-evidently much excited. Rostóv moved to the window to see whom he was
-speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topchéenko.
-
-“I ordered you not to let them eat that Máshka woot stuff!”
-Denísov was shouting. “And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchúk
-bwought some fwom the fields.”
-
-“I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they don’t
-obey,” answered the quartermaster.
-
-Rostóv lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: “Let
-him fuss and bustle now, my job’s done and I’m lying
-down—capitally!” He could hear that Lavrúshka—that sly, bold
-orderly of Denísov’s—was talking, as well as the quartermaster.
-Lavrúshka was saying something about loaded wagons, biscuits, and oxen
-he had seen when he had gone out for provisions.
-
-Then Denísov’s voice was heard shouting farther and farther away.
-“Saddle! Second platoon!”
-
-“Where are they off to now?” thought Rostóv.
-
-Five minutes later, Denísov came into the hut, climbed with muddy boots
-on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things about, took
-his leaded whip, buckled on his saber, and went out again. In answer to
-Rostóv’s inquiry where he was going, he answered vaguely and crossly
-that he had some business.
-
-“Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!” said Denísov
-going out, and Rostóv heard the hoofs of several horses splashing
-through the mud. He did not even trouble to find out where Denísov had
-gone. Having got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not leave
-the hut till toward evening. Denísov had not yet returned. The weather
-had cleared up, and near the next hut two officers and a cadet were
-playing sváyka, laughing as they threw their missiles which buried
-themselves in the soft mud. Rostóv joined them. In the middle of the
-game, the officers saw some wagons approaching with fifteen hussars on
-their skinny horses behind them. The wagons escorted by the hussars drew
-up to the picket ropes and a crowd of hussars surrounded them.
-
-“There now, Denísov has been worrying,” said Rostóv, “and here
-are the provisions.”
-
-“So they are!” said the officers. “Won’t the soldiers be
-glad!”
-
-A little behind the hussars came Denísov, accompanied by two infantry
-officers with whom he was talking.
-
-Rostóv went to meet them.
-
-“I warn you, Captain,” one of the officers, a short thin man,
-evidently very angry, was saying.
-
-“Haven’t I told you I won’t give them up?” replied Denísov.
-
-“You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny—seizing the transport
-of one’s own army. Our men have had nothing to eat for two days.”
-
-“And mine have had nothing for two weeks,” said Denísov.
-
-“It is robbery! You’ll answer for it, sir!” said the infantry
-officer, raising his voice.
-
-“Now, what are you pestewing me for?” cried Denísov, suddenly
-losing his temper. “I shall answer for it and not you, and you’d
-better not buzz about here till you get hurt. Be off! Go!” he shouted
-at the officers.
-
-“Very well, then!” shouted the little officer, undaunted and not
-riding away. “If you are determined to rob, I’ll...”
-
-“Go to the devil! quick ma’ch, while you’re safe and sound!” and
-Denísov turned his horse on the officer.
-
-“Very well, very well!” muttered the officer, threateningly, and
-turning his horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle.
-
-“A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!” shouted
-Denísov after him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can
-address to a mounted infantryman) and riding up to Rostóv, he burst out
-laughing.
-
-“I’ve taken twansports from the infantwy by force!” he said.
-“After all, can’t let our men starve.”
-
-The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an
-infantry regiment, but learning from Lavrúshka that the transport
-was unescorted, Denísov with his hussars had seized it by force. The
-soldiers had biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared
-them with the other squadrons.
-
-The next day the regimental commander sent for Denísov, and holding his
-fingers spread out before his eyes said:
-
-“This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it and
-won’t begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride over to the staff
-and settle the business there in the commissariat department and if
-possible sign a receipt for such and such stores received. If not, as
-the demand was booked against an infantry regiment, there will be a row
-and the affair may end badly.”
-
-From the regimental commander’s, Denísov rode straight to the staff
-with a sincere desire to act on this advice. In the evening he came
-back to his dugout in a state such as Rostóv had never yet seen him in.
-Denísov could not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostóv asked what
-was the matter, he only uttered some incoherent oaths and threats in a
-hoarse, feeble voice.
-
-Alarmed at Denísov’s condition, Rostóv suggested that he should
-undress, drink some water, and send for the doctor.
-
-“Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them twy me, but
-I’ll always thwash scoundwels... and I’ll tell the Empewo’...
-Ice...” he muttered.
-
-The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely necessary
-to bleed Denísov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken from his hairy
-arm and only then was he able to relate what had happened to him.
-
-“I get there,” began Denísov. “‘Now then, where’s your
-chief’s quarters?’ They were pointed out. ‘Please to wait.’
-‘I’ve widden twenty miles and have duties to attend to and no time
-to wait. Announce me.’ Vewy well, so out comes their head
-chief—also took it into his head to lecture me: ‘It’s
-wobbewy!’—‘Wobbewy,’ I say, ‘is not done by man who seizes
-pwovisions to feed his soldiers, but by him who takes them to fill his
-own pockets!’ ‘Will you please be silent?’ ‘Vewy good!’ Then
-he says: ‘Go and give a weceipt to the commissioner, but your affair
-will be passed on to headquarters.’ I go to the commissioner. I enter,
-and at the table... who do you think? No, but wait a bit!... Who is it
-that’s starving us?” shouted Denísov, hitting the table with the
-fist of his newly bled arm so violently that the table nearly broke down
-and the tumblers on it jumped about. “Telyánin! ‘What? So it’s
-you who’s starving us to death! Is it? Take this and this!’ and I
-hit him so pat, stwaight on his snout... ‘Ah, what a... what a...!’
-and I sta’ted fwashing him... Well, I’ve had a bit of fun I can tell
-you!” cried Denísov, gleeful and yet angry, his white teeth showing
-under his black mustache. “I’d have killed him if they hadn’t
-taken him away!”
-
-“But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself,” said Rostóv.
-“You’ve set your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up
-again.”
-
-Denísov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day he woke calm and
-cheerful.
-
-But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostóv’s and
-Denísov’s dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully showed
-them a paper addressed to Major Denísov from the regimental commander
-in which inquiries were made about yesterday’s occurrence. The
-adjutant told them that the affair was likely to take a very bad
-turn: that a court-martial had been appointed, and that in view of the
-severity with which marauding and insubordination were now regarded,
-degradation to the ranks would be the best that could be hoped for.
-
-The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that, after
-seizing the transports, Major Denísov, being drunk, went to the chief
-quartermaster and without any provocation called him a thief, threatened
-to strike him, and on being led out had rushed into the office and given
-two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm of one of them.
-
-In answer to Rostóv’s renewed questions, Denísov said, laughing,
-that he thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed up
-in it, but that it was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not in the
-least fear any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels dared attack
-him he would give them an answer that they would not easily forget.
-
-Denísov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostóv knew him
-too well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart
-he feared a court-martial and was worried over the affair, which was
-evidently taking a bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices
-from the court arrived, and on the first of May, Denísov was ordered
-to hand the squadron over to the next in seniority and appear before
-the staff of his division to explain his violence at the commissariat
-office. On the previous day Plátov reconnoitered with two Cossack
-regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denísov, as was his wont, rode
-out in front of the outposts, parading his courage. A bullet fired by
-a French sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of his leg. Perhaps at
-another time Denísov would not have left the regiment for so slight a
-wound, but now he took advantage of it to excuse himself from appearing
-at the staff and went into hospital.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the Pávlograds did
-not take part, and after that an armistice was proclaimed. Rostóv, who
-felt his friend’s absence very much, having no news of him since he
-left and feeling very anxious about his wound and the progress of his
-affairs, took advantage of the armistice to get leave to visit Denísov
-in hospital.
-
-The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice devastated
-by Russian and French troops. Because it was summer, when it is so
-beautiful out in the fields, the little town presented a particularly
-dismal appearance with its broken roofs and fences, its foul streets,
-tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken soldiers wandering about.
-
-The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window frames and
-panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a wooden fence
-that had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged soldiers, with pale
-swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in the sunshine in the
-yard.
-
-Directly Rostóv entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of
-putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army
-doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian assistant.
-
-“I can’t tear myself to pieces,” the doctor was saying. “Come to
-Makár Alexéevich in the evening. I shall be there.”
-
-The assistant asked some further questions.
-
-“Oh, do the best you can! Isn’t it all the same?” The doctor
-noticed Rostóv coming upstairs.
-
-“What do you want, sir?” said the doctor. “What do you want?
-The bullets having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a
-pesthouse, sir.”
-
-“How so?” asked Rostóv.
-
-“Typhus, sir. It’s death to go in. Only we two, Makéev and I” (he
-pointed to the assistant), “keep on here. Some five of us doctors have
-died in this place.... When a new one comes he is done for in a week,”
-said the doctor with evident satisfaction. “Prussian doctors have been
-invited here, but our allies don’t like it at all.”
-
-Rostóv explained that he wanted to see Major Denísov of the hussars,
-who was wounded.
-
-“I don’t know. I can’t tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone in
-charge of three hospitals with more than four hundred patients! It’s
-well that the charitable Prussian ladies send us two pounds of coffee
-and some lint each month or we should be lost!” he laughed. “Four
-hundred, sir, and they’re always sending me fresh ones. There are four
-hundred? Eh?” he asked, turning to the assistant.
-
-The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and impatient
-for the talkative doctor to go.
-
-“Major Denísov,” Rostóv said again. “He was wounded at
-Molliten.”
-
-“Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makéev?” queried the doctor, in a tone of
-indifference.
-
-The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor’s words.
-
-“Is he tall and with reddish hair?” asked the doctor.
-
-Rostóv described Denísov’s appearance.
-
-“There was one like that,” said the doctor, as if pleased. “That
-one is dead, I fancy. However, I’ll look up our list. We had a list.
-Have you got it, Makéev?”
-
-“Makár Alexéevich has the list,” answered the assistant. “But if
-you’ll step into the officers’ wards you’ll see for yourself,”
-he added, turning to Rostóv.
-
-“Ah, you’d better not go, sir,” said the doctor, “or you may
-have to stay here yourself.”
-
-But Rostóv bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the assistant
-to show him the way.
-
-“Only don’t blame me!” the doctor shouted up after him.
-
-Rostóv and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell was so
-strong there that Rostóv held his nose and had to pause and collect
-his strength before he could go on. A door opened to the right, and an
-emaciated sallow man on crutches, barefoot and in underclothing, limped
-out and, leaning against the doorpost, looked with glittering envious
-eyes at those who were passing. Glancing in at the door, Rostóv
-saw that the sick and wounded were lying on the floor on straw and
-overcoats.
-
-“May I go in and look?”
-
-“What is there to see?” said the assistant.
-
-But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in,
-Rostóv entered the soldiers’ ward. The foul air, to which he had
-already begun to get used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It
-was a little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where
-it originated.
-
-In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large windows,
-the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to the walls, and
-leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them were unconscious and
-paid no attention to the newcomers. Those who were conscious raised
-themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all looked intently at
-Rostóv with the same expression of hope, of relief, reproach, and
-envy of another’s health. Rostóv went to the middle of the room and
-looking through the open doors into the two adjoining rooms saw the same
-thing there. He stood still, looking silently around. He had not at all
-expected such a sight. Just before him, almost across the middle of the
-passage on the bare floor, lay a sick man, probably a Cossack to judge
-by the cut of his hair. The man lay on his back, his huge arms and legs
-outstretched. His face was purple, his eyes were rolled back so that
-only the whites were seen, and on his bare legs and arms which were
-still red, the veins stood out like cords. He was knocking the back of
-his head against the floor, hoarsely uttering some word which he kept
-repeating. Rostóv listened and made out the word. It was “drink,
-drink, a drink!” Rostóv glanced round, looking for someone who would
-put this man back in his place and bring him water.
-
-“Who looks after the sick here?” he asked the assistant.
-
-Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from the
-next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostóv.
-
-“Good day, your honor!” he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostóv and
-evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.
-
-“Get him to his place and give him some water,” said Rostóv,
-pointing to the Cossack.
-
-“Yes, your honor,” the soldier replied complacently, and rolling
-his eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not
-move.
-
-“No, it’s impossible to do anything here,” thought Rostóv,
-lowering his eyes, and he was going out, but became aware of an intense
-look fixed on him on his right, and he turned. Close to the corner, on
-an overcoat, sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier as thin as a
-skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes intently fixed on Rostóv.
-The man’s neighbor on one side whispered something to him, pointing
-at Rostóv, who noticed that the old man wanted to speak to him. He drew
-nearer and saw that the old man had only one leg bent under him, the
-other had been amputated above the knee. His neighbor on the other side,
-who lay motionless some distance from him with his head thrown back, was
-a young soldier with a snub nose. His pale waxen face was still freckled
-and his eyes were rolled back. Rostóv looked at the young soldier and a
-cold chill ran down his back.
-
-“Why, this one seems...” he began, turning to the assistant.
-
-“And how we’ve been begging, your honor,” said the old soldier,
-his jaw quivering. “He’s been dead since morning. After all we’re
-men, not dogs.”
-
-“I’ll send someone at once. He shall be taken away—taken away at
-once,” said the assistant hurriedly. “Let us go, your honor.”
-
-“Yes, yes, let us go,” said Rostóv hastily, and lowering his
-eyes and shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of
-reproachful envious eyes that were fixed upon him, and went out of the
-room.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostóv to the officers’
-wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood open. There
-were beds in these rooms and the sick and wounded officers were lying or
-sitting on them. Some were walking about the rooms in hospital dressing
-gowns. The first person Rostóv met in the officers’ ward was a thin
-little man with one arm, who was walking about the first room in a
-nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with a pipe between his teeth.
-Rostóv looked at him, trying to remember where he had seen him before.
-
-“See where we’ve met again!” said the little man. “Túshin,
-Túshin, don’t you remember, who gave you a lift at Schön Grabern?
-And I’ve had a bit cut off, you see...” he went on with a smile,
-pointing to the empty sleeve of his dressing gown. “Looking for
-Vasíli Dmítrich Denísov? My neighbor,” he added, when he heard
-who Rostóv wanted. “Here, here,” and Túshin led him into the next
-room, from whence came sounds of several laughing voices.
-
-“How can they laugh, or even live at all here?” thought Rostóv,
-still aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong
-in the soldiers’ ward, and still seeming to see fixed on him those
-envious looks which had followed him out from both sides, and the face
-of that young soldier with eyes rolled back.
-
-Denísov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket, though
-it was nearly noon.
-
-“Ah, Wostóv? How are you, how are you?” he called out, still in the
-same voice as in the regiment, but Rostóv noticed sadly that under this
-habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling showed
-itself in the expression of Denísov’s face and the intonations of his
-voice.
-
-His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six weeks
-after he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as the faces
-of the other hospital patients, but it was not this that struck Rostóv.
-What struck him was that Denísov did not seem glad to see him, and
-smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the regiment, nor about
-the general state of affairs, and when Rostóv spoke of these matters
-did not listen.
-
-Rostóv even noticed that Denísov did not like to be reminded of the
-regiment, or in general of that other free life which was going on
-outside the hospital. He seemed to try to forget that old life and
-was only interested in the affair with the commissariat officers. On
-Rostóv’s inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at once produced from
-under his pillow a paper he had received from the commission and the
-rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when he began
-reading his paper and specially drew Rostóv’s attention to the
-stinging rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions,
-who had gathered round Rostóv—a fresh arrival from the world
-outside—gradually began to disperse as soon as Denísov began reading
-his answer. Rostóv noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had
-already heard that story more than once and were tired of it. Only the
-man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to sit on his bed,
-gloomily frowning and smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Túshin still
-listened, shaking his head disapprovingly. In the middle of the reading,
-the Uhlan interrupted Denísov.
-
-“But what I say is,” he said, turning to Rostóv, “it would be
-best simply to petition the Emperor for pardon. They say great rewards
-will now be distributed, and surely a pardon would be granted....”
-
-“Me petition the Empewo’!” exclaimed Denísov, in a voice to which
-he tried hard to give the old energy and fire, but which sounded like
-an expression of irritable impotence. “What for? If I were a wobber I
-would ask mercy, but I’m being court-martialed for bwinging wobbers
-to book. Let them twy me, I’m not afwaid of anyone. I’ve served
-the Tsar and my countwy honowably and have not stolen! And am I to be
-degwaded?... Listen, I’m w’iting to them stwaight. This is what I
-say: ‘If I had wobbed the Tweasuwy...’”
-
-“It’s certainly well written,” said Túshin, “but that’s not
-the point, Vasíli Dmítrich,” and he also turned to Rostóv. “One
-has to submit, and Vasíli Dmítrich doesn’t want to. You know the
-auditor told you it was a bad business.”
-
-“Well, let it be bad,” said Denísov.
-
-“The auditor wrote out a petition for you,” continued Túshin,
-“and you ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt
-he” (indicating Rostóv) “has connections on the staff. You won’t
-find a better opportunity.”
-
-“Haven’t I said I’m not going to gwovel?” Denísov interrupted
-him, went on reading his paper.
-
-Rostóv had not the courage to persuade Denísov, though he
-instinctively felt that the way advised by Túshin and the other
-officers was the safest, and though he would have been glad to be of
-service to Denísov. He knew his stubborn will and straightforward hasty
-temper.
-
-When the reading of Denísov’s virulent reply, which took more than an
-hour, was over, Rostóv said nothing, and he spent the rest of the day
-in a most dejected state of mind amid Denísov’s hospital comrades,
-who had gathered round him, telling them what he knew and listening to
-their stories. Denísov was moodily silent all the evening.
-
-Late in the evening, when Rostóv was about to leave, he asked Denísov
-whether he had no commission for him.
-
-“Yes, wait a bit,” said Denísov, glancing round at the officers,
-and taking his papers from under his pillow he went to the window, where
-he had an inkpot, and sat down to write.
-
-“It seems it’s no use knocking one’s head against a wall!” he
-said, coming from the window and giving Rostóv a large envelope. In
-it was the petition to the Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in
-which Denísov, without alluding to the offenses of the commissariat
-officials, simply asked for pardon.
-
-“Hand it in. It seems...”
-
-He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state of
-Denísov’s affairs, Rostóv rode to Tilsit with the letter to the
-Emperor.
-
-On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in
-Tilsit. Borís Drubetskóy had asked the important personage on whom he
-was in attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the stay at
-Tilsit.
-
-“I should like to see the great man,” he said, alluding to Napoleon,
-whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had always called Buonaparte.
-
-“You are speaking of Buonaparte?” asked the general, smiling.
-
-Borís looked at his general inquiringly and immediately saw that he was
-being tested.
-
-“I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon,” he replied. The
-general patted him on the shoulder, with a smile.
-
-“You will go far,” he said, and took him to Tilsit with him.
-
-Borís was among the few present at the Niemen on the day the two
-Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated with monograms, saw Napoleon
-pass before the French Guards on the farther bank of the river, saw the
-pensive face of the Emperor Alexander as he sat in silence in a tavern
-on the bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon’s arrival, saw both
-Emperors get into boats, and saw how Napoleon—reaching the raft
-first—stepped quickly forward to meet Alexander and held out his hand
-to him, and how they both retired into the pavilion. Since he had begun
-to move in the highest circles Borís had made it his habit to watch
-attentively all that went on around him and to note it down. At the time
-of the meeting at Tilsit he asked the names of those who had come with
-Napoleon and about the uniforms they wore, and listened attentively to
-words spoken by important personages. At the moment the Emperors went
-into the pavilion he looked at his watch, and did not forget to look at
-it again when Alexander came out. The interview had lasted an hour and
-fifty-three minutes. He noted this down that same evening, among other
-facts he felt to be of historic importance. As the Emperor’s suite
-was a very small one, it was a matter of great importance, for a man who
-valued his success in the service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of
-this interview between the two Emperors, and having succeeded in this,
-Borís felt that henceforth his position was fully assured. He had not
-only become known, but people had grown accustomed to him and accepted
-him. Twice he had executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so
-that the latter knew his face, and all those at court, far from
-cold-shouldering him as at first when they considered him a newcomer,
-would now have been surprised had he been absent.
-
-Borís lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilínski.
-Zhilínski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich, and passionately
-fond of the French, and almost every day of the stay at Tilsit, French
-officers of the Guard and from French headquarters were dining and
-lunching with him and Borís.
-
-On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilínski arranged a
-supper for his French friends. The guest of honor was an aide-de-camp of
-Napoleon’s, there were also several French officers of the Guard,
-and a page of Napoleon’s, a young lad of an old aristocratic French
-family. That same day, Rostóv, profiting by the darkness to avoid being
-recognized in civilian dress, came to Tilsit and went to the lodging
-occupied by Borís and Zhilínski.
-
-Rostóv, in common with the whole army from which he came, was far
-from having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and the
-French—who from being foes had suddenly become friends—that had
-taken place at headquarters and in Borís. In the army, Bonaparte and
-the French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger, contempt,
-and fear. Only recently, talking with one of Plátov’s Cossack
-officers, Rostóv had argued that if Napoleon were taken prisoner he
-would be treated not as a sovereign, but as a criminal. Quite lately,
-happening to meet a wounded French colonel on the road, Rostóv had
-maintained with heat that peace was impossible between a legitimate
-sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte. Rostóv was therefore unpleasantly
-struck by the presence of French officers in Borís’ lodging, dressed
-in uniforms he had been accustomed to see from quite a different point
-of view from the outposts of the flank. As soon as he noticed a French
-officer, who thrust his head out of the door, that warlike feeling of
-hostility which he always experienced at the sight of the enemy suddenly
-seized him. He stopped at the threshold and asked in Russian whether
-Drubetskóy lived there. Borís, hearing a strange voice in the
-anteroom, came out to meet him. An expression of annoyance showed itself
-for a moment on his face on first recognizing Rostóv.
-
-“Ah, it’s you? Very glad, very glad to see you,” he said, however,
-coming toward him with a smile. But Rostóv had noticed his first
-impulse.
-
-“I’ve come at a bad time I think. I should not have come, but I have
-business,” he said coldly.
-
-“No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from your regiment.
-Dans un moment je suis à vous,” * he said, answering someone who
-called him.
-
- * “In a minute I shall be at your disposal.”
-
-
-“I see I’m intruding,” Rostóv repeated.
-
-The look of annoyance had already disappeared from Borís’ face:
-having evidently reflected and decided how to act, he very quietly took
-both Rostóv’s hands and led him into the next room. His eyes, looking
-serenely and steadily at Rostóv, seemed to be veiled by something,
-as if screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it seemed to
-Rostóv.
-
-“Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!” said Borís,
-and he led him into the room where the supper table was laid and
-introduced him to his guests, explaining that he was not a civilian, but
-an hussar officer, and an old friend of his.
-
-“Count Zhilínski—le Comte N. N.—le Capitaine S. S.,” said he,
-naming his guests. Rostóv looked frowningly at the Frenchmen, bowed
-reluctantly, and remained silent.
-
-Zhilínski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very
-willingly into his circle and did not speak to Rostóv. Borís did not
-appear to notice the constraint the newcomer produced and, with the same
-pleasant composure and the same veiled look in his eyes with which
-he had met Rostóv, tried to enliven the conversation. One of the
-Frenchmen, with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen,
-addressed the obstinately taciturn Rostóv, saying that the latter had
-probably come to Tilsit to see the Emperor.
-
-“No, I came on business,” replied Rostóv, briefly.
-
-Rostóv had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look of
-dissatisfaction on Borís’ face, and as always happens to those in a
-bad humor, it seemed to him that everyone regarded him with aversion
-and that he was in everybody’s way. He really was in their way, for he
-alone took no part in the conversation which again became general. The
-looks the visitors cast on him seemed to say: “And what is he sitting
-here for?” He rose and went up to Borís.
-
-“Anyhow, I’m in your way,” he said in a low tone. “Come and talk
-over my business and I’ll go away.”
-
-“Oh, no, not at all,” said Borís. “But if you are tired, come and
-lie down in my room and have a rest.”
-
-“Yes, really...”
-
-They went into the little room where Borís slept. Rostóv, without
-sitting down, began at once, irritably (as if Borís were to blame in
-some way) telling him about Denísov’s affair, asking him whether,
-through his general, he could and would intercede with the Emperor on
-Denísov’s behalf and get Denísov’s petition handed in. When he
-and Borís were alone, Rostóv felt for the first time that he could not
-look Borís in the face without a sense of awkwardness. Borís, with one
-leg crossed over the other and stroking his left hand with the slender
-fingers of his right, listened to Rostóv as a general listens to the
-report of a subordinate, now looking aside and now gazing straight into
-Rostóv’s eyes with the same veiled look. Each time this happened
-Rostóv felt uncomfortable and cast down his eyes.
-
-“I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty is very severe
-in such affairs. I think it would be best not to bring it before the
-Emperor, but to apply to the commander of the corps.... But in general,
-I think...”
-
-“So you don’t want to do anything? Well then, say so!” Rostóv
-almost shouted, not looking Borís in the face.
-
-Borís smiled.
-
-“On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought...”
-
-At that moment Zhilínski’s voice was heard calling Borís.
-
-“Well then, go, go, go...” said Rostóv, and refusing supper and
-remaining alone in the little room, he walked up and down for a long
-time, hearing the lighthearted French conversation from the next room.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-Rostóv had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition
-on Denísov’s behalf. He could not himself go to the general in
-attendance as he was in mufti and had come to Tilsit without permission
-to do so, and Borís, even had he wished to, could not have done so on
-the following day. On that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were
-signed. The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander received the Cross
-of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon the Order of St. Andrew of the
-First Degree, and a dinner had been arranged for the evening, given by
-a battalion of the French Guards to the Preobrazhénsk battalion. The
-Emperors were to be present at that banquet.
-
-Rostóv felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Borís that, when the
-latter looked in after supper, he pretended to be asleep, and early next
-morning went away, avoiding Borís. In his civilian clothes and a
-round hat, he wandered about the town, staring at the French and their
-uniforms and at the streets and houses where the Russian and French
-Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables being set up and
-preparations made for the dinner; he saw the Russian and French colors
-draped from side to side of the streets, with huge monograms A and N. In
-the windows of the houses also flags and bunting were displayed.
-
-“Borís doesn’t want to help me and I don’t want to ask him.
-That’s settled,” thought Nicholas. “All is over between us, but
-I won’t leave here without having done all I can for Denísov and
-certainly not without getting his letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!...
-He is here!” thought Rostóv, who had unconsciously returned to the
-house where Alexander lodged.
-
-Saddled horses were standing before the house and the suite were
-assembling, evidently preparing for the Emperor to come out.
-
-“I may see him at any moment,” thought Rostóv. “If only I were
-to hand the letter direct to him and tell him all... could they really
-arrest me for my civilian clothes? Surely not! He would understand on
-whose side justice lies. He understands everything, knows everything.
-Who can be more just, more magnanimous than he? And even if they did
-arrest me for being here, what would it matter?” thought he, looking
-at an officer who was entering the house the Emperor occupied. “After
-all, people do go in.... It’s all nonsense! I’ll go in and hand
-the letter to the Emperor myself so much the worse for Drubetskóy who
-drives me to it!” And suddenly with a determination he himself did not
-expect, Rostóv felt for the letter in his pocket and went straight to
-the house.
-
-“No, I won’t miss my opportunity now, as I did after Austerlitz,”
-he thought, expecting every moment to meet the monarch, and conscious of
-the blood that rushed to his heart at the thought. “I will fall at
-his feet and beseech him. He will lift me up, will listen, and will even
-thank me. ‘I am happy when I can do good, but to remedy injustice is
-the greatest happiness,’” Rostóv fancied the sovereign saying. And
-passing people who looked after him with curiosity, he entered the porch
-of the Emperor’s house.
-
-A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to the right he
-saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase, was a door leading to the
-lower floor.
-
-“Whom do you want?” someone inquired.
-
-“To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty,” said Nicholas,
-with a tremor in his voice.
-
-“A petition? This way, to the officer on duty” (he was shown the
-door leading downstairs), “only it won’t be accepted.”
-
-On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostóv grew frightened at what
-he was doing; the thought of meeting the Emperor at any moment was so
-fascinating and consequently so alarming that he was ready to run away,
-but the official who had questioned him opened the door, and Rostóv
-entered.
-
-A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches and high boots and
-a batiste shirt that he had evidently only just put on, standing in that
-room, and his valet was buttoning on to the back of his breeches a
-new pair of handsome silk-embroidered braces that, for some reason,
-attracted Rostóv’s attention. This man was speaking to someone in the
-adjoining room.
-
-“A good figure and in her first bloom,” he was saying, but on seeing
-Rostóv, he stopped short and frowned.
-
-“What is it? A petition?”
-
-“What is it?” asked the person in the other room.
-
-“Another petitioner,” answered the man with the braces.
-
-“Tell him to come later. He’ll be coming out directly, we must
-go.”
-
-“Later... later! Tomorrow. It’s too late...”
-
-Rostóv turned and was about to go, but the man in the braces stopped
-him.
-
-“Whom have you come from? Who are you?”
-
-“I come from Major Denísov,” answered Rostóv.
-
-“Are you an officer?”
-
-“Lieutenant Count Rostóv.”
-
-“What audacity! Hand it in through your commander. And go along with
-you... go,” and he continued to put on the uniform the valet handed
-him.
-
-Rostóv went back into the hall and noticed that in the porch there were
-many officers and generals in full parade uniform, whom he had to pass.
-
-Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of finding
-himself at any moment face to face with the Emperor and being put to
-shame and arrested in his presence, fully alive now to the impropriety
-of his conduct and repenting of it, Rostóv, with downcast eyes, was
-making his way out of the house through the brilliant suite when a
-familiar voice called him and a hand detained him.
-
-“What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?” asked a deep
-voice.
-
-It was a cavalry general who had obtained the Emperor’s special favor
-during this campaign, and who had formerly commanded the division in
-which Rostóv was serving.
-
-Rostóv, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing the kindly,
-jocular face of the general, he took him aside and in an excited voice
-told him the whole affair, asking him to intercede for Denísov, whom
-the general knew. Having heard Rostóv to the end, the general shook his
-head gravely.
-
-“I’m sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter.”
-
-Hardly had Rostóv handed him the letter and finished explaining
-Denísov’s case, when hasty steps and the jingling of spurs were heard
-on the stairs, and the general, leaving him, went to the porch. The
-gentlemen of the Emperor’s suite ran down the stairs and went to their
-horses. Hayne, the same groom who had been at Austerlitz, led up the
-Emperor’s horse, and the faint creak of a footstep Rostóv knew at
-once was heard on the stairs. Forgetting the danger of being recognized,
-Rostóv went close to the porch, together with some inquisitive
-civilians, and again, after two years, saw those features he adored:
-that same face and same look and step, and the same union of majesty and
-mildness.... And the feeling of enthusiasm and love for his sovereign
-rose again in Rostóv’s soul in all its old force. In the uniform of
-the Preobrazhénsk regiment—white chamois-leather breeches and high
-boots—and wearing a star Rostóv did not know (it was that of the
-Légion d’honneur), the monarch came out into the porch, putting on
-his gloves and carrying his hat under his arm. He stopped and looked
-about him, brightening everything around by his glance. He spoke a few
-words to some of the generals, and, recognizing the former commander of
-Rostóv’s division, smiled and beckoned to him.
-
-All the suite drew back and Rostóv saw the general talking for some
-time to the Emperor.
-
-The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step toward his horse.
-Again the crowd of members of the suite and street gazers (among whom
-was Rostóv) moved nearer to the Emperor. Stopping beside his horse,
-with his hand on the saddle, the Emperor turned to the cavalry general
-and said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be heard by all:
-
-“I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is stronger than
-I,” and he raised his foot to the stirrup.
-
-The general bowed his head respectfully, and the monarch mounted and
-rode down the street at a gallop. Beside himself with enthusiasm,
-Rostóv ran after him with the crowd.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a battalion
-of the Preobrazhénsk regiment stood on the right and a battalion of the
-French Guards in their bearskin caps on the left.
-
-As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which presented
-arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to the opposite flank, and
-at the head of them Rostóv recognized Napoleon. It could be no one
-else. He came at a gallop, wearing a small hat, a blue uniform open over
-a white vest, and the St. Andrew ribbon over his shoulder. He was riding
-a very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse with a crimson gold-embroidered
-saddlecloth. On approaching Alexander he raised his hat, and as he did
-so, Rostóv, with his cavalryman’s eye, could not help noticing
-that Napoleon did not sit well or firmly in the saddle. The battalions
-shouted “Hurrah!” and “Vive l’Empereur!” Napoleon said
-something to Alexander, and both Emperors dismounted and took each
-other’s hands. Napoleon’s face wore an unpleasant and artificial
-smile. Alexander was saying something affable to him.
-
-In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes’ horses, which
-were pushing back the crowd, Rostóv kept his eyes on every movement
-of Alexander and Bonaparte. It struck him as a surprise that Alexander
-treated Bonaparte as an equal and that the latter was quite at ease with
-the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday matter
-to him.
-
-Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their suites, approached
-the right flank of the Preobrazhénsk battalion and came straight up to
-the crowd standing there. The crowd unexpectedly found itself so close
-to the Emperors that Rostóv, standing in the front row, was afraid he
-might be recognized.
-
-“Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of Honor to the
-bravest of your soldiers,” said a sharp, precise voice, articulating
-every letter.
-
-This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up straight into
-Alexander’s eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to
-him and, bending his head, smiled pleasantly.
-
-“To him who has borne himself most bravely in this last war,” added
-Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as with a composure and assurance
-exasperating to Rostóv, he ran his eyes over the Russian ranks drawn
-up before him, who all presented arms with their eyes fixed on their
-Emperor.
-
-“Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?” said Alexander
-and took a few hasty steps toward Prince Kozlóvski, the commander of
-the battalion.
-
-Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his small white hand,
-tore it in doing so, and threw it away. An aide-de-camp behind him
-rushed forward and picked it up.
-
-“To whom shall it be given?” the Emperor Alexander asked Kozlóvski,
-in Russian in a low voice.
-
-“To whomever Your Majesty commands.”
-
-The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and, glancing back,
-remarked:
-
-“But we must give him an answer.”
-
-Kozlóvski scanned the ranks resolutely and included Rostóv in his
-scrutiny.
-
-“Can it be me?” thought Rostóv.
-
-“Lázarev!” the colonel called, with a frown, and Lázarev, the
-first soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward.
-
-“Where are you off to? Stop here!” voices whispered to Lázarev who
-did not know where to go. Lázarev stopped, casting a sidelong look at
-his colonel in alarm. His face twitched, as often happens to soldiers
-called before the ranks.
-
-Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump little hand out
-behind him as if to take something. The members of his suite, guessing
-at once what he wanted, moved about and whispered as they passed
-something from one to another, and a page—the same one Rostóv
-had seen the previous evening at Borís’—ran forward and, bowing
-respectfully over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting a
-moment, laid in it an Order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without looking,
-pressed two fingers together and the badge was between them. Then he
-approached Lázarev (who rolled his eyes and persistently gazed at his
-own monarch), looked round at the Emperor Alexander to imply that what
-he was now doing was done for the sake of his ally, and the small white
-hand holding the Order touched one of Lázarev’s buttons. It was as if
-Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his hand to deign to touch
-that soldier’s breast for the soldier to be forever happy, rewarded,
-and distinguished from everyone else in the world. Napoleon merely laid
-the cross on Lázarev’s breast and, dropping his hand, turned toward
-Alexander as though sure that the cross would adhere there. And it
-really did.
-
-Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately seized the cross and
-fastened it to the uniform. Lázarev glanced morosely at the little
-man with white hands who was doing something to him and, still standing
-motionless presenting arms, looked again straight into Alexander’s
-eyes, as if asking whether he should stand there, or go away, or do
-something else. But receiving no orders, he remained for some time in
-that rigid position.
-
-The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhénsk battalion,
-breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the tables
-prepared for them.
-
-Lázarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French officers embraced
-him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of officers and
-civilians drew near merely to see him. A rumble of Russian and French
-voices and laughter filled the air round the tables in the square.
-Two officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and happy, passed by
-Rostóv.
-
-“What d’you think of the treat? All on silver plate,” one of them
-was saying. “Have you seen Lázarev?”
-
-“I have.”
-
-“Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhénskis will give them a dinner.”
-
-“Yes, but what luck for Lázarev! Twelve hundred francs’ pension for
-life.”
-
-“Here’s a cap, lads!” shouted a Preobrazhénsk soldier, donning a
-shaggy French cap.
-
-“It’s a fine thing! First-rate!”
-
-“Have you heard the password?” asked one Guards’ officer of
-another. “The day before yesterday it was ‘Napoléon, France,
-bravoure’; yesterday, ‘Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.’ One day our
-Emperor gives it and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send
-a St. George’s Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has to be
-done. He must respond in kind.”
-
-Borís, too, with his friend Zhilínski, came to see the Preobrazhénsk
-banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostóv standing by the corner of a
-house.
-
-“Rostóv! How d’you do? We missed one another,” he said, and could
-not refrain from asking what was the matter, so strangely dismal and
-troubled was Rostóv’s face.
-
-“Nothing, nothing,” replied Rostóv.
-
-“You’ll call round?”
-
-“Yes, I will.”
-
-Rostóv stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from a
-distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on which he could
-not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in his soul. Now he
-remembered Denísov with his changed expression, his submission, and the
-whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and its dirt and disease. So
-vividly did he recall that hospital stench of dead flesh that he
-looked round to see where the smell came from. Next he thought of that
-self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white hand, who was now an
-Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander. Then why those severed
-arms and legs and those dead men?... Then again he thought of Lázarev
-rewarded and Denísov punished and unpardoned. He caught himself
-harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened.
-
-The smell of the food the Preobrazhénskis were eating and a sense of
-hunger recalled him from these reflections; he had to get something to
-eat before going away. He went to a hotel he had noticed that morning.
-There he found so many people, among them officers who, like himself,
-had come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in getting a
-dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The conversation
-naturally turned on the peace. The officers, his comrades, like most of
-the army, were dissatisfied with the peace concluded after the battle of
-Friedland. They said that had we held out a little longer Napoleon would
-have been done for, as his troops had neither provisions nor ammunition.
-Nicholas ate and drank (chiefly the latter) in silence. He finished a
-couple of bottles of wine by himself. The process in his mind went on
-tormenting him without reaching a conclusion. He feared to give way to
-his thoughts, yet could not get rid of them. Suddenly, on one of the
-officers’ saying that it was humiliating to look at the French,
-Rostóv began shouting with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore much to
-the surprise of the officers:
-
-“How can you judge what’s best?” he cried, the blood suddenly
-rushing to his face. “How can you judge the Emperor’s actions? What
-right have we to argue? We cannot comprehend either the Emperor’s aims
-or his actions!”
-
-“But I never said a word about the Emperor!” said the officer,
-justifying himself, and unable to understand Rostóv’s outburst,
-except on the supposition that he was drunk.
-
-But Rostóv did not listen to him.
-
-“We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more,”
-he went on. “If we are ordered to die, we must die. If we’re
-punished, it means that we have deserved it, it’s not for us to judge.
-If the Emperor pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude
-an alliance with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If
-once we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred
-will be left! That way we shall be saying there is no God—nothing!”
-shouted Nicholas, banging the table—very little to the point as it
-seemed to his listeners, but quite relevantly to the course of his own
-thoughts.
-
-“Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That’s
-all....” said he.
-
-“And to drink,” said one of the officers, not wishing to quarrel.
-
-“Yes, and to drink,” assented Nicholas. “Hullo there! Another
-bottle!” he shouted.
-
-In 1808 the Emperor Alexander went to Erfurt for a fresh interview with
-the Emperor Napoleon, and in the upper circles of Petersburg there was
-much talk of the grandeur of this important meeting.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII
-
-In 1809 the intimacy between “the world’s two arbiters,” as
-Napoleon and Alexander were called, was such that when Napoleon declared
-war on Austria a Russian corps crossed the frontier to co-operate with
-our old enemy Bonaparte against our old ally the Emperor of Austria, and
-in court circles the possibility of marriage between Napoleon and one
-of Alexander’s sisters was spoken of. But besides considerations of
-foreign policy, the attention of Russian society was at that time keenly
-directed on the internal changes that were being undertaken in all the
-departments of government.
-
-Life meanwhile—real life, with its essential interests of health and
-sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in thought,
-science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and passions—went on
-as usual, independently of and apart from political friendship or enmity
-with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all the schemes of reconstruction.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country.
-
-All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates—and constantly
-changing from one thing to another had never accomplished—were carried
-out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible difficulty.
-
-He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which Pierre lacked,
-and without fuss or strain on his part this set things going.
-
-On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and became
-free agricultural laborers—this being one of the first examples of
-the kind in Russia. On other estates the serfs’ compulsory labor was
-commuted for a quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for Boguchárovo
-at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and writing to
-the children of the peasants and household serfs.
-
-Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his father and his
-son, who was still in the care of nurses. The other half he spent in
-“Boguchárovo Cloister,” as his father called Prince Andrew’s
-estate. Despite the indifference to the affairs of the world he had
-expressed to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went on, received
-many books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or his father had
-visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life, these people lagged
-behind himself—who never left the country—in knowledge of what was
-happening in home and foreign affairs.
-
-Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a great variety of
-books, Prince Andrew was at this time busy with a critical survey of
-our last two unfortunate campaigns, and with drawing up a proposal for a
-reform of the army rules and regulations.
-
-In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazán estates which had
-been inherited by his son, whose guardian he was.
-
-Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the calèche looking at the new
-grass, the first leaves on the birches, and the first puffs of white
-spring clouds floating across the clear blue sky. He was not thinking of
-anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from side to side.
-
-They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre the year before.
-They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and green
-fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near the bridge,
-uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past strips of
-stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there, and into a
-birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the forest it was
-almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with their sticky green
-leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers and the first blades
-of green grass were pushing up and lifting last year’s leaves. The
-coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees scattered here and there
-among the birches was an unpleasant reminder of winter. On entering the
-forest the horses began to snort and sweated visibly.
-
-Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman; the latter assented.
-But apparently the coachman’s sympathy was not enough for Peter, and
-he turned on the box toward his master.
-
-“How pleasant it is, your excellency!” he said with a respectful
-smile.
-
-“What?”
-
-“It’s pleasant, your excellency!”
-
-“What is he talking about?” thought Prince Andrew. “Oh, the
-spring, I suppose,” he thought as he turned round. “Yes, really
-everything is green already.... How early! The birches and cherry and
-alders too are coming out.... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah, here is
-one oak!”
-
-At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of the
-birches that formed the forest, it was ten times as thick and twice as
-tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as great as a
-man could embrace, and evidently long ago some of its branches had been
-broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge ungainly limbs sprawling
-unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and fingers, it stood an aged,
-stern, and scornful monster among the smiling birch trees. Only the
-dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about in the forest, and this oak,
-refused to yield to the charm of spring or notice either the spring or
-the sunshine.
-
-“Spring, love, happiness!” this oak seemed to say. “Are you not
-weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the
-same and always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! Look
-at those cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too, sticking out
-my broken and barked fingers just where they have grown, whether from my
-back or my sides: as they have grown so I stand, and I do not believe in
-your hopes and your lies.”
-
-As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times to
-look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak,
-too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling, rigid,
-misshapen, and grim as ever.
-
-“Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right,” thought Prince
-Andrew. “Let others—the young—yield afresh to that fraud, but we
-know life, our life is finished!”
-
-A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully pleasant, rose
-in his soul in connection with that tree. During this journey he, as
-it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at his old conclusion,
-restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for him to begin anything
-anew—but that he must live out his life, content to do no harm, and
-not disturbing himself or desiring anything.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for the district
-in connection with the affairs of the Ryazán estate of which he was
-trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilyá Rostóv, and in the middle of May
-Prince Andrew went to visit him.
-
-It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was already clothed in
-green. It was dusty and so hot that on passing near water one longed to
-bathe.
-
-Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the business about which
-he had to speak to the Marshal, was driving up the avenue in the grounds
-of the Rostóvs’ house at Otrádnoe. He heard merry girlish cries
-behind some trees on the right and saw a group of girls running to cross
-the path of his calèche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him ran a
-dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow chintz dress, with
-a white handkerchief on her head from under which loose locks of hair
-escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing that he was a
-stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him.
-
-Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day was so beautiful,
-the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that slim pretty girl
-did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and was contented and
-cheerful in her own separate—probably foolish—but bright and happy
-life. “What is she so glad about? What is she thinking of? Not of
-the military regulations or of the arrangement of the Ryazán serfs’
-quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why is she so happy?” Prince
-Andrew asked himself with instinctive curiosity.
-
-In 1809 Count Ilyá Rostóv was living at Otrádnoe just as he had done
-in former years, that is, entertaining almost the whole province with
-hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music. He was glad to see Prince
-Andrew, as he was to see any new visitor, and insisted on his staying
-the night.
-
-During the dull day, in the course of which he was entertained by
-his elderly hosts and by the more important of the visitors (the old
-count’s house was crowded on account of an approaching name day),
-Prince Andrew repeatedly glanced at Natásha, gay and laughing among the
-younger members of the company, and asked himself each time, “What is
-she thinking about? Why is she so glad?”
-
-That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long unable to sleep. He
-read awhile and then put out his candle, but relit it. It was hot in the
-room, the inside shutters of which were closed. He was cross with the
-stupid old man (as he called Rostóv), who had made him stay by assuring
-him that some necessary documents had not yet arrived from town, and he
-was vexed with himself for having stayed.
-
-He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened the
-shutters the moonlight, as if it had long been watching for this, burst
-into the room. He opened the casement. The night was fresh, bright, and
-very still. Just before the window was a row of pollard trees, looking
-black on one side and with a silvery light on the other. Beneath the
-trees grew some kind of lush, wet, bushy vegetation with silver-lit
-leaves and stems here and there. Farther back beyond the dark trees a
-roof glittered with dew, to the right was a leafy tree with brilliantly
-white trunk and branches, and above it shone the moon, nearly at its
-full, in a pale, almost starless, spring sky. Prince Andrew leaned his
-elbows on the window ledge and his eyes rested on that sky.
-
-His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above were also
-awake. He heard female voices overhead.
-
-“Just once more,” said a girlish voice above him which Prince Andrew
-recognized at once.
-
-“But when are you coming to bed?” replied another voice.
-
-“I won’t, I can’t sleep, what’s the use? Come now for the last
-time.”
-
-Two girlish voices sang a musical passage—the end of some song.
-
-“Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there’s an end of it.”
-
-“You go to sleep, but I can’t,” said the first voice, coming
-nearer to the window. She was evidently leaning right out, for the
-rustle of her dress and even her breathing could be heard. Everything
-was stone-still, like the moon and its light and the shadows. Prince
-Andrew, too, dared not stir, for fear of betraying his unintentional
-presence.
-
-“Sónya! Sónya!” he again heard the first speaker. “Oh, how can
-you sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up,
-Sónya!” she said almost with tears in her voice. “There never,
-never was such a lovely night before!”
-
-Sónya made some reluctant reply.
-
-“Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely! Come here....
-Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you see? I feel like sitting down
-on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this, straining tight,
-as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this....”
-
-“Take care, you’ll fall out.”
-
-He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sónya’s disapproving voice:
-“It’s past one o’clock.”
-
-“Oh, you only spoil things for me. All right, go, go!”
-
-Again all was silent, but Prince Andrew knew she was still sitting
-there. From time to time he heard a soft rustle and at times a sigh.
-
-“O God, O God! What does it mean?” she suddenly exclaimed. “To bed
-then, if it must be!” and she slammed the casement.
-
-“For her I might as well not exist!” thought Prince Andrew while he
-listened to her voice, for some reason expecting yet fearing that she
-might say something about him. “There she is again! As if it were on
-purpose,” thought he.
-
-In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of youthful
-thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his life, that unable
-to explain his condition to himself he lay down and fell asleep at once.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the count, and not
-waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off for home.
-
-It was already the beginning of June when on his return journey he drove
-into the birch forest where the gnarled old oak had made so strange and
-memorable an impression on him. In the forest the harness bells sounded
-yet more muffled than they had done six weeks before, for now all was
-thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs dotted about in the forest
-did not jar on the general beauty but, lending themselves to the mood
-around, were delicately green with fluffy young shoots.
-
-The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was gathering, but only
-a small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling the road
-and the sappy leaves. The left side of the forest was dark in the shade,
-the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and scarcely
-swayed by the breeze. Everything was in blossom, the nightingales
-trilled, and their voices reverberated now near, now far away.
-
-“Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed,” thought
-Prince Andrew. “But where is it?” he again wondered, gazing at
-the left side of the road, and without recognizing it he looked with
-admiration at the very oak he sought. The old oak, quite transfigured,
-spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and
-slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled
-fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in
-evidence now. Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were
-no twigs, leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old
-veteran could have produced.
-
-“Yes, it is the same oak,” thought Prince Andrew, and all at once he
-was seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal. All
-the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory. Austerlitz
-with the lofty heavens, his wife’s dead reproachful face, Pierre at
-the ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night
-itself and the moon, and... all this rushed suddenly to his mind.
-
-“No, life is not over at thirty-one!” Prince Andrew suddenly decided
-finally and decisively. “It is not enough for me to know what I have
-in me—everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted to
-fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may not be
-lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it, but so that
-it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live in harmony!”
-
-
-On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that autumn
-and found all sorts of reasons for this decision. A whole series of
-sensible and logical considerations showing it to be essential for him
-to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter the service, kept springing
-up in his mind. He could not now understand how he could ever even have
-doubted the necessity of taking an active share in life, just as a month
-before he had not understood how the idea of leaving the quiet country
-could ever enter his head. It now seemed clear to him that all his
-experience of life must be senselessly wasted unless he applied it to
-some kind of work and again played an active part in life. He did not
-even remember how formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical
-arguments, it had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself if
-he now, after the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself to believe
-in the possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness
-or love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey
-to Ryazán he found the country dull; his former pursuits no longer
-interested him, and often when sitting alone in his study he got up,
-went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at his own face. Then he would
-turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise, who with hair curled à la
-grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out of the gilt frame. She
-did not now say those former terrible words to him, but looked simply,
-merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing his
-arms behind him, long paced the room, now frowning, now smiling, as
-he reflected on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as a
-crime, which altered his whole life and were connected with Pierre, with
-fame, with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman’s beauty
-and love. And if anyone came into his room at such moments he was
-particularly cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical.
-
-“My dear,” Princess Mary entering at such a moment would say,
-“little Nicholas can’t go out today, it’s very cold.”
-
-“If it were hot,” Prince Andrew would reply at such times very dryly
-to his sister, “he could go out in his smock, but as it is cold he
-must wear warm clothes, which were designed for that purpose. That is
-what follows from the fact that it is cold; and not that a child who
-needs fresh air should remain at home,” he would add with extreme
-logic, as if punishing someone for those secret illogical emotions that
-stirred within him.
-
-At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work dries
-men up.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809. It was the time
-when the youthful Speránski was at the zenith of his fame and his
-reforms were being pushed forward with the greatest energy. That same
-August the Emperor was thrown from his calèche, injured his leg, and
-remained three weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speránski every day and no
-one else. At that time the two famous decrees were being prepared
-that so agitated society—abolishing court ranks and introducing
-examinations to qualify for the grades of Collegiate Assessor and
-State Councilor—and not merely these but a whole state constitution,
-intended to change the existing order of government in Russia: legal,
-administrative, and financial, from the Council of State down to the
-district tribunals. Now those vague liberal dreams with which the
-Emperor Alexander had ascended the throne, and which he had tried to put
-into effect with the aid of his associates, Czartorýski, Novosíltsev,
-Kochubéy, and Strógonov—whom he himself in jest had called his
-Comité de salut public—were taking shape and being realized.
-
-Now all these men were replaced by Speránski on the civil side, and
-Arakchéev on the military. Soon after his arrival Prince Andrew, as a
-gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a levee. The
-Emperor, though he met him twice, did not favor him with a single word.
-It had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that he was antipathetic
-to the Emperor and that the latter disliked his face and personality
-generally, and in the cold, repellent glance the Emperor gave him, he
-now found further confirmation of this surmise. The courtiers explained
-the Emperor’s neglect of him by His Majesty’s displeasure at
-Bolkónski’s not having served since 1805.
-
-“I know myself that one cannot help one’s sympathies and
-antipathies,” thought Prince Andrew, “so it will not do to present
-my proposal for the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor
-personally, but the project will speak for itself.”
-
-He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend
-of his father’s. The field marshal made an appointment to see him,
-received him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few
-days later Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see the
-Minister of War, Count Arakchéev.
-
-
-On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakchéev’s waiting
-room at nine in the morning.
-
-He did not know Arakchéev personally, had never seen him, and all he
-had heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man.
-
-“He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not
-concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been commissioned to
-consider my project, so he alone can get it adopted,” thought Prince
-Andrew as he waited among a number of important and unimportant people
-in Count Arakchéev’s waiting room.
-
-During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen the
-anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such rooms
-were well known to him. Count Arakchéev’s anteroom had quite a
-special character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting their
-turn for an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the faces of
-those of higher rank expressed a common feeling of awkwardness, covered
-by a mask of unconcern and ridicule of themselves, their situation, and
-the person for whom they were waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and
-down, others whispered and laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname
-“Síla Andréevich” and the words, “Uncle will give it to us
-hot,” in reference to Count Arakchéev. One general (an important
-personage), evidently feeling offended at having to wait so long, sat
-crossing and uncrossing his legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.
-
-But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all
-faces—that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the
-adjutant on duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look and
-was told that his turn would come in due course. After some others had
-been shown in and out of the minister’s room by the adjutant on duty,
-an officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and frightened air
-was admitted at that terrible door. This officer’s audience lasted a
-long time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a harsh voice was heard
-from the other side of the door, and the officer—with pale face and
-trembling lips—came out and passed through the waiting room, clutching
-his head.
-
-After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer on
-duty said in a whisper, “To the right, at the window.”
-
-Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man of
-forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep wrinkles,
-scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an overhanging red
-nose. Arakchéev turned his head toward him without looking at him.
-
-“What is your petition?” asked Arakchéev.
-
-“I am not petitioning, your excellency,” returned Prince Andrew
-quietly.
-
-Arakchéev’s eyes turned toward him.
-
-“Sit down,” said he. “Prince Bolkónski?”
-
-“I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has
-deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me...”
-
-“You see, my dear sir, I have read your project,” interrupted
-Arakchéev, uttering only the first words amiably and then—again
-without looking at Prince Andrew—relapsing gradually into a tone of
-grumbling contempt. “You are proposing new military laws? There are
-many laws but no one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody
-designs laws, it is easier writing than doing.”
-
-“I came at His Majesty the Emperor’s wish to learn from your
-excellency how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have
-presented,” said Prince Andrew politely.
-
-“I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to the
-committee. I do not approve of it,” said Arakchéev, rising and taking
-a paper from his writing table. “Here!” and he handed it to Prince
-Andrew.
-
-Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital letters,
-misspelled, and without punctuation: “Unsoundly constructed because
-resembles an imitation of the French military code and from the Articles
-of War needlessly deviating.”
-
-“To what committee has the memorandum been referred?” inquired
-Prince Andrew.
-
-“To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that
-your honor should be appointed a member, but without a salary.”
-
-Prince Andrew smiled.
-
-“I don’t want one.”
-
-“A member without salary,” repeated Arakchéev. “I have the
-honor... Eh! Call the next one! Who else is there?” he shouted, bowing
-to Prince Andrew.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the committee
-Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances, particularly those he
-knew to be in power and whose aid he might need. In Petersburg he now
-experienced the same feeling he had had on the eve of a battle, when
-troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly attracted to the ruling
-circles where the future, on which the fate of millions depended, was
-being shaped. From the irritation of the older men, the curiosity of the
-uninitiated, the reserve of the initiated, the hurry and preoccupation
-of everyone, and the innumerable committees and commissions of whose
-existence he learned every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in
-Petersburg a vast civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in
-chief of which was a mysterious person he did not know, but who was
-supposed to be a man of genius—Speránski. And this movement of
-reconstruction of which Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speránski
-its chief promoter, began to interest him so keenly that the question
-of the army regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his
-consciousness.
-
-Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception in the
-highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The reforming
-party cordially welcomed and courted him, in the first place because
-he was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly because by
-liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of being a liberal.
-The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured the innovations,
-turned to him expecting his sympathy in their disapproval of the
-reforms, simply because he was the son of his father. The feminine
-society world welcomed him gladly, because he was rich, distinguished, a
-good match, and almost a newcomer, with a halo of romance on account
-of his supposed death and the tragic loss of his wife. Besides this
-the general opinion of all who had known him previously was that he had
-greatly improved during these last five years, having softened and grown
-more manly, lost his former affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony,
-and acquired the serenity that comes with years. People talked about
-him, were interested in him, and wanted to meet him.
-
-The day after his interview with Count Arakchéev, Prince Andrew spent
-the evening at Count Kochubéy’s. He told the count of his interview
-with Síla Andréevich (Kochubéy spoke of Arakchéev by that nickname
-with the same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the Minister of
-War’s anteroom).
-
-“Mon cher, even in this case you can’t do without Michael
-Mikháylovich Speránski. He manages everything. I’ll speak to him. He
-has promised to come this evening.”
-
-“What has Speránski to do with the army regulations?” asked Prince
-Andrew.
-
-Kochubéy shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkónski’s
-simplicity.
-
-“We were talking to him about you a few days ago,” Kochubéy
-continued, “and about your freed plowmen.”
-
-“Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?” said an old man
-of Catherine’s day, turning contemptuously toward Bolkónski.
-
-“It was a small estate that brought in no profit,” replied Prince
-Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to irritate the old man
-uselessly.
-
-“Afraid of being late...” said the old man, looking at Kochubéy.
-
-“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” he continued. “Who
-will plow the land if they are set free? It is easy to write laws, but
-difficult to rule.... Just the same as now—I ask you, Count—who will
-be heads of the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?”
-
-“Those who pass the examinations, I suppose,” replied Kochubéy,
-crossing his legs and glancing round.
-
-“Well, I have Pryánichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a
-priceless man, but he’s sixty. Is he to go up for examination?”
-
-“Yes, that’s a difficulty, as education is not at all general,
-but...”
-
-Count Kochubéy did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the arm,
-and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of about forty with a large open
-forehead and a long face of unusual and peculiar whiteness, who was
-just entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with a
-cross suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It was
-Speránski. Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt a throb
-within him, as happens at critical moments of life. Whether it was from
-respect, envy, or anticipation, he did not know. Speránski’s whole
-figure was of a peculiar type that made him easily recognizable. In
-the society in which Prince Andrew lived he had never seen anyone who
-together with awkward and clumsy gestures possessed such calmness and
-self-assurance; he had never seen so resolute yet gentle an expression
-as that in those half-closed, rather humid eyes, or so firm a smile that
-expressed nothing; nor had he heard such a refined, smooth, soft
-voice; above all he had never seen such delicate whiteness of face or
-hands—hands which were broad, but very plump, soft, and white. Such
-whiteness and softness Prince Andrew had only seen on the faces of
-soldiers who had been long in hospital. This was Speránski, Secretary
-of State, reporter to the Emperor and his companion at Erfurt, where he
-had more than once met and talked with Napoleon.
-
-Speránski did not shift his eyes from one face to another as people
-involuntarily do on entering a large company and was in no hurry to
-speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance that he would be listened to, and
-he looked only at the person with whom he was conversing.
-
-Prince Andrew followed Speránski’s every word and movement with
-particular attention. As happens to some people, especially to men
-who judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting
-anyone new—especially anyone whom, like Speránski, he knew by
-reputation—expected to discover in him the perfection of human
-qualities.
-
-Speránski told Kochubéy he was sorry he had been unable to come sooner
-as he had been detained at the palace. He did not say that the Emperor
-had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation of modesty.
-When Kochubéy introduced Prince Andrew, Speránski slowly turned
-his eyes to Bolkónski with his customary smile and looked at him in
-silence.
-
-“I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard of you, as
-everyone has,” he said after a pause.
-
-Kochubéy said a few words about the reception Arakchéev had given
-Bolkónski. Speránski smiled more markedly.
-
-“The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend
-Monsieur Magnítski,” he said, fully articulating every word and
-syllable, “and if you like I can put you in touch with him.” He
-paused at the full stop. “I hope you will find him sympathetic and
-ready to co-operate in promoting all that is reasonable.”
-
-A circle soon formed round Speránski, and the old man who had talked
-about his subordinate Pryánichnikov addressed a question to him.
-
-Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation watched every movement
-of Speránski’s: this man, not long since an insignificant divinity
-student, who now, Bolkónski thought, held in his hands—those plump
-white hands—the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the
-extraordinarily disdainful composure with which Speránski answered
-the old man. He appeared to address condescending words to him from
-an immeasurable height. When the old man began to speak too loud,
-Speránski smiled and said he could not judge of the advantage or
-disadvantage of what pleased the sovereign.
-
-Having talked for a little while in the general circle, Speránski rose
-and coming up to Prince Andrew took him along to the other end of the
-room. It was clear that he thought it necessary to interest himself in
-Bolkónski.
-
-“I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the animated
-conversation in which that venerable gentleman involved me,” he said
-with a mildly contemptuous smile, as if intimating by that smile that he
-and Prince Andrew understood the insignificance of the people with whom
-he had just been talking. This flattered Prince Andrew. “I have known
-of you for a long time: first from your action with regard to your
-serfs, a first example, of which it is very desirable that there should
-be more imitators; and secondly because you are one of those gentlemen
-of the chamber who have not considered themselves offended by the new
-decree concerning the ranks allotted to courtiers, which is causing so
-much gossip and tittle-tattle.”
-
-“No,” said Prince Andrew, “my father did not wish me to take
-advantage of the privilege. I began the service from the lower grade.”
-
-“Your father, a man of the last century, evidently stands above our
-contemporaries who so condemn this measure which merely re-establishes
-natural justice.”
-
-“I think, however, that these condemnations have some ground,”
-returned Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speránski’s influence, of
-which he began to be conscious. He did not like to agree with him in
-everything and felt a wish to contradict. Though he usually spoke easily
-and well, he felt a difficulty in expressing himself now while talking
-with Speránski. He was too much absorbed in observing the famous
-man’s personality.
-
-“Grounds of personal ambition maybe,” Speránski put in quietly.
-
-“And of state interest to some extent,” said Prince Andrew.
-
-“What do you mean?” asked Speránski quietly, lowering his eyes.
-
-“I am an admirer of Montesquieu,” replied Prince Andrew, “and
-his idea that le principe des monarchies est l’honneur me paraît
-incontestable. Certains droits et privilèges de la noblesse me
-paraissent être des moyens de soutenir ce sentiment.” *
-
- * “The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me
- incontestable. Certain rights and privileges for the
- aristocracy appear to me a means of maintaining that
- sentiment.”
-
-
-The smile vanished from Speránski’s white face, which was much
-improved by the change. Probably Prince Andrew’s thought interested
-him.
-
-“Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue,” * he began,
-pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and speaking even slower
-than in Russian but quite calmly.
-
- * “If you regard the question from that point of view.”
-
-
-Speránski went on to say that honor, l’honneur, cannot be upheld by
-privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l’honneur, is either a
-negative concept of not doing what is blameworthy or it is a source of
-emulation in pursuit of commendation and rewards, which recognize it.
-His arguments were concise, simple, and clear.
-
-“An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one
-similar to the Légion d’honneur of the great Emperor Napoleon, not
-harmful but helpful to the success of the service, but not a class or
-court privilege.”
-
-“I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court privileges
-have attained the same end,” returned Prince Andrew. “Every courtier
-considers himself bound to maintain his position worthily.”
-
-“Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege, Prince,”
-said Speránski, indicating by a smile that he wished to finish amiably
-an argument which was embarrassing for his companion. “If you will
-do me the honor of calling on me on Wednesday,” he added, “I will,
-after talking with Magnítski, let you know what may interest you, and
-shall also have the pleasure of a more detailed chat with you.”
-
-Closing his eyes, he bowed à la française, without taking leave, and
-trying to attract as little attention as possible, he left the room.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince Andrew felt the
-whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of seclusion quite
-overshadowed by the trifling cares that engrossed him in that city.
-
-On returning home in the evening he would jot down in his notebook four
-or five necessary calls or appointments for certain hours. The mechanism
-of life, the arrangement of the day so as to be in time everywhere,
-absorbed the greater part of his vital energy. He did nothing, did
-not even think or find time to think, but only talked, and talked
-successfully, of what he had thought while in the country.
-
-He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the same
-remark on the same day in different circles. But he was so busy for
-whole days together that he had no time to notice that he was thinking
-of nothing.
-
-As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubéy’s, Speránski
-produced a strong impression on Prince Andrew on the Wednesday, when he
-received him tête-à-tête at his own house and talked to him long and
-confidentially.
-
-To Bolkónski so many people appeared contemptible and insignificant
-creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the living ideal of that
-perfection toward which he strove, that he readily believed that in
-Speránski he had found this ideal of a perfectly rational and virtuous
-man. Had Speránski sprung from the same class as himself and possessed
-the same breeding and traditions, Bolkónski would soon have discovered
-his weak, human, unheroic sides; but as it was, Speránski’s strange
-and logical turn of mind inspired him with respect all the more because
-he did not quite understand him. Moreover, Speránski, either because he
-appreciated the other’s capacity or because he considered it necessary
-to win him to his side, showed off his dispassionate calm reasonableness
-before Prince Andrew and flattered him with that subtle flattery which
-goes hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a tacit assumption
-that one’s companion is the only man besides oneself capable of
-understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and the reasonableness
-and profundity of one’s own ideas.
-
-During their long conversation on Wednesday evening, Speránski more
-than once remarked: “We regard everything that is above the common
-level of rooted custom...” or, with a smile: “But we want the wolves
-to be fed and the sheep to be safe...” or: “They cannot understand
-this...” and all in a way that seemed to say: “We, you and I,
-understand what they are and who we are.”
-
-This first long conversation with Speránski only strengthened in Prince
-Andrew the feeling he had experienced toward him at their first meeting.
-He saw in him a remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast intellect who by
-his energy and persistence had attained power, which he was using solely
-for the welfare of Russia. In Prince Andrew’s eyes Speránski was the
-man he would himself have wished to be—one who explained all the facts
-of life reasonably, considered important only what was rational, and
-was capable of applying the standard of reason to everything. Everything
-seemed so simple and clear in Speránski’s exposition that Prince
-Andrew involuntarily agreed with him about everything. If he replied and
-argued, it was only because he wished to maintain his independence and
-not submit to Speránski’s opinions entirely. Everything was right
-and everything was as it should be: only one thing disconcerted Prince
-Andrew. This was Speránski’s cold, mirrorlike look, which did not
-allow one to penetrate to his soul, and his delicate white hands, which
-Prince Andrew involuntarily watched as one does watch the hands of
-those who possess power. This mirrorlike gaze and those delicate hands
-irritated Prince Andrew, he knew not why. He was unpleasantly
-struck, too, by the excessive contempt for others that he observed in
-Speránski, and by the diversity of lines of argument he used to
-support his opinions. He made use of every kind of mental device, except
-analogy, and passed too boldly, it seemed to Prince Andrew, from one
-to another. Now he would take up the position of a practical man and
-condemn dreamers; now that of a satirist, and laugh ironically at his
-opponents; now grow severely logical, or suddenly rise to the realm of
-metaphysics. (This last resource was one he very frequently employed.)
-He would transfer a question to metaphysical heights, pass on to
-definitions of space, time, and thought, and, having deduced the
-refutation he needed, would again descend to the level of the original
-discussion.
-
-In general the trait of Speránski’s mentality which struck Prince
-Andrew most was his absolute and unshakable belief in the power and
-authority of reason. It was evident that the thought could never occur
-to him which to Prince Andrew seemed so natural, namely, that it is
-after all impossible to express all one thinks; and that he had never
-felt the doubt, “Is not all I think and believe nonsense?” And
-it was just this peculiarity of Speránski’s mind that particularly
-attracted Prince Andrew.
-
-During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkónski felt a
-passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt for
-Bonaparte. The fact that Speránski was the son of a village priest,
-and that stupid people might meanly despise him on account of his
-humble origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to cherish his
-sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously to strengthen it.
-
-On that first evening Bolkónski spent with him, having mentioned the
-Commission for the Revision of the Code of Laws, Speránski told him
-sarcastically that the Commission had existed for a hundred and fifty
-years, had cost millions, and had done nothing except that Rosenkampf
-had stuck labels on the corresponding paragraphs of the different codes.
-
-“And that is all the state has for the millions it has spent,” said
-he. “We want to give the Senate new juridical powers, but we have no
-laws. That is why it is a sin for men like you, Prince, not to serve in
-these times!”
-
-Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in jurisprudence was
-needed which he did not possess.
-
-“But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It is a vicious
-circle from which we must break a way out.”
-
-A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the Committee on Army
-Regulations and—what he had not at all expected—was chairman of a
-section of the committee for the revision of the laws. At Speránski’s
-request he took the first part of the Civil Code that was being drawn up
-and, with the aid of the Code Napoléon and the Institutes of Justinian,
-he worked at formulating the section on Personal Rights.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on returning to Petersburg
-after visiting his estates had involuntarily found himself in a leading
-position among the Petersburg Freemasons. He arranged dining and funeral
-lodge meetings, enrolled new members, and busied himself uniting various
-lodges and acquiring authentic charters. He gave money for the erection
-of temples and supplemented as far as he could the collection of alms,
-in regard to which the majority of members were stingy and irregular.
-He supported almost singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded in
-Petersburg.
-
-His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same infatuations and
-dissipations. He liked to dine and drink well, and though he considered
-it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations of the
-bachelor circles in which he moved.
-
-Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions, however, Pierre at
-the end of a year began to feel that the more firmly he tried to rest
-upon it, the more Masonic ground on which he stood gave way under him.
-At the same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under him the
-closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he had joined
-the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who confidently
-steps onto the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his foot down it
-sank in. To make quite sure of the firmness of the ground, he put
-his other foot down and sank deeper still, became stuck in it, and
-involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog.
-
-Joseph Alexéevich was not in Petersburg—he had of late stood aside
-from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and lived almost entirely in
-Moscow. All the members of the lodges were men Pierre knew in ordinary
-life, and it was difficult for him to regard them merely as Brothers in
-Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Iván Vasílevich D., whom he knew
-in society mostly as weak and insignificant men. Under the Masonic
-aprons and insignia he saw the uniforms and decorations at which they
-aimed in ordinary life. Often after collecting alms, and reckoning up
-twenty to thirty rubles received for the most part in promises from a
-dozen members, of whom half were as well able to pay as himself, Pierre
-remembered the Masonic vow in which each Brother promised to devote
-all his belongings to his neighbor, and doubts on which he tried not to
-dwell arose in his soul.
-
-He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories. In the first he
-put those who did not take an active part in the affairs of the lodges
-or in human affairs, but were exclusively occupied with the mystical
-science of the order: with questions of the threefold designation of
-God, the three primordial elements—sulphur, mercury, and salt—or
-the meaning of the square and all the various figures of the temple of
-Solomon. Pierre respected this class of Brothers to which the elder ones
-chiefly belonged, including, Pierre thought, Joseph Alexéevich himself,
-but he did not share their interests. His heart was not in the mystical
-aspect of Freemasonry.
-
-In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like him,
-seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a straight
-and comprehensible path, but hoped to do so.
-
-In the third category he included those Brothers (the majority) who saw
-nothing in Freemasonry but the external forms and ceremonies, and prized
-the strict performance of these forms without troubling about their
-purport or significance. Such were Willarski and even the Grand Master
-of the principal lodge.
-
-Finally, to the fourth category also a great many Brothers belonged,
-particularly those who had lately joined. These according to Pierre’s
-observations were men who had no belief in anything, nor desire for
-anything, but joined the Freemasons merely to associate with the wealthy
-young Brothers who were influential through their connections or rank,
-and of whom there were very many in the lodge.
-
-Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing. Freemasonry,
-at any rate as he saw it here, sometimes seemed to him based merely
-on externals. He did not think of doubting Freemasonry itself, but
-suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path and deviated
-from its original principles. And so toward the end of the year he went
-abroad to be initiated into the higher secrets of the order.
-
-In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg. Our Freemasons knew
-from correspondence with those abroad that Bezúkhov had obtained the
-confidence of many highly placed persons, had been initiated into many
-mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade, and was bringing back with
-him much that might conduce to the advantage of the Masonic cause
-in Russia. The Petersburg Freemasons all came to see him, tried to
-ingratiate themselves with him, and it seemed to them all that he was
-preparing something for them and concealing it.
-
-A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree was convened, at
-which Pierre promised to communicate to the Petersburg Brothers what
-he had to deliver to them from the highest leaders of their order. The
-meeting was a full one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre rose and began
-his address.
-
-“Dear Brothers,” he began, blushing and stammering, with a written
-speech in his hand, “it is not sufficient to observe our mysteries in
-the seclusion of our lodge—we must act—act! We are drowsing, but we
-must act.” Pierre raised his notebook and began to read.
-
-“For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the triumph of
-virtue,” he read, “we must cleanse men from prejudice, diffuse
-principles in harmony with the spirit of the times, undertake the
-education of the young, unite ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the
-wisest men, boldly yet prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity, and
-folly, and form of those devoted to us a body linked together by unity
-of purpose and possessed of authority and power.
-
-“To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of virtue over vice
-and must endeavor to secure that the honest man may, even in this world,
-receive a lasting reward for his virtue. But in these great endeavors we
-are gravely hampered by the political institutions of today. What is
-to be done in these circumstances? To favor revolutions, overthrow
-everything, repel force by force?... No! We are very far from that.
-Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy
-evil while men remain what they are, and also because wisdom needs no
-violence.
-
-“The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of
-preparing men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of
-conviction—aiming at the punishment of vice and folly, and patronizing
-talent and virtue: raising worthy men from the dust and attaching
-them to our Brotherhood. Only then will our order have the power
-unobtrusively to bind the hands of the protectors of disorder and to
-control them without their being aware of it. In a word, we must found a
-form of government holding universal sway, which should be diffused over
-the whole world without destroying the bonds of citizenship, and beside
-which all other governments can continue in their customary course and
-do everything except what impedes the great aim of our order, which
-is to obtain for virtue the victory over vice. This aim was that of
-Christianity itself. It taught men to be wise and good and for their
-own benefit to follow the example and instruction of the best and wisest
-men.
-
-“At that time, when everything was plunged in darkness, preaching
-alone was of course sufficient. The novelty of Truth endowed her with
-special strength, but now we need much more powerful methods. It is
-now necessary that man, governed by his senses, should find in virtue
-a charm palpable to those senses. It is impossible to eradicate the
-passions; but we must strive to direct them to a noble aim, and it is
-therefore necessary that everyone should be able to satisfy his passions
-within the limits of virtue. Our order should provide means to that end.
-
-“As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men in every state,
-each of them again training two others and all being closely united,
-everything will be possible for our order, which has already in secret
-accomplished much for the welfare of mankind.”
-
-This speech not only made a strong impression, but created excitement in
-the lodge. The majority of the Brothers, seeing in it dangerous designs
-of Illuminism, * met it with a coldness that surprised Pierre. The Grand
-Master began answering him, and Pierre began developing his views with
-more and more warmth. It was long since there had been so stormy a
-meeting. Parties were formed, some accusing Pierre of Illuminism, others
-supporting him. At that meeting he was struck for the first time by
-the endless variety of men’s minds, which prevents a truth from ever
-presenting itself identically to two persons. Even those members
-who seemed to be on his side understood him in their own way with
-limitations and alterations he could not agree to, as what he always
-wanted most was to convey his thought to others just as he himself
-understood it.
-
- * The Illuminati sought to substitute republican for
- monarchical institutions.
-
-At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony and ill-will
-reproved Bezúkhov for his vehemence and said it was not love of virtue
-alone, but also a love of strife that had moved him in the dispute.
-Pierre did not answer him and asked briefly whether his proposal would
-be accepted. He was told that it would not, and without waiting for the
-usual formalities he left the lodge and went home.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so dreaded. For three
-days after the delivery of his speech at the lodge he lay on a sofa at
-home receiving no one and going nowhere.
-
-It was just then that he received a letter from his wife, who implored
-him to see her, telling him how grieved she was about him and how she
-wished to devote her whole life to him.
-
-At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few days she would
-return to Petersburg from abroad.
-
-Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers whom Pierre respected
-less than the others forced his way in to see him and, turning the
-conversation upon Pierre’s matrimonial affairs, by way of fraternal
-advice expressed the opinion that his severity to his wife was wrong
-and that he was neglecting one of the first rules of Freemasonry by not
-forgiving the penitent.
-
-At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasíli’s wife, sent to
-him imploring him to come if only for a few minutes to discuss a most
-important matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy against him and
-that they wanted to reunite him with his wife, and in the mood he then
-was, this was not even unpleasant to him. Nothing mattered to him.
-Nothing in life seemed to him of much importance, and under the
-influence of the depression that possessed him he valued neither his
-liberty nor his resolution to punish his wife.
-
-“No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not to
-blame,” he thought.
-
-If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with his wife, it
-was only because in his state of depression he did not feel able to take
-any step. Had his wife come to him, he would not have turned her away.
-Compared to what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of indifference
-whether he lived with his wife or not?
-
-Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre late
-one night prepared for a journey and started for Moscow to see Joseph
-Alexéevich. This is what he noted in his diary:
-
-Moscow, 17th November
-
-I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to write down what I
-have experienced. Joseph Alexéevich is living poorly and has for three
-years been suffering from a painful disease of the bladder. No one has
-ever heard him utter a groan or a word of complaint. From morning till
-late at night, except when he eats his very plain food, he is working
-at science. He received me graciously and made me sit down on the bed
-on which he lay. I made the sign of the Knights of the East and of
-Jerusalem, and he responded in the same manner, asking me with a mild
-smile what I had learned and gained in the Prussian and Scottish lodges.
-I told him everything as best I could, and told him what I had proposed
-to our Petersburg lodge, of the bad reception I had encountered, and of
-my rupture with the Brothers. Joseph Alexéevich, having remained silent
-and thoughtful for a good while, told me his view of the matter, which
-at once lit up for me my whole past and the future path I should follow.
-He surprised me by asking whether I remembered the threefold aim of
-the order: (1) The preservation and study of the mystery. (2) The
-purification and reformation of oneself for its reception, and (3) The
-improvement of the human race by striving for such purification. Which
-is the principal aim of these three? Certainly self-reformation and
-self-purification. Only to this aim can we always strive independently
-of circumstances. But at the same time just this aim demands the
-greatest efforts of us; and so, led astray by pride, losing sight of
-this aim, we occupy ourselves either with the mystery which in our
-impurity we are unworthy to receive, or seek the reformation of
-the human race while ourselves setting an example of baseness and
-profligacy. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine, just because it is
-attracted by social activity and puffed up by pride. On this ground
-Joseph Alexéevich condemned my speech and my whole activity, and in the
-depth of my soul I agreed with him. Talking of my family affairs he said
-to me, “the chief duty of a true Mason, as I have told you, lies in
-perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the difficulties
-of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on the contrary,
-my dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares that we can attain
-our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge—for man can only know himself
-by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can only be attained by
-conflict, and (3) The attainment of the chief virtue—love of death.
-Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its vanity and develop our
-innate love of death or of rebirth to a new life.” These words are all
-the more remarkable because, in spite of his great physical sufferings,
-Joseph Alexéevich is never weary of life though he loves death, for
-which—in spite of the purity and loftiness of his inner man—he does
-not yet feel himself sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained
-to me fully the meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out
-to me that the numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He
-advised me not to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but
-to take up only second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while
-diverting the Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the true path
-self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for
-myself personally above all to keep a watch over myself, and to that end
-he gave me a notebook, the one I am now writing in and in which I will
-in future note down all my actions.
-
-Petersburg, 23rd November
-
-I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears and
-said that Hélène was here and that she implored me to hear her; that
-she was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I knew
-that if I once let myself see her I should not have strength to go on
-refusing what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know whose aid and
-advice to seek. Had my benefactor been here he would have told me what
-to do. I went to my room and reread Joseph Alexéevich’s letters and
-recalled my conversations with him, and deduced from it all that I
-ought not to refuse a supplicant, and ought to reach a helping hand to
-everyone—especially to one so closely bound to me—and that I must
-bear my cross. But if I forgive her for the sake of doing right, then
-let union with her have only a spiritual aim. That is what I decided,
-and what I wrote to Joseph Alexéevich. I told my wife that I begged her
-to forget the past, to forgive me whatever wrong I may have done her,
-and that I had nothing to forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She
-need not know how hard it was for me to see her again. I have settled on
-the upper floor of this big house and am experiencing a happy feeling of
-regeneration.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-At that time, as always happens, the highest society that met at court
-and at the grand balls was divided into several circles, each with its
-own particular tone. The largest of these was the French circle of the
-Napoleonic alliance, the circle of Count Rumyántsev and Caulaincourt.
-In this group Hélène, as soon as she had settled in Petersburg with
-her husband, took a very prominent place. She was visited by the members
-of the French embassy and by many belonging to that circle and noted for
-their intellect and polished manners.
-
-Hélène had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting of the Emperors
-and had brought from there these connections with the Napoleonic
-notabilities. At Erfurt her success had been brilliant. Napoleon himself
-had noticed her in the theater and said of her: “C’est un superbe
-animal.” * Her success as a beautiful and elegant woman did not
-surprise Pierre, for she had become even handsomer than before. What did
-surprise him was that during these last two years his wife had succeeded
-in gaining the reputation “d’ une femme charmante, aussi spirituelle
-que belle.” *(2) The distinguished Prince de Ligne wrote her
-eight-page letters. Bilíbin saved up his epigrams to produce them
-in Countess Bezúkhova’s presence. To be received in the Countess
-Bezúkhova’s salon was regarded as a diploma of intellect. Young men
-read books before attending Hélène’s evenings, to have something to
-say in her salon, and secretaries of the embassy, and even ambassadors,
-confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that in a way Hélène was a
-power. Pierre, who knew she was very stupid, sometimes attended, with a
-strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her evenings and dinner parties,
-where politics, poetry, and philosophy were discussed. At these parties
-his feelings were like those of a conjuror who always expects his trick
-to be found out at any moment. But whether because stupidity was just
-what was needed to run such a salon, or because those who were deceived
-found pleasure in the deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and
-Hélène Bezúkhova’s reputation as a lovely and clever woman became
-so firmly established that she could say the emptiest and stupidest
-things and everybody would go into raptures over every word of hers
-and look for a profound meaning in it of which she herself had no
-conception.
-
- * “That’s a superb animal.”
-
- * (2) “Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely.”
-
-
-Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant society woman. He was
-that absent-minded crank, a grand seigneur husband who was in no one’s
-way, and far from spoiling the high tone and general impression of the
-drawing room, he served, by the contrast he presented to her, as an
-advantageous background to his elegant and tactful wife. Pierre during
-the last two years, as a result of his continual absorption in abstract
-interests and his sincere contempt for all else, had acquired in his
-wife’s circle, which did not interest him, that air of unconcern,
-indifference, and benevolence toward all, which cannot be acquired
-artificially and therefore inspires involuntary respect. He entered
-his wife’s drawing room as one enters a theater, was acquainted with
-everybody, equally pleased to see everyone, and equally indifferent to
-them all. Sometimes he joined in a conversation which interested him
-and, regardless of whether any “gentlemen of the embassy” were
-present or not, lispingly expressed his views, which were sometimes not
-at all in accord with the accepted tone of the moment. But the general
-opinion concerning the queer husband of “the most distinguished woman
-in Petersburg” was so well established that no one took his freaks
-seriously.
-
-Among the many young men who frequented her house every day, Borís
-Drubetskóy, who had already achieved great success in the service, was
-the most intimate friend of the Bezúkhov household since Hélène’s
-return from Erfurt. Hélène spoke of him as “mon page” and treated
-him like a child. Her smile for him was the same as for everybody,
-but sometimes that smile made Pierre uncomfortable. Toward him Borís
-behaved with a particularly dignified and sad deference. This shade
-of deference also disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so painfully three
-years before from the mortification to which his wife had subjected him
-that he now protected himself from the danger of its repetition, first
-by not being a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing himself
-to suspect.
-
-“No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally renounced
-her former infatuations,” he told himself. “There has never been
-an instance of a bluestocking being carried away by affairs of the
-heart”—a statement which, though gathered from an unknown source,
-he believed implicitly. Yet strange to say Borís’ presence in his
-wife’s drawing room (and he was almost always there) had a physical
-effect upon Pierre; it constricted his limbs and destroyed the
-unconsciousness and freedom of his movements.
-
-“What a strange antipathy,” thought Pierre, “yet I used to like
-him very much.”
-
-In the eyes of the world Pierre was a great gentleman, the rather blind
-and absurd husband of a distinguished wife, a clever crank who did
-nothing but harmed nobody and was a first-rate, good-natured fellow. But
-a complex and difficult process of internal development was taking place
-all this time in Pierre’s soul, revealing much to him and causing him
-many spiritual doubts and joys.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote in it during
-that time:
-
-
-24th November
-
-Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. (By Joseph
-Alexéevich’s advice Pierre had entered the service of the state and
-served on one of the committees.) Returned home for dinner and dined
-alone—the countess had many visitors I do not like. I ate and drank
-moderately and after dinner copied out some passages for the Brothers.
-In the evening I went down to the countess and told a funny story about
-B., and only remembered that I ought not to have done so when everybody
-laughed loudly at it.
-
-I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great God, help me to
-walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by calmness and deliberation,
-(2) to vanquish lust by self-restraint and repulsion, (3) to withdraw
-from worldliness, but not avoid (a) the service of the state, (b) family
-duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the management of my affairs.
-
-
-27th November
-
-I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to sloth. O God,
-help and strengthen me that I may walk in Thy ways! Read the Scriptures,
-but without proper feeling. Brother Urúsov came and we talked about
-worldly vanities. He told me of the Emperor’s new projects. I began
-to criticize them, but remembered my rules and my benefactor’s
-words—that a true Freemason should be a zealous worker for the state
-when his aid is required and a quiet onlooker when not called on to
-assist. My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O. visited me and we
-had a preliminary talk about the reception of a new Brother. They laid
-on me the duty of Rhetor. I feel myself weak and unworthy. Then our
-talk turned to the interpretation of the seven pillars and steps of the
-Temple, the seven sciences, the seven virtues, the seven vices, and the
-seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Brother O. was very eloquent. In the
-evening the admission took place. The new decoration of the Premises
-contributed much to the magnificence of the spectacle. It was Borís
-Drubetskóy who was admitted. I nominated him and was the Rhetor. A
-strange feeling agitated me all the time I was alone with him in the
-dark chamber. I caught myself harboring a feeling of hatred toward him
-which I vainly tried to overcome. That is why I should really like
-to save him from evil and lead him into the path of truth, but evil
-thoughts of him did not leave me. It seemed to me that his object in
-entering the Brotherhood was merely to be intimate and in favor with
-members of our lodge. Apart from the fact that he had asked me several
-times whether N. and S. were members of our lodge (a question to which I
-could not reply) and that according to my observation he is incapable of
-feeling respect for our holy order and is too preoccupied and satisfied
-with the outer man to desire spiritual improvement, I had no cause to
-doubt him, but he seemed to me insincere, and all the time I stood
-alone with him in the dark temple it seemed to me that he was smiling
-contemptuously at my words, and I wished really to stab his bare breast
-with the sword I held to it. I could not be eloquent, nor could I
-frankly mention my doubts to the Brothers and to the Grand Master. Great
-Architect of Nature, help me to find the true path out of the labyrinth
-of lies!
-
-
-After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and then the
-following was written:
-
-
-I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother V., who
-advised me to hold fast by Brother A. Though I am unworthy, much was
-revealed to me. Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim
-is the name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name unutterable
-which means the All. Talks with Brother V. strengthen, refresh, and
-support me in the path of virtue. In his presence doubt has no place.
-The distinction between the poor teachings of mundane science and our
-sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human sciences dissect
-everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to examine it. In the
-holy science of our order all is one, all is known in its entirety and
-life. The Trinity—the three elements of matter—are sulphur, mercury,
-and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and fiery nature; in combination with
-salt by its fiery nature it arouses a desire in the latter by means
-of which it attracts mercury, seizes it, holds it, and in combination
-produces other bodies. Mercury is a fluid, volatile, spiritual essence.
-Christ, the Holy Spirit, Him!...
-
-
-3rd December
-
-Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. Afterwards went and
-paced up and down the large hall. I wished to meditate, but instead my
-imagination pictured an occurrence of four years ago, when Dólokhov,
-meeting me in Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I was enjoying
-perfect peace of mind in spite of my wife’s absence. At the time I
-gave him no answer. Now I recalled every detail of that meeting and in
-my mind gave him the most malevolent and bitter replies. I recollected
-myself and drove away that thought only when I found myself glowing with
-anger, but I did not sufficiently repent. Afterwards Borís Drubetskóy
-came and began relating various adventures. His coming vexed me from the
-first, and I said something disagreeable to him. He replied. I flared
-up and said much that was unpleasant and even rude to him. He became
-silent, and I recollected myself only when it was too late. My God, I
-cannot get on with him at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set
-myself above him and so become much worse than he, for he is lenient
-to my rudeness while I on the contrary nourish contempt for him. O God,
-grant that in his presence I may rather see my own vileness, and behave
-so that he too may benefit. After dinner I fell asleep and as I was
-drowsing off I clearly heard a voice saying in my left ear, “Thy
-day!”
-
-I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded by
-dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly a smallish dog seized my left
-thigh with its teeth and would not let go. I began to throttle it with
-my hands. Scarcely had I torn it off before another, a bigger one, began
-biting me. I lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the bigger and
-heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A. came and, taking my arm, led
-me to a building to enter which we had to pass along a narrow plank.
-I stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and I began to clamber up a
-fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After much effort I
-dragged myself up, so that my leg hung down on one side and my body on
-the other. I looked round and saw Brother A. standing on the fence and
-pointing me to a broad avenue and garden, and in the garden was a large
-and beautiful building. I woke up. O Lord, great Architect of Nature,
-help me to tear from myself these dogs—my passions especially the
-last, which unites in itself the strength of all the former ones, and
-aid me to enter that temple of virtue to a vision of which I attained in
-my dream.
-
-
-7th December
-
-I dreamed that Joseph Alexéevich was sitting in my house, and that I
-was very glad and wished to entertain him. It seemed as if I chattered
-incessantly with other people and suddenly remembered that this could
-not please him, and I wished to come close to him and embrace him. But
-as soon as I drew near I saw that his face had changed and grown young,
-and he was quietly telling me something about the teaching of our order,
-but so softly that I could not hear it. Then it seemed that we all left
-the room and something strange happened. We were sitting or lying on
-the floor. He was telling me something, and I wished to show him my
-sensibility, and not listening to what he was saying I began picturing
-to myself the condition of my inner man and the grace of God sanctifying
-me. And tears came into my eyes, and I was glad he noticed this. But he
-looked at me with vexation and jumped up, breaking off his remarks. I
-felt abashed and asked whether what he had been saying did not concern
-me; but he did not reply, gave me a kind look, and then we suddenly
-found ourselves in my bedroom where there is a double bed. He lay down
-on the edge of it and I burned with longing to caress him and lie down
-too. And he said, “Tell me frankly what is your chief temptation? Do
-you know it? I think you know it already.” Abashed by this question,
-I replied that sloth was my chief temptation. He shook his head
-incredulously; and even more abashed, I said that though I was living
-with my wife as he advised, I was not living with her as her husband. To
-this he replied that one should not deprive a wife of one’s embraces
-and gave me to understand that that was my duty. But I replied that
-I should be ashamed to do it, and suddenly everything vanished. And I
-awoke and found in my mind the text from the Gospel: “The life was
-the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness
-comprehended it not.” Joseph Alexéevich’s face had looked young
-and bright. That day I received a letter from my benefactor in which he
-wrote about “conjugal duties.”
-
-
-9th December
-
-I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw that
-I was in Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and Joseph
-Alexéevich came in from the drawing room. I seemed to know at once that
-the process of regeneration had already taken place in him, and I rushed
-to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands, and he said, “Hast
-thou noticed that my face is different?” I looked at him, still
-holding him in my arms, and saw that his face was young, but that he
-had no hair on his head and his features were quite changed. And I said,
-“I should have known you had I met you by chance,” and I thought to
-myself, “Am I telling the truth?” And suddenly I saw him lying like
-a dead body; then he gradually recovered and went with me into my study
-carrying a large book of sheets of drawing paper; I said, “I drew
-that,” and he answered by bowing his head. I opened the book, and on
-all the pages there were excellent drawings. And in my dream I knew
-that these drawings represented the love adventures of the soul with its
-beloved. And on its pages I saw a beautiful representation of a maiden
-in transparent garments and with a transparent body, flying up to the
-clouds. And I seemed to know that this maiden was nothing else than a
-representation of the Song of Songs. And looking at those drawings I
-dreamed I felt that I was doing wrong, but could not tear myself away
-from them. Lord, help me! My God, if Thy forsaking me is Thy doing, Thy
-will be done; but if I am myself the cause, teach me what I should do! I
-shall perish of my debauchery if Thou utterly desertest me!
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-The Rostóvs’ monetary affairs had not improved during the two years
-they had spent in the country.
-
-Though Nicholas Rostóv had kept firmly to his resolution and was still
-serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending comparatively little,
-the way of life at Otrádnoe—Mítenka’s management of affairs, in
-particular—was such that the debts inevitably increased every year.
-The only resource obviously presenting itself to the old count was to
-apply for an official post, so he had come to Petersburg to look for one
-and also, as he said, to let the lassies enjoy themselves for the last
-time.
-
-Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to Véra and was
-accepted.
-
-Though in Moscow the Rostóvs belonged to the best society without
-themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg their circle of
-acquaintances was a mixed and indefinite one. In Petersburg they were
-provincials, and the very people they had entertained in Moscow without
-inquiring to what set they belonged, here looked down on them.
-
-The Rostóvs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in
-Moscow, and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country
-neighbors from Otrádnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters,
-Perónskaya a maid of honor, Pierre Bezúkhov, and the son of their
-district postmaster who had obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the
-men who very soon became frequent visitors at the Rostóvs’ house in
-Petersburg were Borís, Pierre whom the count had met in the street and
-dragged home with him, and Berg who spent whole days at the Rostóvs’
-and paid the eldest daughter, Countess Véra, the attentions a young man
-pays when he intends to propose.
-
-Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand wounded at
-Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary sword in his left. He
-narrated that episode so persistently and with so important an air that
-everyone believed in the merit and usefulness of his deed, and he had
-obtained two decorations for Austerlitz.
-
-In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had picked
-up the scrap of a grenade that had killed an aide-de-camp standing near
-the commander in chief and had taken it to his commander. Just as he had
-done after Austerlitz, he related this occurrence at such length and
-so insistently that everyone again believed it had been necessary to do
-this, and he received two decorations for the Finnish war also. In
-1809 he was a captain in the Guards, wore medals, and held some special
-lucrative posts in Petersburg.
-
-Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg’s merits, it could not
-be denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent
-terms with his superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant career
-before him and an assured position in society.
-
-Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the stalls of a Moscow
-theater, Berg had pointed out Véra Rostóva to him and had said in
-German, “das soll mein Weib werden,” * and from that moment had
-made up his mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered the
-Rostóvs’ position and his own, he decided that the time had come to
-propose.
-
- * “That girl shall be my wife.”
-
-
-Berg’s proposal was at first received with a perplexity that was not
-flattering to him. At first it seemed strange that the son of an obscure
-Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess Rostóva; but
-Berg’s chief characteristic was such a naïve and good natured egotism
-that the Rostóvs involuntarily came to think it would be a good thing,
-since he himself was so firmly convinced that it was good, indeed
-excellent. Moreover, the Rostóvs’ affairs were seriously embarrassed,
-as the suitor could not but know; and above all, Véra was twenty-four,
-had been taken out everywhere, and though she was certainly good-looking
-and sensible, no one up to now had proposed to her. So they gave their
-consent.
-
-“You see,” said Berg to his comrade, whom he called “friend”
-only because he knew that everyone has friends, “you see, I have
-considered it all, and should not marry if I had not thought it all out
-or if it were in any way unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and
-mamma are now provided for—I have arranged that rent for them in the
-Baltic Provinces—and I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with
-her fortune and my good management we can get along nicely. I am not
-marrying for money—I consider that dishonorable—but a wife should
-bring her share and a husband his. I have my position in the service,
-she has connections and some means. In our times that is worth
-something, isn’t it? But above all, she is a handsome, estimable girl,
-and she loves me....”
-
-Berg blushed and smiled.
-
-“And I love her, because her character is sensible and very good.
-Now the other sister, though they are the same family, is quite
-different—an unpleasant character and has not the same intelligence.
-She is so... you know?... Unpleasant... But my fiancée!... Well, you
-will be coming,” he was going to say, “to dine,” but changed his
-mind and said “to take tea with us,” and quickly doubling up his
-tongue he blew a small round ring of tobacco smoke, perfectly embodying
-his dream of happiness.
-
-After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents by Berg’s
-proposal, the holiday tone of joyousness usual at such times took
-possession of the family, but the rejoicing was external and insincere.
-In the family’s feeling toward this wedding a certain awkwardness
-and constraint was evident, as if they were ashamed of not having loved
-Véra sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off their hands. The
-old count felt this most. He would probably have been unable to state
-the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from the state of his
-affairs. He did not know at all how much he had, what his debts amounted
-to, or what dowry he could give Véra. When his daughters were born
-he had assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an estate with three
-hundred serfs; but one of these estates had already been sold, and the
-other was mortgaged and the interest so much in arrears that it would
-have to be sold, so that it was impossible to give it to Véra. Nor had
-he any money.
-
-Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week remained before
-the wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own mind the
-question of the dowry, nor spoken to his wife about it. At one time the
-count thought of giving her the Ryazán estate or of selling a forest,
-at another time of borrowing money on a note of hand. A few days before
-the wedding Berg entered the count’s study early one morning and, with
-a pleasant smile, respectfully asked his future father-in-law to let
-him know what Véra’s dowry would be. The count was so disconcerted by
-this long-foreseen inquiry that without consideration he gave the first
-reply that came into his head. “I like your being businesslike about
-it.... I like it. You shall be satisfied....”
-
-And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to end the
-conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did not
-know for certain how much Véra would have and did not receive at least
-part of the dowry in advance, he would have to break matters off.
-
-“Because, consider, Count—if I allowed myself to marry now
-without having definite means to maintain my wife, I should be acting
-badly....”
-
-The conversation ended by the count, who wished to be generous and to
-avoid further importunity, saying that he would give a note of hand
-for eighty thousand rubles. Berg smiled meekly, kissed the count on the
-shoulder, and said that he was very grateful, but that it was impossible
-for him to arrange his new life without receiving thirty thousand in
-ready money. “Or at least twenty thousand, Count,” he added, “and
-then a note of hand for only sixty thousand.”
-
-“Yes, yes, all right!” said the count hurriedly. “Only excuse me,
-my dear fellow, I’ll give you twenty thousand and a note of hand for
-eighty thousand as well. Yes, yes! Kiss me.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-Natásha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which
-she had counted on her fingers with Borís after they had kissed four
-years ago. Since then she had not seen him. Before Sónya and her
-mother, if Borís happened to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of
-that episode as of some childish, long-forgotten matter that was not
-worth mentioning. But in the secret depths of her soul the question
-whether her engagement to Borís was a jest or an important, binding
-promise tormented her.
-
-Since Borís left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had not seen the
-Rostóvs. He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed near
-Otrádnoe, but had never been to see them.
-
-Sometimes it occurred to Natásha that he did not wish to see her, and
-this conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in which her elders spoke
-of him.
-
-“Nowadays old friends are not remembered,” the countess would say
-when Borís was mentioned.
-
-Anna Mikháylovna also had of late visited them less frequently, seemed
-to hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke rapturously
-and gratefully of the merits of her son and the brilliant career on
-which he had entered. When the Rostóvs came to Petersburg Borís called
-on them.
-
-He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natásha was
-his most poetic recollection. But he went with the firm intention of
-letting her and her parents feel that the childish relations between
-himself and Natásha could not be binding either on her or on him. He
-had a brilliant position in society thanks to his intimacy with Countess
-Bezúkhova, a brilliant position in the service thanks to the patronage
-of an important personage whose complete confidence he enjoyed, and he
-was beginning to make plans for marrying one of the richest heiresses in
-Petersburg, plans which might very easily be realized. When he entered
-the Rostóvs’ drawing room Natásha was in her own room. When she
-heard of his arrival she almost ran into the drawing room, flushed and
-beaming with a more than cordial smile.
-
-Borís remembered Natásha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining from
-under her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had known her
-four years before; and so he was taken aback when quite a different
-Natásha entered, and his face expressed rapturous astonishment. This
-expression on his face pleased Natásha.
-
-“Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?” asked the
-countess.
-
-Borís kissed Natásha’s hand and said that he was astonished at the
-change in her.
-
-“How handsome you have grown!”
-
-“I should think so!” replied Natásha’s laughing eyes.
-
-“And is Papa older?” she asked.
-
-Natásha sat down and, without joining in Borís’ conversation with
-the countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood’s suitor. He
-felt the weight of that resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced
-at her occasionally.
-
-Borís’ uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were all
-comme il faut and in the latest fashion. This Natásha noticed at once.
-He sat rather sideways in the armchair next to the countess, arranging
-with his right hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his left hand
-like a skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined compression of his
-lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg society, recalling
-with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow acquaintances. It was
-not accidentally, Natásha felt, that he alluded, when speaking of the
-highest aristocracy, to an ambassador’s ball he had attended, and to
-invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S.
-
-All this time Natásha sat silent, glancing up at him from under her
-brows. This gaze disturbed and confused Borís more and more. He looked
-round more frequently toward her, and broke off in what he was saying.
-He did not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and took his leave. The
-same inquisitive, challenging, and rather mocking eyes still looked
-at him. After his first visit Borís said to himself that Natásha
-attracted him just as much as ever, but that he must not yield to that
-feeling, because to marry her, a girl almost without fortune, would
-mean ruin to his career, while to renew their former relations without
-intending to marry her would be dishonorable. Borís made up his mind
-to avoid meeting Natásha, but despite that resolution he called again
-a few days later and began calling often and spending whole days at the
-Rostóvs’. It seemed to him that he ought to have an explanation with
-Natásha and tell her that the old times must be forgotten, that in
-spite of everything... she could not be his wife, that he had no means,
-and they would never let her marry him. But he failed to do so and felt
-awkward about entering on such an explanation. From day to day he
-became more and more entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sónya that
-Natásha was in love with Borís as of old. She sang him his favorite
-songs, showed him her album, making him write in it, did not allow him
-to allude to the past, letting it be understood how delightful was the
-present; and every day he went away in a fog, without having said what
-he meant to, and not knowing what he was doing or why he came, or how
-it would all end. He left off visiting Hélène and received reproachful
-notes from her every day, and yet he continued to spend whole days with
-the Rostóvs.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket,
-without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing
-under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and
-bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natásha, also in
-a dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in
-curlpapers, ran in. The countess—her prayerful mood dispelled—looked
-round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: “Can it be that
-this couch will be my grave?” Natásha, flushed and eager, seeing
-her mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down, and
-unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing that
-her mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and, rapidly
-slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her slippers and
-jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might become her grave. This
-couch was high, with a feather bed and five pillows each smaller than
-the one below. Natásha jumped on it, sank into the feather bed, rolled
-over to the wall, and began snuggling up the bedclothes as she settled
-down, raising her knees to her chin, kicking out and laughing almost
-inaudibly, now covering herself up head and all, and now peeping at her
-mother. The countess finished her prayers and came to the bed with a
-stern face, but seeing, that Natásha’s head was covered, she smiled
-in her kind, weak way.
-
-“Now then, now then!” said she.
-
-“Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?” said Natásha. “Now, just one on
-your throat and another... that’ll do!” And seizing her mother round
-the neck, she kissed her on the throat. In her behavior to her mother
-Natásha seemed rough, but she was so sensitive and tactful that however
-she clasped her mother she always managed to do it without hurting her
-or making her feel uncomfortable or displeased.
-
-“Well, what is it tonight?” said the mother, having arranged her
-pillows and waited until Natásha, after turning over a couple of times,
-had settled down beside her under the quilt, spread out her arms, and
-assumed a serious expression.
-
-These visits of Natásha’s at night before the count returned from his
-club were one of the greatest pleasures of both mother, and daughter.
-
-“What is it tonight?—But I have to tell you...”
-
-Natásha put her hand on her mother’s mouth.
-
-“About Borís... I know,” she said seriously; “that’s what I
-have come about. Don’t say it—I know. No, do tell me!” and she
-removed her hand. “Tell me, Mamma! He’s nice?”
-
-“Natásha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say Borís
-is nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son. But what then?...
-What are you thinking about? You have quite turned his head, I can see
-that....”
-
-As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter. Natásha
-was lying looking steadily straight before her at one of the mahogany
-sphinxes carved on the corners of the bedstead, so that the countess
-only saw her daughter’s face in profile. That face struck her by its
-peculiarly serious and concentrated expression.
-
-Natásha was listening and considering.
-
-“Well, what then?” said she.
-
-“You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you want of him? You
-know you can’t marry him.”
-
-“Why not?” said Natásha, without changing her position.
-
-“Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a relation...
-and because you yourself don’t love him.”
-
-“How do you know?”
-
-“I know. It is not right, darling!”
-
-“But if I want to...” said Natásha.
-
-“Leave off talking nonsense,” said the countess.
-
-“But if I want to...”
-
-“Natásha, I am in earnest...”
-
-Natásha did not let her finish. She drew the countess’ large hand to
-her, kissed it on the back and then on the palm, then again turned it
-over and began kissing first one knuckle, then the space between the
-knuckles, then the next knuckle, whispering, “January, February,
-March, April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don’t you say anything? Speak!”
-said she, turning to her mother, who was tenderly gazing at her daughter
-and in that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she had wished to
-say.
-
-“It won’t do, my love! Not everyone will understand this friendship
-dating from your childish days, and to see him so intimate with you may
-injure you in the eyes of other young men who visit us, and above all
-it torments him for nothing. He may already have found a suitable and
-wealthy match, and now he’s half crazy.”
-
-“Crazy?” repeated Natásha.
-
-“I’ll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin...”
-
-“I know! Cyril Matvéich... but he is old.”
-
-“He was not always old. But this is what I’ll do, Natásha, I’ll
-have a talk with Borís. He need not come so often....”
-
-“Why not, if he likes to?”
-
-“Because I know it will end in nothing....”
-
-“How can you know? No, Mamma, don’t speak to him! What nonsense!”
-said Natásha in the tone of one being deprived of her property.
-“Well, I won’t marry, but let him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy
-it.” Natásha smiled and looked at her mother. “Not to marry, but
-just so,” she added.
-
-“How so, my pet?”
-
-“Just so. There’s no need for me to marry him. But... just so.”
-
-“Just so, just so,” repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she
-went off into a good humored, unexpected, elderly laugh.
-
-“Don’t laugh, stop!” cried Natásha. “You’re shaking the whole
-bed! You’re awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait...”
-and she seized the countess’ hands and kissed a knuckle of the little
-finger, saying, “June,” and continued, kissing, “July, August,”
-on the other hand. “But, Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you
-think? Was anybody ever so much in love with you? And he’s very nice,
-very, very nice. Only not quite my taste—he is so narrow, like the
-dining-room clock.... Don’t you understand? Narrow, you know—gray,
-light gray...”
-
-“What rubbish you’re talking!” said the countess.
-
-Natásha continued: “Don’t you really understand? Nicholas would
-understand.... Bezúkhov, now, is blue, dark-blue and red, and he is
-square.”
-
-“You flirt with him too,” said the countess, laughing.
-
-“No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, dark-blue and
-red.... How can I explain it to you?”
-
-“Little countess!” the count’s voice called from behind the door.
-“You’re not asleep?” Natásha jumped up, snatched up her slippers,
-and ran barefoot to her own room.
-
-It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no one
-could understand all that she understood and all there was in her.
-
-“Sónya?” she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little
-kitten with her enormous plait of hair. “No, how could she? She’s
-virtuous. She fell in love with Nicholas and does not wish to know
-anything more. Even Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how
-clever I am and how... charming she is,” she went on, speaking
-of herself in the third person, and imagining it was some very wise
-man—the wisest and best of men—who was saying it of her. “There
-is everything, everything in her,” continued this man. “She is
-unusually intelligent, charming... and then she is pretty, uncommonly
-pretty, and agile—she swims and rides splendidly... and her voice! One
-can really say it’s a wonderful voice!”
-
-She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw herself
-on her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought that she would immediately
-fall asleep, called Dunyásha the maid to put out the candle, and before
-Dunyásha had left the room had already passed into yet another happier
-world of dreams, where everything was as light and beautiful as in
-reality, and even more so because it was different.
-
-Next day the countess called Borís aside and had a talk with him, after
-which he ceased coming to the Rostóvs’.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-On the thirty-first of December, New Year’s Eve, 1809 - 10 an old
-grandee of Catherine’s day was giving a ball and midnight supper. The
-diplomatic corps and the Emperor himself were to be present.
-
-The grandee’s well-known mansion on the English Quay glittered with
-innumerable lights. Police were stationed at the brightly lit entrance
-which was carpeted with red baize, and not only gendarmes but dozens of
-police officers and even the police master himself stood at the porch.
-Carriages kept driving away and fresh ones arriving, with red-liveried
-footmen and footmen in plumed hats. From the carriages emerged men
-wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while ladies in satin and ermine
-cautiously descended the carriage steps which were let down for them
-with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly and noiselessly over the baize
-at the entrance.
-
-Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper ran through the
-crowd and caps were doffed.
-
-“The Emperor?... No, a minister... prince... ambassador. Don’t you
-see the plumes?...” was whispered among the crowd.
-
-One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know everyone and
-mentioned by name the greatest dignitaries of the day.
-
-A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostóvs, who were
-to be present, were still hurrying to get dressed.
-
-There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in the
-Rostóv family, many fears that the invitation would not arrive, that
-the dresses would not be ready, or that something would not be arranged
-as it should be.
-
-Márya Ignátevna Perónskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at
-the court of the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the
-countess and piloted the provincial Rostóvs in Petersburg high society,
-was to accompany them to the ball.
-
-They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten
-o’clock, but it was already five minutes to ten, and the girls were
-not yet dressed.
-
-Natásha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up at eight that
-morning and had been in a fever of excitement and activity all day. All
-her powers since morning had been concentrated on ensuring that they
-all—she herself, Mamma, and Sónya—should be as well dressed as
-possible. Sónya and her mother put themselves entirely in her hands.
-The countess was to wear a claret-colored velvet dress, and the two
-girls white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on their bodices and
-their hair dressed à la grecque.
-
-Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands, necks, and
-ears washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the openwork
-silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were already on; the
-hairdressing was almost done. Sónya was finishing dressing and so was
-the countess, but Natásha, who had bustled about helping them all, was
-behindhand. She was still sitting before a looking-glass with a dressing
-jacket thrown over her slender shoulders. Sónya stood ready dressed in
-the middle of the room and, pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her
-dainty finger, was fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked as the pin went
-through it.
-
-“That’s not the way, that’s not the way, Sónya!” cried Natásha
-turning her head and clutching with both hands at her hair which the
-maid who was dressing it had not time to release. “That bow is not
-right. Come here!”
-
-Sónya sat down and Natásha pinned the ribbon on differently.
-
-“Allow me, Miss! I can’t do it like that,” said the maid who was
-holding Natásha’s hair.
-
-“Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That’s right, Sónya.”
-
-“Aren’t you ready? It is nearly ten,” came the countess’ voice.
-
-“Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?”
-
-“I have only my cap to pin on.”
-
-“Don’t do it without me!” called Natásha. “You won’t do it
-right.”
-
-“But it’s already ten.”
-
-They had decided to be at the ball by half-past ten, and Natásha had
-still to get dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens.
-
-When her hair was done, Natásha, in her short petticoat from under
-which her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother’s dressing jacket,
-ran up to Sónya, scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother. Turning
-her mother’s head this way and that, she fastened on the cap and,
-hurriedly kissing her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were turning
-up the hem of her skirt.
-
-The cause of the delay was Natásha’s skirt, which was too long.
-Two maids were turning up the hem and hurriedly biting off the ends of
-thread. A third with pins in her mouth was running about between the
-countess and Sónya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer garment
-up high on one uplifted hand.
-
-“Mávra, quicker, darling!”
-
-“Give me my thimble, Miss, from there...”
-
-“Whenever will you be ready?” asked the count coming to the door.
-“Here is some scent. Perónskaya must be tired of waiting.”
-
-“It’s ready, Miss,” said the maid, holding up the shortened gauze
-dress with two fingers, and blowing and shaking something off it, as if
-by this to express a consciousness of the airiness and purity of what
-she held.
-
-Natásha began putting on the dress.
-
-“In a minute! In a minute! Don’t come in, Papa!” she cried to her
-father as he opened the door—speaking from under the filmy skirt which
-still covered her whole face.
-
-Sónya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the count in. He was
-wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and was perfumed
-and his hair pomaded.
-
-“Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!” cried Natásha, as she
-stood in the middle of the room smoothing out the folds of the gauze.
-
-“If you please, Miss! allow me,” said the maid, who on her knees was
-pulling the skirt straight and shifting the pins from one side of her
-mouth to the other with her tongue.
-
-“Say what you like,” exclaimed Sónya, in a despairing voice as she
-looked at Natásha, “say what you like, it’s still too long.”
-
-Natásha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass. The dress
-was too long.
-
-“Really, madam, it is not at all too long,” said Mávra, crawling on
-her knees after her young lady.
-
-“Well, if it’s too long we’ll tack it up... we’ll tack it up
-in one minute,” said the resolute Dunyásha taking a needle that was
-stuck on the front of her little shawl and, still kneeling on the floor,
-set to work once more.
-
-At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in shyly, in her cap
-and velvet gown.
-
-“Oo-oo, my beauty!” exclaimed the count, “she looks better than
-any of you!”
-
-He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped aside fearing to
-be rumpled.
-
-“Mamma, your cap, more to this side,” said Natásha. “I’ll
-arrange it,” and she rushed forward so that the maids who were tacking
-up her skirt could not move fast enough and a piece of gauze was torn
-off.
-
-“Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my fault!”
-
-“Never mind, I’ll run it up, it won’t show,” said Dunyásha.
-
-“What a beauty—a very queen!” said the nurse as she came to the
-door. “And Sónya! They are lovely!”
-
-At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages and started.
-But they had still to call at the Taurida Gardens.
-
-Perónskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she
-had gone through the same process as the Rostóvs, but with less
-flurry—for to her it was a matter of routine. Her ugly old body was
-washed, perfumed, and powdered in just the same way. She had washed
-behind her ears just as carefully, and when she entered her drawing
-room in her yellow dress, wearing her badge as maid of honor, her old
-lady’s maid was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostóvs’
-servants had been.
-
-She praised the Rostóvs’ toilets. They praised her taste and toilet,
-and at eleven o’clock, careful of their coiffures and dresses, they
-settled themselves in their carriages and drove off.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-Natásha had not had a moment free since early morning and had not once
-had time to think of what lay before her.
-
-In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying carriage, she
-for the first time vividly imagined what was in store for her there at
-the ball, in those brightly lighted rooms—with music, flowers, dances,
-the Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of Petersburg. The
-prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it would come true,
-so out of keeping was it with the chill darkness and closeness of the
-carriage. She understood all that awaited her only when, after stepping
-over the red baize at the entrance, she entered the hall, took off her
-fur cloak, and, beside Sónya and in front of her mother, mounted the
-brightly illuminated stairs between the flowers. Only then did she
-remember how she must behave at a ball, and tried to assume the majestic
-air she considered indispensable for a girl on such an occasion. But,
-fortunately for her, she felt her eyes growing misty, she saw nothing
-clearly, her pulse beat a hundred to the minute, and the blood throbbed
-at her heart. She could not assume that pose, which would have made her
-ridiculous, and she moved on almost fainting from excitement and trying
-with all her might to conceal it. And this was the very attitude that
-became her best. Before and behind them other visitors were entering,
-also talking in low tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the
-landing reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with
-diamonds and pearls on their bare necks and arms.
-
-Natásha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her reflection
-from the others. All was blended into one brilliant procession.
-On entering the ballroom the regular hum of voices, footsteps, and
-greetings deafened Natásha, and the light and glitter dazzled her still
-more. The host and hostess, who had already been standing at the door
-for half an hour repeating the same words to the various arrivals,
-“Charmé de vous voir,” * greeted the Rostóvs and Perónskaya in
-the same manner.
-
- * “Delighted to see you.”
-
-
-The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her
-black hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess’ eye
-involuntarily rested longer on the slim Natásha. She looked at her
-and gave her alone a special smile in addition to her usual smile as
-hostess. Looking at her she may have recalled the golden, irrecoverable
-days of her own girlhood and her own first ball. The host also followed
-Natásha with his eyes and asked the count which was his daughter.
-
-“Charming!” said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.
-
-In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting
-the Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front rows
-of that crowd. Natásha heard and felt that several people were asking
-about her and looking at her. She realized that those noticing her liked
-her, and this observation helped to calm her.
-
-“There are some like ourselves and some worse,” she thought.
-
-Perónskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important people
-at the ball.
-
-“That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man,”
-she said, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray curly
-hair, who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he said.
-
-“Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezúkhova,”
-said Perónskaya, indicating Hélène who had just entered. “How
-lovely! She is quite equal to Márya Antónovna. See how the men, young
-and old, pay court to her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince
-—— is quite mad about her. But see, those two, though not
-good-looking, are even more run after.”
-
-She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very plain
-daughter.
-
-“She is a splendid match, a millionairess,” said Perónskaya. “And
-look, here come her suitors.”
-
-“That is Bezúkhova’s brother, Anatole Kurágin,” she said,
-indicating a handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them
-with head erect, looking at something over the heads of the ladies.
-“He’s handsome, isn’t he? I hear they will marry him to that rich
-girl. But your cousin, Drubetskóy, is also very attentive to her. They
-say she has millions. Oh yes, that’s the French ambassador himself!”
-she replied to the countess’ inquiry about Caulaincourt. “Looks as
-if he were a king! All the same, the French are charming, very charming.
-No one more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still the
-most beautiful of them all, our Márya Antónovna! And how simply she
-is dressed! Lovely! And that stout one in spectacles is the universal
-Freemason,” she went on, indicating Pierre. “Put him beside his wife
-and he looks a regular buffoon!”
-
-Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the crowd
-and nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly as if he
-were passing through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through, evidently
-looking for someone.
-
-Natásha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, “the
-buffoon,” as Perónskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for
-them, and for her in particular. He had promised to be at the ball and
-introduce partners to her.
-
-But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome, dark
-man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a window
-talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natásha at once
-recognized the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it was
-Bolkónski, who seemed to her to have grown much younger, happier, and
-better-looking.
-
-“There’s someone else we know—Bolkónski, do you see, Mamma?”
-said Natásha, pointing out Prince Andrew. “You remember, he stayed a
-night with us at Otrádnoe.”
-
-“Oh, you know him?” said Perónskaya. “I can’t bear him. Il fait
-à présent la pluie et le beau temps. * He’s too proud for anything.
-Takes after his father. And he’s hand in glove with Speránski,
-writing some project or other. Just look how he treats the ladies!
-There’s one talking to him and he has turned away,” she said,
-pointing at him. “I’d give it to him if he treated me as he does
-those ladies.”
-
- * “He is all the rage just now.”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and then
-back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor entered to
-the sounds of music that had immediately struck up. Behind him walked
-his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing to right and left
-as if anxious to get the first moments of the reception over. The band
-played the polonaise in vogue at that time on account of the words that
-had been set to it, beginning: “Alexander, Elisaveta, all our hearts
-you ravish quite...” The Emperor passed on to the drawing room, the
-crowd made a rush for the doors, and several persons with excited faces
-hurried there and back again. Then the crowd hastily retired from
-the drawing room door, at which the Emperor reappeared talking to the
-hostess. A young man, looking distraught, pounced down on the ladies,
-asking them to move aside. Some ladies, with faces betraying complete
-forgetfulness of all the rules of decorum, pushed forward to the
-detriment of their toilets. The men began to choose partners and take
-their places for the polonaise.
-
-Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing
-room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the
-music. The host followed with Márya Antónovna Narýshkina; then
-came ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Perónskaya
-diligently named. More than half the ladies already had partners
-and were taking up, or preparing to take up, their positions for the
-polonaise. Natásha felt that she would be left with her mother and
-Sónya among a minority of women who crowded near the wall, not having
-been invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms hanging down,
-her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly, and with
-bated breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight before
-her, evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery. She was
-not concerned about the Emperor or any of those great people whom
-Perónskaya was pointing out—she had but one thought: “Is it
-possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among the first to
-dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will notice me?
-They do not even seem to see me, or if they do they look as if they
-were saying, ‘Ah, she’s not the one I’m after, so it’s not worth
-looking at her!’ No, it’s impossible,” she thought. “They must
-know how I long to dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would
-enjoy dancing with me.”
-
-The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable
-time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natásha’s ears.
-She wanted to cry. Perónskaya had left them. The count was at the
-other end of the room. She and the countess and Sónya were standing by
-themselves as in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of strangers,
-with no one interested in them and not wanted by anyone. Prince Andrew
-with a lady passed by, evidently not recognizing them. The handsome
-Anatole was smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and looked at
-Natásha as one looks at a wall. Borís passed them twice and each time
-turned away. Berg and his wife, who were not dancing, came up to them.
-
-This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natásha—as if there were
-nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did not
-listen to or look at Véra, who was telling her something about her own
-green dress.
-
-At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced
-with three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the
-Rostóvs requesting them to stand farther back, though as it was they
-were already close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the
-distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The Emperor
-looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but no one had yet begun
-dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went up to Countess
-Bezúkhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly raised her hand and
-laid it on his shoulder without looking at him. The aide-de-camp, an
-adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly round her waist, with
-confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding first round the edge of
-the circle, then at the corner of the room he caught Hélène’s
-left hand and turned her, the only sound audible, apart from the
-ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of the spurs on his
-rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his partner’s velvet
-dress spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled round. Natásha
-gazed at them and was ready to cry because it was not she who was
-dancing that first turn of the waltz.
-
-Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing
-stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in the
-front row of the circle not far from the Rostóvs. Baron Firhoff was
-talking to him about the first sitting of the Council of State to be
-held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with Speránski
-and participating in the work of the legislative commission, could give
-reliable information about that sitting, concerning which various rumors
-were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was saying, he was
-gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men intending to dance who
-had not yet gathered courage to enter the circle.
-
-Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor’s
-presence, and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to
-dance.
-
-Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.
-
-“You always dance. I have a protégée, the young Rostóva, here. Ask
-her,” he said.
-
-“Where is she?” asked Bolkónski. “Excuse me!” he added, turning
-to the baron, “we will finish this conversation elsewhere—at a ball
-one must dance.” He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated.
-The despairing, dejected expression of Natásha’s face caught his eye.
-He recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her début,
-remembered her conversation at the window, and with an expression of
-pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostóva.
-
-“Allow me to introduce you to my daughter,” said the countess, with
-heightened color.
-
-“I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess
-remembers me,” said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite
-belying Perónskaya’s remarks about his rudeness, and approaching
-Natásha he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed
-his invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on
-Natásha’s face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly
-brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.
-
-“I have long been waiting for you,” that frightened happy little
-girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as
-she raised her hand to Prince Andrew’s shoulder. They were the second
-couple to enter the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best dancers of
-his day and Natásha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in their white
-satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly, and independently
-of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic happiness. Her slender
-bare arms and neck were not beautiful—compared to Hélène’s her
-shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But Hélène seemed, as
-it were, hardened by a varnish left by the thousands of looks that had
-scanned her person, while Natásha was like a girl exposed for the first
-time, who would have felt very much ashamed had she not been assured
-that this was absolutely necessary.
-
-Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as
-possible from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed
-to him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint he disliked,
-caused by the Emperor’s presence, he danced, and had chosen Natásha
-because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she was the first
-pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he embraced that
-slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close to him and smiling
-so near him than the wine of her charm rose to his head, and he
-felt himself revived and rejuvenated when after leaving her he stood
-breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-After Prince Andrew, Borís came up to ask Natásha for a dance, and
-then the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young
-men, so that, flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous partners
-to Sónya, she did not cease dancing all the evening. She noticed and
-saw nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did she fail to
-notice that the Emperor talked a long time with the French ambassador,
-and how particularly gracious he was to a certain lady, or that Prince
-So-and-so and So-and-so did and said this and that, and that Hélène
-had great success and was honored by the special attention of So-and-so,
-but she did not even see the Emperor, and only noticed that he had gone
-because the ball became livelier after his departure. For one of the
-merry cotillions before supper Prince Andrew was again her partner. He
-reminded her of their first encounter in the Otrádnoe avenue, and how
-she had been unable to sleep that moonlight night, and told her how he
-had involuntarily overheard her. Natásha blushed at that recollection
-and tried to excuse herself, as if there had been something to be
-ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had overheard.
-
-Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked meeting
-someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And such was
-Natásha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and even her
-mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special care and
-tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest and most
-unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the middle of the
-cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natásha, still out of
-breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer chose her. She was
-tired and panting and evidently thought of declining, but immediately
-put her hand gaily on the man’s shoulder, smiling at Prince Andrew.
-
-“I’d be glad to sit beside you and rest: I’m tired; but you see
-how they keep asking me, and I’m glad of it, I’m happy and I love
-everybody, and you and I understand it all,” and much, much more was
-said in her smile. When her partner left her Natásha ran across the
-room to choose two ladies for the figure.
-
-“If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she will be
-my wife,” said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own surprise, as
-he watched her. She did go first to her cousin.
-
-“What rubbish sometimes enters one’s head!” thought Prince Andrew,
-“but what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original,
-that she won’t be dancing here a month before she will be married....
-Such as she are rare here,” he thought, as Natásha, readjusting a
-rose that was slipping on her bodice, settled herself beside him.
-
-When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up to
-the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and asked
-his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natásha did not answer
-at once but only looked up with a smile that said reproachfully: “How
-can you ask such a question?”
-
-“I have never enjoyed myself so much before!” she said, and Prince
-Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her
-father and instantly dropped again. Natásha was happier than she had
-ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one becomes
-completely kind and good and does not believe in the possibility of
-evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.
-
-At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the position
-his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and absent-minded. A
-deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing by a window he stared
-over his spectacles seeing no one.
-
-On her way to supper Natásha passed him.
-
-Pierre’s gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of him.
-She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of her own
-happiness.
-
-“How delightful it is, Count!” said she. “Isn’t it?”
-
-Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said.
-
-“Yes, I am very glad,” he said.
-
-“How can people be dissatisfied with anything?” thought Natásha.
-“Especially such a capital fellow as Bezúkhov!” In Natásha’s
-eyes all the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid
-people, loving one another; none of them capable of injuring
-another—and so they ought all to be happy.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not dwell
-on it long. “Yes, it was a very brilliant ball,” and then... “Yes,
-that little Rostóva is very charming. There’s something fresh,
-original, un-Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her.” That
-was all he thought about yesterday’s ball, and after his morning tea
-he set to work.
-
-But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for work
-and could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work, as he
-often did, and was glad when he heard someone coming.
-
-The visitor was Bítski, who served on various committees, frequented
-all the societies in Petersburg, and a passionate devotee of the new
-ideas and of Speránski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger—one of
-those men who choose their opinions like their clothes according to
-the fashion, but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest
-partisans. Hardly had he got rid of his hat before he ran into Prince
-Andrew’s room with a preoccupied air and at once began talking. He
-had just heard particulars of that morning’s sitting of the Council
-of State opened by the Emperor, and he spoke of it enthusiastically. The
-Emperor’s speech had been extraordinary. It had been a speech such as
-only constitutional monarchs deliver. “The Sovereign plainly said
-that the Council and Senate are estates of the realm, he said that the
-government must rest not on authority but on secure bases. The Emperor
-said that the fiscal system must be reorganized and the accounts
-published,” recounted Bítski, emphasizing certain words and opening
-his eyes significantly.
-
-“Ah, yes! Today’s events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our
-history,” he concluded.
-
-Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the Council of
-State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which he had attached
-such importance, and was surprised that this event, now that it had
-taken place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite insignificant. He
-listened with quiet irony to Bítski’s enthusiastic account of it. A
-very simple thought occurred to him: “What does it matter to me or to
-Bítski what the Emperor was pleased to say at the Council? Can all that
-make me any happier or better?”
-
-And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest Prince
-Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to dine that
-evening at Speránski’s, “with only a few friends,” as the host
-had said when inviting him. The prospect of that dinner in the intimate
-home circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested Prince
-Andrew, especially as he had not yet seen Speránski in his domestic
-surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.
-
-At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house Speránski
-owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room this small
-house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting that of a
-monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the friendly
-gathering of Speránski’s intimate acquaintances already assembled
-at five o’clock. There were no ladies present except Speránski’s
-little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her governess. The
-other guests were Gervais, Magnítski, and Stolýpin. While still in
-the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a ringing staccato
-laugh—a laugh such as one hears on the stage. Someone—it sounded
-like Speránski—was distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew
-had never before heard Speránski’s famous laugh, and this ringing,
-high-pitched laughter from a statesman made a strange impression on him.
-
-He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing between two
-windows at a small table laid with hors-d’oeuvres. Speránski, wearing
-a gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast, and evidently still
-the same waistcoat and high white stock he had worn at the meeting of
-the Council of State, stood at the table with a beaming countenance. His
-guests surrounded him. Magnítski, addressing himself to Speránski,
-was relating an anecdote, and Speránski was laughing in advance at
-what Magnítski was going to say. When Prince Andrew entered the room
-Magnítski’s words were again crowned by laughter. Stolýpin gave
-a deep bass guffaw as he munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais
-laughed softly with a hissing chuckle, and Speránski in a high-pitched
-staccato manner.
-
-Still laughing, Speránski held out his soft white hand to Prince
-Andrew.
-
-“Very pleased to see you, Prince,” he said. “One moment...” he
-went on, turning to Magnítski and interrupting his story. “We have
-agreed that this is a dinner for recreation, with not a word about
-business!” and turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh.
-
-Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speránski with astonishment,
-regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not
-Speránski but someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared
-mysterious and fascinating in Speránski suddenly became plain and
-unattractive.
-
-At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed to
-consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before Magnítski
-had finished his story someone else was anxious to relate something
-still funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the state
-service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in this
-company the insignificance of those people was so definitely accepted
-that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good humored
-ridicule. Speránski related how at the Council that morning a deaf
-dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so too.
-Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable for the
-stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolýpin, stuttering, broke into
-the conversation and began excitedly talking of the abuses that existed
-under the former order of things—threatening to give a serious turn
-to the conversation. Magnítski starting quizzing Stolýpin about his
-vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and the talk reverted to its
-former lively tone.
-
-Evidently Speránski liked to rest after his labors and find amusement
-in a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his wish, tried
-to enliven him and amuse themselves. But their gaiety seemed to Prince
-Andrew mirthless and tiresome. Speránski’s high-pitched voice struck
-him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter grated on him like a false
-note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and feared that he would be a damper
-on the spirits of the company, but no one took any notice of his being
-out of harmony with the general mood. They all seemed very gay.
-
-He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his remarks were
-tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out of the water, and he could
-not jest with them.
-
-There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was witty and
-might have been funny, but it lacked just that something which is the
-salt of mirth, and they were not even aware that such a thing existed.
-
-After dinner Speránski’s daughter and her governess rose. He patted
-the little girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that gesture,
-too, seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew.
-
-The men remained at table over their port—English fashion. In the
-midst of a conversation that was started about Napoleon’s Spanish
-affairs, which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to
-express a contrary opinion. Speránski smiled and, with an evident wish
-to prevent the conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a
-story that had no connection with the previous conversation. For a few
-moments all were silent.
-
-Having sat some time at table, Speránski corked a bottle of wine and,
-remarking, “Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair,” passed
-it to the servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk loudly
-went into the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier were handed
-to Speránski and he took them to his study. As soon as he had left
-the room the general merriment stopped and the guests began to converse
-sensibly and quietly with one another.
-
-“Now for the recitation!” said Speránski on returning from
-his study. “A wonderful talent!” he said to Prince Andrew, and
-Magnítski immediately assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous
-verses in French which he had composed about various well-known
-Petersburg people. He was interrupted several times by applause. When
-the verses were finished Prince Andrew went up to Speránski and took
-his leave.
-
-“Where are you off to so early?” asked Speránski.
-
-“I promised to go to a reception.”
-
-They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those mirrorlike,
-impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of him to have
-expected anything from Speránski and from any of his own activities
-connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance to what
-Speránski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang in Prince
-Andrew’s ears long after he had left the house.
-
-When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in
-Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something new. He
-recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of his project
-of army reform, which had been accepted for consideration and which they
-were trying to pass over in silence simply because another, a very poor
-one, had already been prepared and submitted to the Emperor. He thought
-of the meetings of a committee of which Berg was a member. He remembered
-how carefully and at what length everything relating to form and
-procedure was discussed at those meetings, and how sedulously and
-promptly all that related to the gist of the business was evaded. He
-recalled his labors on the Legal Code, and how painstakingly he had
-translated the articles of the Roman and French codes into Russian,
-and he felt ashamed of himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself
-Boguchárovo, his occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazán;
-he remembered the peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally
-applying to them the Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he
-felt astonished that he could have spent so much time on such useless
-work.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited before,
-and among them at the Rostóvs’ with whom he had renewed acquaintance
-at the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness which demanded the
-call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl who had left such a
-pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.
-
-Natásha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a dark-blue
-house dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier than in
-her ball dress. She and all the Rostóv family welcomed him as an old
-friend, simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he had formerly
-judged severely, now seemed to him to consist of excellent, simple,
-and kindly people. The old count’s hospitality and good nature, which
-struck one especially in Petersburg as a pleasant surprise, were such
-that Prince Andrew could not refuse to stay to dinner. “Yes,”
-he thought, “they are capital people, who of course have not the
-slightest idea what a treasure they possess in Natásha; but they are
-kindly folk and form the best possible setting for this strikingly
-poetic, charming girl, overflowing with life!”
-
-In Natásha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely
-alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world,
-that in the Otrádnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night
-had already begun to disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no
-longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having entered it
-found in it a new enjoyment.
-
-After dinner Natásha, at Prince Andrew’s request, went to the
-clavichord and began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window talking
-to the ladies and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he ceased
-speaking and suddenly felt tears choking him, a thing he had thought
-impossible for him. He looked at Natásha as she sang, and something new
-and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the same time sad.
-He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was ready to weep. What
-about? His former love? The little princess? His disillusionments?...
-His hopes for the future?... Yes and no. The chief reason was a sudden,
-vivid sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great
-and illimitable within him and that limited and material something that
-he, and even she, was. This contrast weighed on and yet cheered him
-while she sang.
-
-As soon as Natásha had finished she went up to him and asked how he
-liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling that
-she ought not to have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and said he
-liked her singing as he liked everything she did.
-
-Prince Andrew left the Rostóvs’ late in the evening. He went to bed
-from habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having lit his
-candle he sat up in bed, then got up, then lay down again not at all
-troubled by his sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and joyful as if he
-had stepped out of a stuffy room into God’s own fresh air. It did not
-enter his head that he was in love with Natásha; he was not thinking
-about her, but only picturing her to himself, and in consequence all
-life appeared in a new light. “Why do I strive, why do I toil in this
-narrow, confined frame, when life, all life with all its joys, is open
-to me?” said he to himself. And for the first time for a very long
-while he began making happy plans for the future. He decided that he
-must attend to his son’s education by finding a tutor and putting
-the boy in his charge, then he ought to retire from the service and go
-abroad, and see England, Switzerland and Italy. “I must use my freedom
-while I feel so much strength and youth in me,” he said to himself.
-“Pierre was right when he said one must believe in the possibility of
-happiness in order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead
-bury their dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy!”
-thought he.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in
-Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an immaculate
-brand-new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed forward over his
-temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.
-
-“I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately she
-could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more fortunate
-with you,” he said with a smile.
-
-“What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service.”
-
-“I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count” (Berg said
-this with perfect conviction that this information could not but be
-agreeable), “and so I wish to arrange just a small party for my own
-and my wife’s friends.” (He smiled still more pleasantly.) “I
-wished to ask the countess and you to do me the honor of coming to tea
-and to supper.”
-
-Only Countess Hélène, considering the society of such people as the
-Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an invitation.
-Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to collect at his house a small
-but select company, and why this would give him pleasure, and why though
-he grudged spending money on cards or anything harmful, he was prepared
-to run into some expense for the sake of good society—that Pierre
-could not refuse, and promised to come.
-
-“But don’t be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten
-minutes to eight, please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is
-coming. He is very good to me. We shall have supper, Count. So you will
-do me the favor.”
-
-Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at the
-Bergs’ house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight.
-
-Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were ready
-for their guests’ arrival.
-
-In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and pictures
-and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely buttoned up in
-his new uniform, sat beside his wife explaining to her that one always
-could and should be acquainted with people above one, because only then
-does one get satisfaction from acquaintances.
-
-“You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I
-managed from my first promotion.” (Berg measured his life not by years
-but by promotions.) “My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only
-waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to
-be your husband.” (He rose and kissed Véra’s hand, and on the way
-to her straightened out a turned-up corner of the carpet.) “And
-how have I obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my
-aquaintances. It goes without saying that one must be conscientious and
-methodical.”
-
-Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and
-paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak
-woman who could not understand all that constitutes a man’s dignity,
-what it was ein Mann zu sein. * Véra at the same time smiling with a
-sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all the
-same understood life wrongly, as according to Véra all men did. Berg,
-judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Véra, judging
-only by her husband and generalizing from that observation, supposed
-that all men, though they understand nothing and are conceited and
-selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.
-
- * To be a man.
-
-Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her lace
-fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on the
-lips.
-
-“The only thing is, we mustn’t have children too soon,” he
-continued, following an unconscious sequence of ideas.
-
-“Yes,” answered Véra, “I don’t at all want that. We must live
-for society.”
-
-“Princess Yusúpova wore one exactly like this,” said Berg, pointing
-to the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.
-
-Just then Count Bezúkhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced at one
-another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally claiming
-the honor of this visit.
-
-“This is what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,” thought
-Berg. “This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself.”
-
-“But please don’t interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests,”
-said Véra, “because I know what interests each of them and what to
-say to different people.”
-
-Berg smiled again.
-
-“It can’t be helped: men must sometimes have masculine
-conversation,” said he.
-
-They received Pierre in their small, new drawing room, where it was
-impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry,
-neatness, and order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange that
-Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an armchair
-or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently painfully
-undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor to settle
-the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry by moving a
-chair for himself, and Berg and Véra immediately began their evening
-party, interrupting each other in their efforts to entertain their
-guest.
-
-Véra, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be
-entertained with conversation about the French embassy, at once began
-accordingly. Berg, having decided that masculine conversation was
-required, interrupted his wife’s remarks and touched on the question
-of the war with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the general
-subject to personal considerations as to the proposals made him to take
-part in the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had declined them.
-Though the conversation was very incoherent and Véra was angry at the
-intrusion of the masculine element, both husband and wife felt with
-satisfaction that, even if only one guest was present, their evening had
-begun very well and was as like as two peas to every other evening party
-with its talk, tea, and lighted candles.
-
-Before long Borís, Berg’s old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of
-condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Véra. After
-Borís came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the
-Rostóvs, and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other
-evening parties. Berg and Véra could not repress their smiles of
-satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing room,
-at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of dresses, and the
-bowing and scraping. Everything was just as everybody always has it,
-especially so the general, who admired the apartment, patted Berg on the
-shoulder, and with parental authority superintended the setting out of
-the table for boston. The general sat down by Count Ilyá Rostóv, who
-was next to himself the most important guest. The old people sat with
-the old, the young with the young, and the hostess at the tea table, on
-which stood exactly the same kind of cakes in a silver cake basket as
-the Panins had at their party. Everything was just as it was everywhere
-else.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston
-with Count Rostóv, the general, and the colonel. At the card table he
-happened to be directly facing Natásha, and was struck by a curious
-change that had come over her since the ball. She was silent, and not
-only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from plainness by
-her look of gentle indifference to everything around.
-
-“What’s the matter with her?” thought Pierre, glancing at her.
-She was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without
-looking at him, made some reply to Borís who sat down beside her. After
-playing out a whole suit and to his partner’s delight taking five
-tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who had
-entered the room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again at
-Natásha.
-
-“What has happened to her?” he asked himself with still greater
-surprise.
-
-Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her with a
-look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was looking up
-at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid breathing. And
-the bright glow of some inner fire that had been suppressed was again
-alight in her. She was completely transformed and from a plain girl had
-again become what she had been at the ball.
-
-Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and
-youthful expression in his friend’s face.
-
-Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now with
-his back to Natásha and now facing her, but during the whole of the six
-rubbers he watched her and his friend.
-
-“Something very important is happening between them,” thought
-Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him and
-made him neglect the game.
-
-After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use playing
-like that, and Pierre was released. Natásha on one side was talking
-with Sónya and Borís, and Véra with a subtle smile was saying
-something to Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and, asking
-whether they were talking secrets, sat down beside them. Véra, having
-noticed Prince Andrew’s attentions to Natásha, decided that at a
-party, a real evening party, subtle allusions to the tender passion were
-absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when Prince Andrew was alone,
-began a conversation with him about feelings in general and about her
-sister. With so intellectual a guest as she considered Prince Andrew to
-be, she felt that she had to employ her diplomatic tact.
-
-When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Véra was being carried away
-by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed embarrassed, a
-thing that rarely happened with him.
-
-“What do you think?” Véra was saying with an arch smile. “You are
-so discerning, Prince, and understand people’s characters so well at
-a glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her
-attachments? Could she, like other women” (Véra meant herself),
-“love a man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is what
-I consider true love. What do you think, Prince?”
-
-“I know your sister too little,” replied Prince Andrew, with a
-sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, “to
-be able to solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed that
-the less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to be,”
-he added, and looked up at Pierre who was just approaching them.
-
-“Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days,” continued
-Véra—mentioning “our days” as people of limited intelligence are
-fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the
-peculiarities of “our days” and that human characteristics change
-with the times—“in our days a girl has so much freedom that the
-pleasure of being courted often stifles real feeling in her. And it must
-be confessed that Natalie is very susceptible.” This return to
-the subject of Natalie caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with
-discomfort: he was about to rise, but Véra continued with a still more
-subtle smile:
-
-“I think no one has been more courted than she,” she went on, “but
-till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you know,
-Count,” she said to Pierre, “even our dear cousin Borís, who,
-between ourselves, was very far gone in the land of tenderness...”
-(alluding to a map of love much in vogue at that time).
-
-Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.
-
-“You are friendly with Borís, aren’t you?” asked Véra.
-
-“Yes, I know him....”
-
-“I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natásha?”
-
-“Oh, there was childish love?” suddenly asked Prince Andrew,
-blushing unexpectedly.
-
-“Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le
-cousinage est un dangereux voisinage. * Don’t you think so?”
-
- * “Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.”
-
-
-“Oh, undoubtedly!” said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural
-liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very careful
-with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of these
-jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew him aside.
-
-“Well?” asked Pierre, seeing his friend’s strange animation with
-surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natásha as he rose.
-
-“I must... I must have a talk with you,” said Prince Andrew. “You
-know that pair of women’s gloves?” (He referred to the Masonic
-gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he
-loved.) “I... but no, I will talk to you later on,” and with a
-strange light in his eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince
-Andrew approached Natásha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how
-Prince Andrew asked her something and how she flushed as she replied.
-
-But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he
-should take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on
-the affairs in Spain.
-
-Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never left his face.
-The party was very successful and quite like other parties he had
-seen. Everything was similar: the ladies’ subtle talk, the cards, the
-general raising his voice at the card table, and the samovar and the tea
-cakes; only one thing was lacking that he had always seen at the evening
-parties he wished to imitate. They had not yet had a loud conversation
-among the men and a dispute about something important and clever. Now
-the general had begun such a discussion and so Berg drew Pierre to it.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII
-
-Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with the
-Rostóvs and spent the rest of the day there.
-
-Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came, and
-without concealing it he tried to be with Natásha all day. Not only in
-the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natásha, but in the
-whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something important that was
-bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and sternly serious eyes
-at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natásha and timidly started some
-artificial conversation about trifles as soon as he looked her way.
-Sónya was afraid to leave Natásha and afraid of being in the way when
-she was with them. Natásha grew pale, in a panic of expectation, when
-she remained alone with him for a moment. Prince Andrew surprised her by
-his timidity. She felt that he wanted to say something to her but could
-not bring himself to do so.
-
-In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to
-Natásha and whispered: “Well, what?”
-
-“Mamma! For heaven’s sake don’t ask me anything now! One can’t
-talk about that,” said Natásha.
-
-But all the same that night Natásha, now agitated and now frightened,
-lay a long time in her mother’s bed gazing straight before her. She
-told her how he had complimented her, how he told her he was going
-abroad, asked her where they were going to spend the summer, and then
-how he had asked her about Borís.
-
-“But such a... such a... never happened to me before!” she said.
-“Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I’m
-with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it’s the real thing?
-Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?”
-
-“No, my love; I am frightened myself,” answered her mother. “Now
-go!”
-
-“All the same I shan’t sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy!
-Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before,” she said, surprised
-and alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. “And could we
-ever have thought!...”
-
-It seemed to Natásha that even at the time she first saw Prince Andrew
-at Otrádnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she feared
-this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very man she had
-then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and of finding
-him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.
-
-“And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg
-while we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that
-ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this!
-Already then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar.”
-
-“What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them...”
-said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince Andrew
-had written in Natásha’s album.
-
-“Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?”
-
-“Don’t, Natásha! Pray to God. ‘Marriages are made in
-heaven,’” said her mother.
-
-“Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!” cried Natásha,
-shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.
-
-At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and telling him
-of his love for Natásha and his firm resolve to make her his wife.
-
-That day Countess Hélène had a reception at her house. The French
-ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of
-late become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies and
-gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the rooms and
-struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and morose air.
-
-Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous depression
-and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the intimacy of
-his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly been made a
-gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had begun to feel
-oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark thoughts of the vanity
-of all things human came to him oftener than before. At the same time
-the feeling he had noticed between his protégée Natásha and Prince
-Andrew accentuated his gloom by the contrast between his own position
-and his friend’s. He tried equally to avoid thinking about his wife,
-and about Natásha and Prince Andrew; and again everything seemed to him
-insignificant in comparison with eternity; again the question: for what?
-presented itself; and he forced himself to work day and night at Masonic
-labors, hoping to drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward
-midnight, after he had left the countess’ apartments, he was sitting
-upstairs in a shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction
-of the Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy
-with tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andrew.
-
-“Ah, it’s you!” said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air.
-“And I, you see, am hard at it.” He pointed to his manuscript book
-with that air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy
-people look at their work.
-
-Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life on
-his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look,
-smiled at him with the egotism of joy.
-
-“Well, dear heart,” said he, “I wanted to tell you about it
-yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything
-like it before. I am in love, my friend!”
-
-Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person down on
-the sofa beside Prince Andrew.
-
-“With Natásha Rostóva, yes?” said he.
-
-“Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it,
-but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and
-suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in
-the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can’t
-live without her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why
-don’t you speak?”
-
-“I? I? What did I tell you?” said Pierre suddenly, rising and
-beginning to pace up and down the room. “I always thought it.... That
-girl is such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend,
-I entreat you, don’t philosophize, don’t doubt, marry, marry,
-marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier man than you.”
-
-“But what of her?”
-
-“She loves you.”
-
-“Don’t talk rubbish...” said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking
-into Pierre’s eyes.
-
-“She does, I know,” Pierre cried fiercely.
-
-“But do listen,” returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the
-arm. “Do you know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to
-someone.”
-
-“Well, go on, go on. I am very glad,” said Pierre, and his face
-really changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to Prince
-Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a different, quite
-a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for life, his
-disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he made up his mind
-to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in his soul. Now he
-boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future, said he could not
-sacrifice his own happiness to his father’s caprice, and spoke of how
-he would either make his father consent to this marriage and love her,
-or would do without his consent; then he marveled at the feeling that
-had mastered him as at something strange, apart from and independent of
-himself.
-
-“I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of
-such love,” said Prince Andrew. “It is not at all the same feeling
-that I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided into two
-halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the
-other half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom and
-darkness....”
-
-“Darkness and gloom,” reiterated Pierre: “yes, yes, I understand
-that.”
-
-“I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very
-happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake.”
-
-“Yes, yes,” Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched
-and sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew’s lot
-appeared to him, the gloomier seemed his own.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII
-
-Prince Andrew needed his father’s consent to his marriage, and to
-obtain this he started for the country next day.
-
-His father received his son’s communication with external composure,
-but inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to
-alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life
-was already ending. “If only they would let me end my days as I want
-to,” thought the old man, “then they might do as they please.”
-With his son, however, he employed the diplomacy he reserved for
-important occasions and, adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole
-matter.
-
-In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards
-birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young
-as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special stress
-on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son whom it would
-be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. “Fourthly and finally,”
-the father said, looking ironically at his son, “I beg you to put it
-off for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as you wanted to for
-a German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your love or passion or
-obstinacy—as you please—is still as great, marry! And that’s my
-last word on it. Mind, the last...” concluded the prince, in a tone
-which showed that nothing would make him alter his decision.
-
-Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his feelings, or
-his fiancée’s, would not stand a year’s test, or that he (the old
-prince himself) would die before then, and he decided to conform to his
-father’s wish—to propose, and postpone the wedding for a year.
-
-Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostóvs,
-Prince Andrew returned to Petersburg.
-
-
-Next day after her talk with her mother Natásha expected Bolkónski all
-day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the same.
-Pierre did not come either and Natásha, not knowing that Prince Andrew
-had gone to see his father, could not explain his absence to herself.
-
-Three weeks passed in this way. Natásha had no desire to go out
-anywhere and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and
-listless; she wept secretly at night and did not go to her mother in the
-evenings. She blushed continually and was irritable. It seemed to her
-that everybody knew about her disappointment and was laughing at her and
-pitying her. Strong as was her inward grief, this wound to her vanity
-intensified her misery.
-
-Once she came to her mother, tried to say something, and suddenly began
-to cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not know why
-it is being punished.
-
-The countess began to soothe Natásha, who after first listening to her
-mother’s words, suddenly interrupted her:
-
-“Leave off, Mamma! I don’t think, and don’t want to think about
-it! He just came and then left off, left off....”
-
-Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but recovered and went
-on quietly:
-
-“And I don’t at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I
-have now become quite calm, quite calm.”
-
-The day after this conversation Natásha put on the old dress which
-she knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the
-mornings, and that day she returned to the old way of life which she had
-abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went to
-the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud resonance, and
-began singing her solfeggio. When she had finished her first exercise
-she stood still in the middle of the room and sang a musical phrase that
-particularly pleased her. She listened joyfully (as though she had not
-expected it) to the charm of the notes reverberating, filling the
-whole empty ballroom, and slowly dying away; and all at once she felt
-cheerful. “What’s the good of making so much of it? Things are nice
-as it is,” she said to herself, and she began walking up and down the
-room, not stepping simply on the resounding parquet but treading with
-each step from the heel to the toe (she had on a new and favorite pair
-of shoes) and listening to the regular tap of the heel and creak of
-the toe as gladly as she had to the sounds of her own voice. Passing a
-mirror she glanced into it. “There, that’s me!” the expression of
-her face seemed to say as she caught sight of herself. “Well, and very
-nice too! I need nobody.”
-
-A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room but she
-would not let him, and having closed the door behind him continued her
-walk. That morning she had returned to her favorite mood—love of,
-and delight in, herself. “How charming that Natásha is!” she said
-again, speaking as some third, collective, male person. “Pretty,
-a good voice, young, and in nobody’s way if only they leave her in
-peace.” But however much they left her in peace she could not now be
-at peace, and immediately felt this.
-
-In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, “At home?” and
-then footsteps were heard. Natásha was looking at the mirror, but did
-not see herself. She listened to the sounds in the hall. When she saw
-herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for certain, though
-she hardly heard his voice through the closed doors.
-
-Pale and agitated, Natásha ran into the drawing room.
-
-“Mamma! Bolkónski has come!” she said. “Mamma, it is awful, it is
-unbearable! I don’t want... to be tormented? What am I to do?...”
-
-Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room with
-an agitated and serious face. As soon as he saw Natásha his face
-brightened. He kissed the countess’ hand and Natásha’s, and sat
-down beside the sofa.
-
-“It is long since we had the pleasure...” began the countess,
-but Prince Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question,
-obviously in haste to say what he had to.
-
-“I have not been to see you all this time because I have been at my
-father’s. I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I only
-got back last night,” he said glancing at Natásha; “I want to have
-a talk with you, Countess,” he added after a moment’s pause.
-
-The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.
-
-“I am at your disposal,” she murmured.
-
-Natásha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable to do so:
-something gripped her throat, and regardless of manners she stared
-straight at Prince Andrew with wide-open eyes.
-
-“At once? This instant!... No, it can’t be!” she thought.
-
-Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her that she was not
-mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant, her fate would be decided.
-
-“Go, Natásha! I will call you,” said the countess in a whisper.
-
-Natásha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince Andrew and at
-her mother and went out.
-
-“I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter’s hand,” said
-Prince Andrew.
-
-The countess’ face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.
-
-“Your offer...” she began at last sedately. He remained silent,
-looking into her eyes. “Your offer...” (she grew confused) “is
-agreeable to us, and I accept your offer. I am glad. And my husband... I
-hope... but it will depend on her....”
-
-“I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you give it to
-me?” said Prince Andrew.
-
-“Yes,” replied the countess. She held out her hand to him, and with
-a mixed feeling of estrangement and tenderness pressed her lips to his
-forehead as he stooped to kiss her hand. She wished to love him as a
-son, but felt that to her he was a stranger and a terrifying man. “I
-am sure my husband will consent,” said the countess, “but your
-father...”
-
-“My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an express
-condition of his consent that the wedding is not to take place for a
-year. And I wished to tell you of that,” said Prince Andrew.
-
-“It is true that Natásha is still young, but—so long as that?...”
-
-“It is unavoidable,” said Prince Andrew with a sigh.
-
-“I will send her to you,” said the countess, and left the room.
-
-“Lord have mercy upon us!” she repeated while seeking her daughter.
-
-Sónya said that Natásha was in her bedroom. Natásha was sitting on
-the bed, pale and dry-eyed, and was gazing at the icons and whispering
-something as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped
-up and flew to her.
-
-“Well, Mamma?... Well?...”
-
-“Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand,” said the countess,
-coldly it seemed to Natásha. “Go... go,” said the mother, sadly and
-reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her daughter ran away.
-
-Natásha never remembered how she entered the drawing room. When she
-came in and saw him she paused. “Is it possible that this stranger
-has now become everything to me?” she asked herself, and immediately
-answered, “Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than
-everything in the world.” Prince Andrew came up to her with downcast
-eyes.
-
-“I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you. May I hope?”
-
-He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned expression of
-her face. Her face said: “Why ask? Why doubt what you cannot but know?
-Why speak, when words cannot express what one feels?”
-
-She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.
-
-“Do you love me?”
-
-“Yes, yes!” Natásha murmured as if in vexation. Then she sighed
-loudly and, catching her breath more and more quickly, began to sob.
-
-“What is it? What’s the matter?”
-
-“Oh, I am so happy!” she replied, smiled through her tears, bent
-over closer to him, paused for an instant as if asking herself whether
-she might, and then kissed him.
-
-Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find
-in his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly
-changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of
-desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness, fear
-at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful sense of
-the duty that now bound him to her forever. The present feeling, though
-not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger and more serious.
-
-“Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?” asked
-Prince Andrew, still looking into her eyes.
-
-“Is it possible that I—the ‘chit of a girl,’ as everybody called
-me,” thought Natásha—“is it possible that I am now to be the
-wife and the equal of this strange, dear, clever man whom even my father
-looks up to? Can it be true? Can it be true that there can be no
-more playing with life, that now I am grown up, that on me now lies
-a responsibility for my every word and deed? Yes, but what did he ask
-me?”
-
-“No,” she replied, but she had not understood his question.
-
-“Forgive me!” he said. “But you are so young, and I have already
-been through so much in life. I am afraid for you, you do not yet know
-yourself.”
-
-Natásha listened with concentrated attention, trying but failing to
-take in the meaning of his words.
-
-“Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be,” continued
-Prince Andrew, “it will give you time to be sure of yourself. I ask
-you to make me happy in a year, but you are free: our engagement shall
-remain a secret, and should you find that you do not love me, or should
-you come to love...” said Prince Andrew with an unnatural smile.
-
-“Why do you say that?” Natásha interrupted him. “You know that
-from the very day you first came to Otrádnoe I have loved you,” she
-cried, quite convinced that she spoke the truth.
-
-“In a year you will learn to know yourself....”
-
-“A whole year!” Natásha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that
-the marriage was to be postponed for a year. “But why a year? Why a
-year?...”
-
-Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay.
-Natásha did not hear him.
-
-“And can’t it be helped?” she asked. Prince Andrew did not reply,
-but his face expressed the impossibility of altering that decision.
-
-“It’s awful! Oh, it’s awful! awful!” Natásha suddenly cried,
-and again burst into sobs. “I shall die, waiting a year: it’s
-impossible, it’s awful!” She looked into her lover’s face and saw
-in it a look of commiseration and perplexity.
-
-“No, no! I’ll do anything!” she said, suddenly checking her tears.
-“I am so happy.”
-
-The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed couple
-their blessing.
-
-From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostóvs’ as
-Natásha’s affianced lover.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV
-
-No betrothal ceremony took place and Natásha’s engagement to
-Bolkónski was not announced; Prince Andrew insisted on that. He said
-that as he was responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole
-burden of it; that he had given his word and bound himself forever, but
-that he did not wish to bind Natásha and gave her perfect freedom. If
-after six months she felt that she did not love him she would have full
-right to reject him. Naturally neither Natásha nor her parents wished
-to hear of this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He came every day to the
-Rostóvs’, but did not behave to Natásha as an affianced lover: he
-did not use the familiar thou, but said you to her, and kissed only her
-hand. After their engagement, quite different, intimate, and natural
-relations sprang up between them. It was as if they had not known each
-other till now. Both liked to recall how they had regarded each other
-when as yet they were nothing to one another; they felt themselves
-now quite different beings: then they were artificial, now natural and
-sincere. At first the family felt some constraint in intercourse with
-Prince Andrew; he seemed a man from another world, and for a long time
-Natásha trained the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them
-all that he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all
-of them, and that she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to be.
-After a few days they grew accustomed to him, and without restraint in
-his presence pursued their usual way of life, in which he took his part.
-He could talk about rural economy with the count, fashions with the
-countess and Natásha, and about albums and fancywork with Sónya.
-Sometimes the household both among themselves and in his presence
-expressed their wonder at how it had all happened, and at the evident
-omens there had been of it: Prince Andrew’s coming to Otrádnoe and
-their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natásha and Prince
-Andrew which her nurse had noticed on his first visit, and Andrew’s
-encounter with Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents betokening
-that it had to be.
-
-In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned which always
-accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting
-together everyone kept silent. Sometimes the others would get up and
-go away and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely
-spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to
-speak of it. Natásha shared this as she did all his feelings, which she
-constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about his son. Prince
-Andrew blushed, as he often did now—Natásha particularly liked it in
-him—and said that his son would not live with them.
-
-“Why not?” asked Natásha in a frightened tone.
-
-“I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides...”
-
-“How I should have loved him!” said Natásha, immediately guessing
-his thought; “but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding
-fault with us.”
-
-Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask
-his advice about Pétya’s education or Nicholas’ service. The
-old countess sighed as she looked at them; Sónya was always getting
-frightened lest she should be in the way and tried to find excuses for
-leaving them alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew
-spoke (he could tell a story very well), Natásha listened to him
-with pride; when she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he gazed
-attentively and scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in perplexity:
-“What does he look for in me? He is trying to discover something by
-looking at me! What if what he seeks in me is not there?” Sometimes
-she fell into one of the mad, merry moods characteristic of her, and
-then she particularly loved to hear and see how Prince Andrew laughed.
-He seldom laughed, but when he did he abandoned himself entirely to his
-laughter, and after such a laugh she always felt nearer to him. Natásha
-would have been completely happy if the thought of the separation
-awaiting her and drawing near had not terrified her, just as the mere
-thought of it made him turn pale and cold.
-
-On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought with
-him Pierre, who had not been to the Rostóvs’ once since the ball.
-Pierre seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the
-countess, and Natásha sat down beside a little chess table with Sónya,
-thereby inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.
-
-“You have known Bezúkhov a long time?” he asked. “Do you like
-him?”
-
-“Yes, he’s a dear, but very absurd.”
-
-And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of his
-absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him.
-
-“Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known him
-from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie,” Prince
-Andrew said with sudden seriousness—“I am going away and heaven
-knows what may happen. You may cease to... all right, I know I am not
-to say that. Only this, then: whatever may happen to you when I am not
-here...”
-
-“What can happen?”
-
-“Whatever trouble may come,” Prince Andrew continued, “I beg
-you, Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for
-advice and help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but he
-has a heart of gold.”
-
-Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sónya, nor Prince Andrew
-himself could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would act
-on Natásha. Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that day,
-dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not understanding
-what awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking leave, he kissed
-her hand for the last time. “Don’t go!” she said in a tone
-that made him wonder whether he really ought not to stay and which he
-remembered long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone; but
-for several days she sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no interest in
-anything and only saying now and then, “Oh, why did he go away?”
-
-But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around
-her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and became
-her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy, as a
-child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of face.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXV
-
-During that year after his son’s departure, Prince Nicholas
-Bolkónski’s health and temper became much worse. He grew still more
-irritable, and it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of his
-frequent fits of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out
-her tender spots so as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible.
-Princess Mary had two passions and consequently two joys—her nephew,
-little Nicholas, and religion—and these were the favorite subjects
-of the prince’s attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken of he would
-bring round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or the petting
-and spoiling of children. “You want to make him”—little
-Nicholas—“into an old maid like yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew
-wants a son and not an old maid,” he would say. Or, turning to
-Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in Princess Mary’s presence
-how she liked our village priests and icons and would joke about them.
-
-He continually hurt Princess Mary’s feelings and tormented her, but it
-cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame toward her, or
-could her father, whom she knew loved her in spite of it all, be unjust?
-And what is justice? The princess never thought of that proud word
-“justice.” All the complex laws of man centered for her in one clear
-and simple law—the law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by Him who
-lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to
-do with the justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and
-love, and that she did.
-
-During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had been gay,
-gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known him for a
-long time past. She felt that something had happened to him, but he said
-nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a long talk with
-his father about something, and Princess Mary noticed that before his
-departure they were dissatisfied with one another.
-
-Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend
-Julie Karágina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls dream)
-of marrying to her brother, and who was at that time in mourning for her
-own brother, killed in Turkey.
-
-Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie.
-
-Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a
-special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and your
-excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone, can—I
-will not say comfort us—but save us from despair. Religion alone can
-explain to us what without its help man cannot comprehend: why, for what
-cause, kind and noble beings able to find happiness in life—not merely
-harming no one but necessary to the happiness of others—are called
-away to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons, or such as are a
-burden to themselves and to others, are left living. The first death I
-saw, and one I shall never forget—that of my dear sister-in-law—left
-that impression on me. Just as you ask destiny why your splendid brother
-had to die, so I asked why that angel Lise, who not only never wronged
-anyone, but in whose soul there were never any unkind thoughts, had to
-die. And what do you think, dear friend? Five years have passed since
-then, and already I, with my petty understanding, begin to see clearly
-why she had to die, and in what way that death was but an expression
-of the infinite goodness of the Creator, whose every action, though
-generally incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of His infinite
-love for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically
-innocent to have the strength to perform all a mother’s duties. As a
-young wife she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not have been so
-as a mother. As it is, not only has she left us, and particularly Prince
-Andrew, with the purest regrets and memories, but probably she will
-there receive a place I dare not hope for myself. But not to speak of
-her alone, that early and terrible death has had the most beneficent
-influence on me and on my brother in spite of all our grief. Then, at
-the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not occur to me; I should
-then have dismissed them with horror, but now they are very clear and
-certain. I write all this to you, dear friend, only to convince you
-of the Gospel truth which has become for me a principle of life: not
-a single hair of our heads will fall without His will. And His will is
-governed only by infinite love for us, and so whatever befalls us is for
-our good.
-
-You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my
-wish to see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You will
-be surprised to hear that the reason for this is Buonaparte! The case is
-this: my father’s health is growing noticeably worse, he cannot stand
-any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This irritability is, as
-you know, chiefly directed to political questions. He cannot endure
-the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal terms with all the
-sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own, the grandson of the
-Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite indifferent to politics, but
-from my father’s remarks and his talks with Michael Ivánovich I know
-all that goes on in the world and especially about the honors conferred
-on Buonaparte, who only at Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is
-not accepted as a great man, still less as Emperor of France. And my
-father cannot stand this. It seems to me that it is chiefly because of
-his political views that my father is reluctant to speak of going to
-Moscow; for he foresees the encounters that would result from his way
-of expressing his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might
-derive from a course of treatment he would lose as a result of the
-disputes about Buonaparte which would be inevitable. In any case it will
-be decided very shortly.
-
-Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother Andrew’s
-absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much of late. After
-his sorrow he only this year quite recovered his spirits. He has again
-become as I used to know him when a child: kind, affectionate, with that
-heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has realized, it seems to me,
-that life is not over for him. But together with this mental change
-he has grown physically much weaker. He has become thinner and more
-nervous. I am anxious about him and glad he is taking this trip abroad
-which the doctors recommended long ago. I hope it will cure him. You
-write that in Petersburg he is spoken of as one of the most active,
-cultivated, and capable of the young men. Forgive my vanity as a
-relation, but I never doubted it. The good he has done to everybody
-here, from his peasants up to the gentry, is incalculable. On his
-arrival in Petersburg he received only his due. I always wonder at the
-way rumors fly from Petersburg to Moscow, especially such false ones as
-that you write about—I mean the report of my brother’s betrothal to
-the little Rostóva. I do not think my brother will ever marry again,
-and certainly not her; and this is why: first, I know that though he
-rarely speaks about the wife he has lost, the grief of that loss
-has gone too deep in his heart for him ever to decide to give her a
-successor and our little angel a stepmother. Secondly because, as far
-as I know, that girl is not the kind of girl who could please Prince
-Andrew. I do not think he would choose her for a wife, and frankly I do
-not wish it. But I am running on too long and am at the end of my second
-sheet. Good-by, my dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and mighty
-care. My dear friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.
-
-MARY
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI
-
-In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an unexpected letter
-from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in which he gave her strange and
-surprising news. He informed her of his engagement to Natásha Rostóva.
-The whole letter breathed loving rapture for his betrothed and tender
-and confiding affection for his sister. He wrote that he had never loved
-as he did now and that only now did he understand and know what life
-was. He asked his sister to forgive him for not having told her of his
-resolve when he had last visited Bald Hills, though he had spoken of it
-to his father. He had not done so for fear Princess Mary should ask her
-father to give his consent, irritating him and having to bear the brunt
-of his displeasure without attaining her object. “Besides,” he
-wrote, “the matter was not then so definitely settled as it is now.
-My father then insisted on a delay of a year and now already six months,
-half of that period, have passed, and my resolution is firmer than ever.
-If the doctors did not keep me here at the spas I should be back in
-Russia, but as it is I have to postpone my return for three months. You
-know me and my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I have
-been and always shall be independent; but to go against his will and
-arouse his anger, now that he may perhaps remain with us such a short
-time, would destroy half my happiness. I am now writing to him about
-the same question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand him the
-letter and to let me know how he looks at the whole matter and whether
-there is hope that he may consent to reduce the term by four months.”
-
-After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Mary gave the
-letter to her father. The next day the old prince said to her quietly:
-
-“Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It won’t be
-long—I shall soon set him free.”
-
-The princess was about to reply, but her father would not let her speak
-and, raising his voice more and more, cried:
-
-“Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich,
-eh? Yes, a nice stepmother little Nicholas will have! Write and tell him
-that he may marry tomorrow if he likes. She will be little Nicholas’
-stepmother and I’ll marry Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He mustn’t be
-without a stepmother either! Only one thing, no more women are wanted
-in my house—let him marry and live by himself. Perhaps you will go
-and live with him too?” he added, turning to Princess Mary. “Go in
-heaven’s name! Go out into the frost... the frost... the frost!”
-
-After this outburst the prince did not speak any more about the matter.
-But repressed vexation at his son’s poor-spirited behavior found
-expression in his treatment of his daughter. To his former pretexts
-for irony a fresh one was now added—allusions to stepmothers and
-amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.
-
-“Why shouldn’t I marry her?” he asked his daughter. “She’ll
-make a splendid princess!”
-
-And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Mary
-noticed that her father was really associating more and more with the
-Frenchwoman. She wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his
-letter, but comforted him with hopes of reconciling their father to the
-idea.
-
-Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew, and religion
-were Princess Mary’s joys and consolations; but besides that, since
-everyone must have personal hopes, Princess Mary in the profoundest
-depths of her heart had a hidden dream and hope that supplied the chief
-consolation of her life. This comforting dream and hope were given her
-by God’s folk—the half-witted and other pilgrims who visited
-her without the prince’s knowledge. The longer she lived, the more
-experience and observation she had of life, the greater was her wonder
-at the short-sightedness of men who seek enjoyment and happiness here
-on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling, and harming one another, to
-obtain that impossible, visionary, sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had
-loved his wife, she died, but that was not enough: he wanted to bind
-his happiness to another woman. Her father objected to this because he
-wanted a more distinguished and wealthier match for Andrew. And they
-all struggled and suffered and tormented one another and injured their
-souls, their eternal souls, for the attainment of benefits which endure
-but for an instant. Not only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the
-Son of God, came down to earth and told us that this life is but for
-a moment and is a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find
-happiness in it. “How is it that no one realizes this?” thought
-Princess Mary. “No one except these despised God’s folk who, wallet
-on back, come to me by the back door, afraid of being seen by the
-prince, not for fear of ill-usage by him but for fear of causing him
-to sin. To leave family, home, and all the cares of worldly welfare, in
-order without clinging to anything to wander in hempen rags from place
-to place under an assumed name, doing no one any harm but praying for
-all—for those who drive one away as well as for those who protect one:
-higher than that life and truth there is no life or truth!”
-
-There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman of fifty called
-Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone about barefoot and worn
-heavy chains. Princess Mary was particularly fond of her. Once, when in
-a room with a lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia was talking of
-her life, the thought that Theodosia alone had found the true path of
-life suddenly came to Princess Mary with such force that she resolved to
-become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia had gone to sleep Princess Mary
-thought about this for a long time, and at last made up her mind that,
-strange as it might seem, she must go on a pilgrimage. She disclosed
-this thought to no one but to her confessor, Father Akínfi, the monk,
-and he approved of her intention. Under guise of a present for the
-pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim’s complete costume for
-herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough coat, and a black kerchief.
-Often, approaching the chest of drawers containing this secret treasure,
-Princess Mary paused, uncertain whether the time had not already come to
-put her project into execution.
-
-Often, listening to the pilgrims’ tales, she was so stimulated by
-their simple speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep
-meaning, that several times she was on the point of abandoning
-everything and running away from home. In imagination she already
-pictured herself by Theodosia’s side, dressed in coarse rags, walking
-with a staff, a wallet on her back, along the dusty road, directing her
-wanderings from one saint’s shrine to another, free from envy, earthly
-love, or desire, and reaching at last the place where there is no more
-sorrow or sighing, but eternal joy and bliss.
-
-“I shall come to a place and pray there, and before having time to get
-used to it or getting to love it, I shall go farther. I will go on till
-my legs fail, and I’ll lie down and die somewhere, and shall at last
-reach that eternal, quiet haven, where there is neither sorrow nor
-sighing...” thought Princess Mary.
-
-But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially little Koko
-(Nicholas), her resolve weakened. She wept quietly, and felt that she
-was a sinner who loved her father and little nephew more than God.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor—idleness—was a
-condition of the first man’s blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man
-has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not
-only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but
-because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at
-ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we are idle. If man
-could find a state in which he felt that though idle he was fulfilling
-his duty, he would have found one of the conditions of man’s primitive
-blessedness. And such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness
-is the lot of a whole class—the military. The chief attraction of
-military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and
-irreproachable idleness.
-
-Nicholas Rostóv experienced this blissful condition to the full when,
-after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pávlograd regiment, in which
-he already commanded the squadron he had taken over from Denísov.
-
-Rostóv had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow
-acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked
-and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was well
-contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters from home
-more frequent complaints from his mother that their affairs were falling
-into greater and greater disorder, and that it was time for him to come
-back to gladden and comfort his old parents.
-
-Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to
-take him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the
-entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt that
-sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life, with
-its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its accounts
-with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society, and with
-Sónya’s love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully difficult
-and complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold, formal letters
-in French, beginning: “My dear Mamma,” and ending: “Your obedient
-son,” which said nothing of when he would return. In 1810 he received
-letters from his parents, in which they told him of Natásha’s
-engagement to Bolkónski, and that the wedding would be in a year’s
-time because the old prince made difficulties. This letter grieved and
-mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that Natásha, for
-whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family, should be lost to
-the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of view, he regretted not
-to have been there to show that fellow Bolkónski that connection with
-him was no such great honor after all, and that if he loved Natásha he
-might dispense with permission from his dotard father. For a moment he
-hesitated whether he should not apply for leave in order to see Natásha
-before she was married, but then came the maneuvers, and considerations
-about Sónya and about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas
-again put it off. But in the spring of that year, he received a letter
-from his mother, written without his father’s knowledge, and that
-letter persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and
-take matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and
-they would all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and trusted
-Mítenka so much, and was so good-natured, that everybody took advantage
-of him and things were going from bad to worse. “For God’s sake, I
-implore you, come at once if you do not wish to make me and the whole
-family wretched,” wrote the countess.
-
-This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a
-matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do.
-
-The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any rate
-to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but after his
-after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely vicious
-gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and when
-he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrúshka
-(Denísov’s servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who
-turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was going
-home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he would
-go away without having heard from the staff—and this interested him
-extremely—whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive the
-Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to think
-that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the Polish
-Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostóv had betted
-he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it
-seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish
-Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had given
-one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would take place
-without him—he knew he must go away from this good, bright world to
-somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week later he
-obtained his leave. His hussar comrades—not only those of his own
-regiment, but the whole brigade—gave Rostóv a dinner to which the
-subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were two
-bands and two choirs of singers. Rostóv danced the Trepák with Major
-Básov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped Rostóv; the
-soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted “hurrah!”
-and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as far as the first
-post station.
-
-During the first half of the journey—from Kremenchúg to Kiev—all
-Rostóv’s thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with
-the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to forget
-his three roans and Dozhoyvéyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder
-anxiously how things would be at Otrádnoe and what he would find
-there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached it—far
-stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the law by which
-the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the square of the
-distance. At the last post station before Otrádnoe he gave the driver a
-three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran breathlessly, like a boy, up the
-steps of his home.
-
-After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of unsatisfied
-expectation—the feeling that “everything is just the same, so why
-did I hurry?”—Nicholas began to settle down in his old home world.
-His father and mother were much the same, only a little older. What was
-new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional discord, which there
-used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found out, was due to the
-bad state of their affairs. Sónya was nearly twenty; she had stopped
-growing prettier and promised nothing more than she was already, but
-that was enough. She exhaled happiness and love from the time Nicholas
-returned, and the faithful, unalterable love of this girl had a
-gladdening effect on him. Pétya and Natásha surprised Nicholas
-most. Pétya was a big handsome boy of thirteen, merry, witty, and
-mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking. As for Natásha,
-for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed whenever he looked at
-her.
-
-“You’re not the same at all,” he said.
-
-“How? Am I uglier?”
-
-“On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!” he whispered to
-her.
-
-“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Natásha, joyfully.
-
-She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit to
-Otrádnoe and showed him his last letter.
-
-“Well, are you glad?” Natásha asked. “I am so tranquil and happy
-now.”
-
-“Very glad,” answered Nicholas. “He is an excellent fellow.... And
-are you very much in love?”
-
-“How shall I put it?” replied Natásha. “I was in love with
-Borís, with my teacher, and with Denísov, but this is quite different.
-I feel at peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists,
-and I am calm and contented now. Not at all as before.”
-
-Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the marriage
-for a year; but Natásha attacked her brother with exasperation, proving
-to him that it could not be otherwise, and that it would be a bad thing
-to enter a family against the father’s will, and that she herself
-wished it so.
-
-“You don’t at all understand,” she said.
-
-Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.
-
-Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem at
-all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband. She was
-even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This amazed
-Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkónski’s courtship skeptically.
-He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially as he had
-not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him that there was
-something not quite right about this intended marriage.
-
-“Why this delay? Why no betrothal?” he thought. Once, when he had
-touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his surprise
-and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her soul she too
-had doubts about this marriage.
-
-“You see he writes,” said she, showing her son a letter of Prince
-Andrew’s, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a
-daughter’s future married happiness, “he writes that he won’t come
-before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His health
-is very delicate. Don’t tell Natásha. And don’t attach importance
-to her being so bright: that’s because she’s living through the last
-days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every time we receive
-a letter from him! However, God grant that everything turns out well!”
-(She always ended with these words.) “He is an excellent man!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull. He was
-worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid business
-matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw off this
-burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his arrival he
-went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as to where he
-was going, to Mítenka’s lodge and demanded an account of everything.
-But what an account of everything might be Nicholas knew even less
-than the frightened and bewildered Mítenka. The conversation and the
-examination of the accounts with Mítenka did not last long. The village
-elder, a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were waiting in
-the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young count’s voice
-roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and then words of
-abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other.
-
-“Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I’ll hack the dog to pieces! I’m
-not my father!... Robbing us!...” and so on.
-
-Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red in
-the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mítenka out by the scruff of
-the neck and applied his foot and knee to his behind with great agility
-at convenient moments between the words, shouting, “Be off! Never let
-me see your face here again, you villain!”
-
-Mítenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the
-shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for culprits
-at Otrádnoe. Mítenka himself, returning tipsy from the town, used
-to hide there, and many of the residents at Otrádnoe, hiding from
-Mítenka, knew of its protective qualities.)
-
-Mítenka’s wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and frightened
-faces out of the door of a room where a bright samovar was boiling and
-where the steward’s high bedstead stood with its patchwork quilt.
-
-The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by
-with resolute strides and went into the house.
-
-The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened at the
-lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would certainly
-improve, but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect this
-excitement might have on her son. She went several times to his door on
-tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.
-
-Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed
-smile, said to him:
-
-“But you know, my dear boy, it’s a pity you got excited! Mítenka
-has told me all about it.”
-
-“I knew,” thought Nicholas, “that I should never understand
-anything in this crazy world.”
-
-“You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they
-were carried forward—and you did not look at the other page.”
-
-“Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have
-done, I have done; but, if you like, I won’t speak to him again.”
-
-“No, my dear boy” (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he had
-mismanaged his wife’s property and was to blame toward his children,
-but he did not know how to remedy it). “No, I beg you to attend to the
-business. I am old. I...”
-
-“No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I
-understand it all less than you do.”
-
-“Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings
-forward from page to page,” he thought. “I used to understand what
-a ‘corner’ and the stakes at cards meant, but carrying forward to
-another page I don’t understand at all,” said he to himself, and
-after that he did not meddle in business affairs. But once the countess
-called her son and informed him that she had a promissory note from Anna
-Mikháylovna for two thousand rubles, and asked him what he thought of
-doing with it.
-
-“This,” answered Nicholas. “You say it rests with me. Well, I
-don’t like Anna Mikháylovna and I don’t like Borís, but they were
-our friends and poor. Well then, this!” and he tore up the note, and
-by so doing caused the old countess to weep tears of joy. After that,
-young Rostóv took no further part in any business affairs, but
-devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new
-pursuit—the chase—for which his father kept a large establishment.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts congealed
-an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had thickened and its
-bright green stood out sharply against the brownish strips of winter rye
-trodden down by the cattle, and against the pale-yellow stubble of the
-spring buckwheat. The wooded ravines and the copses, which at the end of
-August had still been green islands amid black fields and stubble, had
-become golden and bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The
-hares had already half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were
-beginning to scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was
-the best time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young
-sportsman Rostóv had not merely reached hard winter condition, but were
-so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give them
-a three days’ rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go on
-a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was an
-undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.
-
-All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the air was
-sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began to thaw.
-On the fifteenth, when young Rostóv, in his dressing gown, looked out
-of the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for hunting: it
-was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth without any
-wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping, microscopic
-particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the garden were hung with
-transparent drops which fell on the freshly fallen leaves. The earth in
-the kitchen garden looked wet and black and glistened like poppy seed
-and at a short distance merged into the dull, moist veil of mist.
-Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy porch. There was a smell of
-decaying leaves and of dog. Mílka, a black-spotted, broad-haunched
-bitch with prominent black eyes, got up on seeing her master, stretched
-her hind legs, lay down like a hare, and then suddenly jumped up and
-licked him right on his nose and mustache. Another borzoi, a dog,
-catching sight of his master from the garden path, arched his back
-and, rushing headlong toward the porch with lifted tail, began rubbing
-himself against his legs.
-
-“O-hoy!” came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman’s call
-which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round
-the corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray,
-wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian
-fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence
-and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his
-Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. This scorn
-was not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel,
-disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above them, was all
-the same his serf and huntsman.
-
-“Daniel!” Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of the
-weather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away
-by that irresistible passion for sport which makes a man forget all
-his previous resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his
-mistress.
-
-“What orders, your excellency?” said the huntsman in his deep bass,
-deep as a proto-deacon’s and hoarse with hallooing—and two flashing
-black eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, who was silent.
-“Can you resist it?” those eyes seemed to be asking.
-
-“It’s a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?” asked
-Nicholas, scratching Mílka behind the ears.
-
-Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.
-
-“I sent Uvárka at dawn to listen,” his bass boomed out after a
-minute’s pause. “He says she’s moved them into the Otrádnoe
-enclosure. They were howling there.” (This meant that the she-wolf,
-about whom they both knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otrádnoe
-copse, a small place a mile and a half from the house.)
-
-“We ought to go, don’t you think so?” said Nicholas. “Come to me
-with Uvárka.”
-
-“As you please.”
-
-“Then put off feeding them.”
-
-“Yes, sir.”
-
-Five minutes later Daniel and Uvárka were standing in Nicholas’ big
-study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was
-like seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture and
-surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usual stood
-just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, for fear of
-breaking something in the master’s apartment, and he hastened to say
-all that was necessary so as to get from under that ceiling, out into
-the open under the sky once more.
-
-Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinion that
-the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting), Nicholas
-ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was about to
-go Natásha came in with rapid steps, not having done up her hair or
-finished dressing and with her old nurse’s big shawl wrapped round
-her. Pétya ran in at the same time.
-
-“You are going?” asked Natásha. “I knew you would! Sónya said
-you wouldn’t go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you
-couldn’t help going.”
-
-“Yes, we are going,” replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as he
-intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natásha and Pétya.
-“We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for you.”
-
-“You know it is my greatest pleasure,” said Natásha. “It’s not
-fair; you are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said
-nothing to us about it.”
-
-“‘No barrier bars a Russian’s path’—we’ll go!” shouted
-Pétya.
-
-“But you can’t. Mamma said you mustn’t,” said Nicholas to
-Natásha.
-
-“Yes, I’ll go. I shall certainly go,” said Natásha decisively.
-“Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my
-dogs,” she added to the huntsman.
-
-It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but to
-have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible. He
-cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his business,
-careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on the young
-lady.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting establishment
-but had now handed it all completely over to his son’s care, being
-in very good spirits on this fifteenth of September, prepared to go out
-with the others.
-
-In an hour’s time the whole hunting party was at the porch. Nicholas,
-with a stern and serious air which showed that now was no time for
-attending to trifles, went past Natásha and Pétya who were trying to
-tell him something. He had a look at all the details of the hunt, sent
-a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the quarry, mounted his
-chestnut Donéts, and whistling to his own leash of borzois, set off
-across the threshing ground to a field leading to the Otrádnoe wood.
-The old count’s horse, a sorrel gelding called Viflyánka, was led by
-the groom in attendance on him, while the count himself was to drive in
-a small trap straight to a spot reserved for him.
-
-They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and
-whippers-in. Besides the family, there were eight borzoi kennelmen
-and more than forty borzois, so that, with the borzois on the leash
-belonging to members of the family, there were about a hundred and
-thirty dogs and twenty horsemen.
-
-Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the hunt knew his
-business, his place, what he had to do. As soon as they had passed the
-fence they all spread out evenly and quietly, without noise or talk,
-along the road and field leading to the Otrádnoe covert.
-
-The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet, now and then
-splashing into puddles as they crossed a road. The misty sky still
-seemed to descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the air
-was still, warm, and silent. Occasionally the whistle of a huntsman,
-the snort of a horse, the crack of a whip, or the whine of a straggling
-hound could be heard.
-
-When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more riders with
-dogs appeared out of the mist, approaching the Rostóvs. In front rode a
-fresh-looking, handsome old man with a large gray mustache.
-
-“Good morning, Uncle!” said Nicholas, when the old man drew near.
-
-“That’s it. Come on!... I was sure of it,” began “Uncle.” (He
-was a distant relative of the Rostóvs’, a man of small means, and
-their neighbor.) “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist it and
-it’s a good thing you’re going. That’s it! Come on!” (This was
-“Uncle’s” favorite expression.) “Take the covert at once, for my
-Gírchik says the Ilágins are at Kornikí with their hounds. That’s
-it. Come on!... They’ll take the cubs from under your very nose.”
-
-“That’s where I’m going. Shall we join up our packs?” asked
-Nicholas.
-
-The hounds were joined into one pack, and “Uncle” and Nicholas rode
-on side by side. Natásha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide her
-eager face and shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed by
-Pétya who always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and by a
-groom appointed to look after her. Pétya, who was laughing, whipped and
-pulled at his horse. Natásha sat easily and confidently on her black
-Arábchik and reined him in without effort with a firm hand.
-
-“Uncle” looked round disapprovingly at Pétya and Natásha. He did
-not like to combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting.
-
-“Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!” shouted Pétya.
-
-“Good morning, good morning! But don’t go overriding the hounds,”
-said “Uncle” sternly.
-
-“Nicholas, what a fine dog Truníla is! He knew me,” said Natásha,
-referring to her favorite hound.
-
-“In the first place, Truníla is not a ‘dog,’ but a harrier,”
-thought Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her
-feel the distance that ought to separate them at that moment. Natásha
-understood it.
-
-“You mustn’t think we’ll be in anyone’s way, Uncle,” she said.
-“We’ll go to our places and won’t budge.”
-
-“A good thing too, little countess,” said “Uncle,” “only mind
-you don’t fall off your horse,” he added, “because—that’s it,
-come on!—you’ve nothing to hold on to.”
-
-The oasis of the Otrádnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards off,
-the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostóv, having finally settled
-with “Uncle” where they should set on the hounds, and having shown
-Natásha where she was to stand—a spot where nothing could possibly
-run out—went round above the ravine.
-
-“Well, nephew, you’re going for a big wolf,” said “Uncle.”
-“Mind and don’t let her slip!”
-
-“That’s as may happen,” answered Rostóv. “Karáy, here!” he
-shouted, answering “Uncle’s” remark by this call to his borzoi.
-Karáy was a shaggy old dog with a hanging jowl, famous for having
-tackled a big wolf unaided. They all took up their places.
-
-The old count, knowing his son’s ardor in the hunt, hurried so as not
-to be late, and the huntsmen had not yet reached their places when Count
-Ilyá Rostóv, cheerful, flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove up
-with his black horses over the winter rye to the place reserved for him,
-where a wolf might come out. Having straightened his coat and fastened
-on his hunting knives and horn, he mounted his good, sleek, well-fed,
-and comfortable horse, Viflyánka, which was turning gray, like himself.
-His horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilyá Rostóv, though not at
-heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of the hunt well, and rode to
-the bushy edge of the road where he was to stand, arranged his reins,
-settled himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was ready, looked
-about with a smile.
-
-Beside him was Simon Chekmár, his personal attendant, an old horseman
-now somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmár held in leash three
-formidable wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master
-and his horse. Two wise old dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred paces
-farther along the edge of the wood stood Mítka, the count’s other
-groom, a daring horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the hunt, by
-old custom, the count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled brandy, taken
-a snack, and washed it down with half a bottle of his favorite Bordeaux.
-
-He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His eyes were
-rather moist and glittered more than usual, and as he sat in his saddle,
-wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like a child taken out for an
-outing.
-
-The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmár, having got everything ready, kept
-glancing at his master with whom he had lived on the best of terms for
-thirty years, and understanding the mood he was in expected a pleasant
-chat. A third person rode up circumspectly through the wood (it was
-plain that he had had a lesson) and stopped behind the count. This
-person was a gray-bearded old man in a woman’s cloak, with a tall
-peaked cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who went by a woman’s
-name, Nastásya Ivánovna.
-
-“Well, Nastásya Ivánovna!” whispered the count, winking at him.
-“If you scare away the beast, Daniel’ll give it you!”
-
-“I know a thing or two myself!” said Nastásya Ivánovna.
-
-“Hush!” whispered the count and turned to Simon. “Have you seen
-the young countess?” he asked. “Where is she?”
-
-“With young Count Peter, by the Zhárov rank grass,” answered Simon,
-smiling. “Though she’s a lady, she’s very fond of hunting.”
-
-“And you’re surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?” said the
-count. “She’s as good as many a man!”
-
-“Of course! It’s marvelous. So bold, so easy!”
-
-“And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyádov upland, isn’t he?”
-
-“Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the matter so well
-that Daniel and I are often quite astounded,” said Simon, well knowing
-what would please his master.
-
-“Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?”
-
-“A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank grass by the
-Zavárzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight
-when they rushed from the covert... the horse worth a thousand rubles
-and the rider beyond all price! Yes, one would have to search far to
-find another as smart.”
-
-“To search far...” repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon had not
-said more. “To search far,” he said, turning back the skirt of his
-coat to get at his snuffbox.
-
-“The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael
-Sidórych...” Simon did not finish, for on the still air he had
-distinctly caught the music of the hunt with only two or three hounds
-giving tongue. He bent down his head and listened, shaking a warning
-finger at his master. “They are on the scent of the cubs...” he
-whispered, “straight to the Lyádov uplands.”
-
-The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face, looked into
-the distance straight before him, down the narrow open space, holding
-the snuffbox in his hand but not taking any. After the cry of the hounds
-came the deep tones of the wolf call from Daniel’s hunting horn; the
-pack joined the first three hounds and they could be heard in full cry,
-with that peculiar lift in the note that indicates that they are after
-a wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on the hounds, but changed to the
-cry of ulyulyu, and above the others rose Daniel’s voice, now a deep
-bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice seemed to fill the whole wood and
-carried far beyond out into the open field.
-
-After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his attendant
-convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into two packs: the
-sound of the larger pack, eagerly giving tongue, began to die away in
-the distance, the other pack rushed by the wood past the count, and
-it was with this that Daniel’s voice was heard calling ulyulyu.
-The sounds of both packs mingled and broke apart again, but both were
-becoming more distant.
-
-Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young borzoi had
-entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing the snuffbox in his hand,
-opened it and took a pinch. “Back!” cried Simon to a borzoi that
-was pushing forward out of the wood. The count started and dropped the
-snuffbox. Nastásya Ivánovna dismounted to pick it up. The count and
-Simon were looking at him.
-
-Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the hunt suddenly
-approached, as if the hounds in full cry and Daniel ulyulyuing were just
-in front of them.
-
-The count turned and saw on his right Mítka staring at him with eyes
-starting out of his head, raising his cap and pointing before him to the
-other side.
-
-“Look out!” he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he had long
-fretted to utter that word, and letting the borzois slip he galloped
-toward the count.
-
-The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw on their left a
-wolf which, softly swaying from side to side, was coming at a quiet
-lope farther to the left to the very place where they were standing.
-The angry borzois whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the
-horses’ feet at the wolf.
-
-The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs awkwardly,
-like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly swaying
-from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish of its tail
-disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same instant, with a cry
-like a wail, first one hound, then another, and then another, sprang
-helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the whole pack rushed across
-the field toward the very spot where the wolf had disappeared. The hazel
-bushes parted behind the hounds and Daniel’s chestnut horse appeared,
-dark with sweat. On its long back sat Daniel, hunched forward, capless,
-his disheveled gray hair hanging over his flushed, perspiring face.
-
-“Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!...” he cried. When he caught sight of the
-count his eyes flashed lightning.
-
-“Blast you!” he shouted, holding up his whip threateningly at the
-count.
-
-“You’ve let the wolf go!... What sportsmen!” and as if scorning to
-say more to the frightened and shamefaced count, he lashed the heaving
-flanks of his sweating chestnut gelding with all the anger the count
-had aroused and flew off after the hounds. The count, like a punished
-schoolboy, looked round, trying by a smile to win Simon’s sympathy for
-his plight. But Simon was no longer there. He was galloping round by the
-bushes while the field was coming up on both sides, all trying to head
-the wolf, but it vanished into the wood before they could do so.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-Nicholas Rostóv meanwhile remained at his post, waiting for the wolf.
-By the way the hunt approached and receded, by the cries of the dogs
-whose notes were familiar to him, by the way the voices of the huntsmen
-approached, receded, and rose, he realized what was happening at the
-copse. He knew that young and old wolves were there, that the hounds had
-separated into two packs, that somewhere a wolf was being chased, and
-that something had gone wrong. He expected the wolf to come his way any
-moment. He made thousands of different conjectures as to where and
-from what side the beast would come and how he would set upon it. Hope
-alternated with despair. Several times he addressed a prayer to God
-that the wolf should come his way. He prayed with that passionate and
-shamefaced feeling with which men pray at moments of great excitement
-arising from trivial causes. “What would it be to Thee to do this for
-me?” he said to God. “I know Thou art great, and that it is a sin to
-ask this of Thee, but for God’s sake do let the old wolf come my way
-and let Karáy spring at it—in sight of ‘Uncle’ who is watching
-from over there—and seize it by the throat in a death grip!” A
-thousand times during that half-hour Rostóv cast eager and restless
-glances over the edge of the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising
-above the aspen undergrowth and the gully with its water-worn side and
-“Uncle’s” cap just visible above the bush on his right.
-
-“No, I shan’t have such luck,” thought Rostóv, “yet what
-wouldn’t it be worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards and in
-war, I am always unlucky.” Memories of Austerlitz and of Dólokhov
-flashed rapidly and clearly through his mind. “Only once in my life
-to get an old wolf, I want only that!” thought he, straining eyes and
-ears and looking to the left and then to the right and listening to the
-slightest variation of note in the cries of the dogs.
-
-Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him across
-the deserted field. “No, it can’t be!” thought Rostóv, taking a
-deep breath, as a man does at the coming of something long hoped for.
-The height of happiness was reached—and so simply, without warning, or
-noise, or display, that Rostóv could not believe his eyes and remained
-in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward and jumped heavily over
-a gully that lay in her path. She was an old animal with a gray back and
-big reddish belly. She ran without hurry, evidently feeling sure that no
-one saw her. Rostóv, holding his breath, looked round at the borzois.
-They stood or lay not seeing the wolf or understanding the situation.
-Old Karáy had turned his head and was angrily searching for fleas,
-baring his yellow teeth and snapping at his hind legs.
-
-“Ulyulyulyu!” whispered Rostóv, pouting his lips. The borzois
-jumped up, jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears.
-Karáy finished scratching his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got
-up with quivering tail from which tufts of matted hair hung down.
-
-“Shall I loose them or not?” Nicholas asked himself as the wolf
-approached him coming from the copse. Suddenly the wolf’s whole
-physiognomy changed: she shuddered, seeing what she had probably never
-seen before—human eyes fixed upon her—and turning her head a little
-toward Rostóv, she paused.
-
-“Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward...” the wolf seemed to say
-to herself, and she moved forward without again looking round and with a
-quiet, long, easy yet resolute lope.
-
-“Ulyulyu!” cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of its own
-accord his good horse darted headlong downhill, leaping over gullies
-to head off the wolf, and the borzois passed it, running faster still.
-Nicholas did not hear his own cry nor feel that he was galloping, nor
-see the borzois, nor the ground over which he went: he saw only the
-wolf, who, increasing her speed, bounded on in the same direction along
-the hollow. The first to come into view was Mílka, with her black
-markings and powerful quarters, gaining upon the wolf. Nearer and
-nearer... now she was ahead of it; but the wolf turned its head to face
-her, and instead of putting on speed as she usually did Mílka suddenly
-raised her tail and stiffened her forelegs.
-
-“Ulyulyulyulyu!” shouted Nicholas.
-
-The reddish Lyubím rushed forward from behind Mílka, sprang
-impetuously at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but
-immediately jumped aside in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed her
-teeth, and again rose and bounded forward, followed at the distance of a
-couple of feet by all the borzois, who did not get any closer to her.
-
-“She’ll get away! No, it’s impossible!” thought Nicholas, still
-shouting with a hoarse voice.
-
-“Karáy, ulyulyu!...” he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi
-who was now his only hope. Karáy, with all the strength age had left
-him, stretched himself to the utmost and, watching the wolf, galloped
-heavily aside to intercept it. But the quickness of the wolf’s
-lope and the borzoi’s slower pace made it plain that Karáy had
-miscalculated. Nicholas could already see not far in front of him the
-wood where the wolf would certainly escape should she reach it. But,
-coming toward him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping almost
-straight at the wolf. There was still hope. A long, yellowish
-young borzoi, one Nicholas did not know, from another leash, rushed
-impetuously at the wolf from in front and almost knocked her over. But
-the wolf jumped up more quickly than anyone could have expected and,
-gnashing her teeth, flew at the yellowish borzoi, which, with a piercing
-yelp, fell with its head on the ground, bleeding from a gash in its
-side.
-
-“Karáy? Old fellow!...” wailed Nicholas.
-
-Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf’s path, the
-old dog with its felted hair hanging from its thigh was within five
-paces of it. As if aware of her danger, the wolf turned her eyes on
-Karáy, tucked her tail yet further between her legs, and increased
-her speed. But here Nicholas only saw that something happened to
-Karáy—the borzoi was suddenly on the wolf, and they rolled together
-down into a gully just in front of them.
-
-That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully
-with the dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and
-outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears
-laid back (Karáy was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest
-moment of his life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready to
-dismount and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust her head up from
-among that mass of dogs, and then her forepaws were on the edge of the
-gully. She clicked her teeth (Karáy no longer had her by the throat),
-leaped with a movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and having
-disengaged herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again, went
-forward. Karáy, his hair bristling, and probably bruised or wounded,
-climbed with difficulty out of the gully.
-
-“Oh my God! Why?” Nicholas cried in despair.
-
-“Uncle’s” huntsman was galloping from the other side across the
-wolf’s path and his borzois once more stopped the animal’s advance.
-She was again hemmed in.
-
-Nicholas and his attendant, with “Uncle” and his huntsman, were all
-riding round the wolf, crying “ulyulyu!” shouting and preparing to
-dismount each moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward
-again every time she shook herself and moved toward the wood where she
-would be safe.
-
-Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the ulyulyuing,
-had rushed out from the wood. He saw Karáy seize the wolf, and checked
-his horse, supposing the affair to be over. But when he saw that the
-horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself and ran for
-safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf but straight
-toward the wood, just as Karáy had run to cut the animal off. As
-a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just when she had been
-stopped a second time by “Uncle’s” borzois.
-
-Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand and
-thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip as if
-it were a flail.
-
-Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut, breathing
-heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body and saw Daniel
-lying on the wolf’s back among the dogs, trying to seize her by the
-ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to the wolf herself
-that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed back her ears and
-tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her. Daniel rose a little, took
-a step, and with his whole weight, as if lying down to rest, fell on
-the wolf, seizing her by the ears. Nicholas was about to stab her, but
-Daniel whispered, “Don’t! We’ll gag her!” and, changing his
-position, set his foot on the wolf’s neck. A stick was thrust between
-her jaws and she was fastened with a leash, as if bridled, her legs were
-bound together, and Daniel rolled her over once or twice from side to
-side.
-
-With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a shying
-and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her, took her
-to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had killed two of
-the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled with their booty
-and their stories, and all came to look at the wolf, which, with her
-broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten stick between her jaws,
-gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd of dogs and men surrounding
-her. When she was touched, she jerked her bound legs and looked wildly
-yet simply at everybody. Old Count Rostóv also rode up and touched the
-wolf.
-
-“Oh, what a formidable one!” said he. “A formidable one, eh?” he
-asked Daniel, who was standing near.
-
-“Yes, your excellency,” answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap.
-
-The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with
-Daniel.
-
-“Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!” said the count.
-
-For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable
-smile.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-The old count went home, and Natásha and Pétya promised to return very
-soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At midday
-they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with young trees.
-Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his whips.
-
-Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood alone
-in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been loosed
-before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltórn, giving tongue at intervals;
-other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving tongue. A
-moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a fox had been
-found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along the ravine
-toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas.
-
-He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the
-ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself
-at any moment on the ryefield opposite.
-
-The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois, and
-Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going hard
-across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew close
-to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and sharper
-curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white borzoi dashed
-in followed by a black one, and everything was in confusion; the borzois
-formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying their bodies and with
-tails turned away from the center of the group. Two huntsmen galloped up
-to the dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a stranger, in a green coat.
-
-“What’s this?” thought Nicholas. “Where’s that huntsman from?
-He is not ‘Uncle’s’ man.”
-
-The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without strapping
-it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high saddles, stood
-near them and there too the dogs were lying. The huntsmen waved their
-arms and did something to the fox. Then from that spot came the sound of
-a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of a fight.
-
-“That’s Ilágin’s huntsman having a row with our Iván,” said
-Nicholas’ groom.
-
-Nicholas sent the man to call Natásha and Pétya to him, and rode at a
-footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds together.
-Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight was going on.
-
-Nicholas dismounted, and with Natásha and Pétya, who had ridden up,
-stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would end. Out of
-the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and rode toward
-his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper. While still at a
-distance he took off his cap and tried to speak respectfully, but he was
-pale and breathless and his face was angry. One of his eyes was black,
-but he probably was not even aware of it.
-
-“What has happened?” asked Nicholas.
-
-“A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my gray
-bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the fox! I
-gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want a taste
-of this?...” said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and probably
-imagining himself still speaking to his foe.
-
-Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and Pétya
-to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy’s, Ilágin’s,
-hunting party was.
-
-The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,
-surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.
-
-The facts were that Ilágin, with whom the Rostóvs had a quarrel and
-were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the Rostóvs,
-and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very woods the
-Rostóvs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs had
-chased.
-
-Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilágin, with his usual absence
-of moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his
-arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe. He
-rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and fully
-prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish his
-enemy.
-
-Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman in
-a beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black horse,
-accompanied by two hunt servants.
-
-Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilágin a stately and courteous
-gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young count’s
-acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilágin raised his beaver
-cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and would have the
-man punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox hunted by someone
-else’s borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted with the count
-and invited him to draw his covert.
-
-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 Iligin’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 black-spotted 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. “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 outdo
-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 leash rushed
-downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the borzois that
-were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare. All the hunt,
-who had been moving slowly, shouted, “Stop!” calling in the hounds,
-while the borzoi whips, with a cry of “A-tu!” galloped across the
-field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilágin, Nicholas,
-Natásha, and “Uncle” flew, reckless of where and how they went,
-seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose sight even
-for an instant of the chase. The hare they had started was a strong and
-swift one. When he jumped up he did not run at once, but pricked his
-ears listening to the shouting and trampling that resounded from all
-sides at once. He took a dozen bounds, not very quickly, letting the
-borzois gain on him, and, finally having chosen his direction and
-realized his danger, laid back his ears and rushed off headlong. He had
-been lying in the stubble, but in front of him was the autumn sowing
-where the ground was soft. The two borzois of the huntsman who had
-sighted him, having been the nearest, were the first to see and pursue
-him, but they had not gone far before Ilágin’s red-spotted Erzá
-passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare with terrible
-swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had seized him, rolled
-over like a ball. The hare arched his back and bounded off yet more
-swiftly. From behind Erzá rushed the broad-haunched, black-spotted
-Mílka and began rapidly gaining on the hare.
-
-“Miláshka, dear!” rose Nicholas’ triumphant cry. It looked as if
-Mílka would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and
-flew past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erzá reached him,
-but when close to the hare’s scut paused as if measuring the distance,
-so as not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind leg.
-
-“Erzá, darling!” Ilágin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erzá
-did not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have
-seized her prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between the
-winter rye and the stubble. Again Erzá and Mílka were abreast, running
-like a pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the hare, but
-it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the borzois did not
-overtake him so quickly.
-
-“Rugáy, Rugáyushka! That’s it, come on!” came a third voice just
-then, and “Uncle’s” red borzoi, straining and curving its back,
-caught up with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless
-of the terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off
-the balk onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously,
-sinking to his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was
-how, muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of borzois
-surrounded him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the crowd
-of dogs. Only the delighted “Uncle” dismounted, and cut off a pad,
-shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously glancing round
-with restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He spoke without
-himself knowing whom to or what about. “That’s it, come on! That’s
-a dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the thousand-ruble as well as
-the one-ruble borzois. That’s it, come on!” said he, panting and
-looking wrathfully around as if he were abusing someone, as if they
-were all his enemies and had insulted him, and only now had he at
-last succeeded in justifying himself. “There are your thousand-ruble
-ones.... That’s it, come on!...”
-
-“Rugáy, here’s a pad for you!” he said, throwing down the
-hare’s muddy pad. “You’ve deserved it, that’s it, come on!”
-
-“She’d tired herself out, she’d run it down three times by
-herself,” said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless
-of whether he were heard or not.
-
-“But what is there in running across it like that?” said Ilágin’s
-groom.
-
-“Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take
-it,” Ilágin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop
-and his excitement. At the same moment Natásha, without drawing
-breath, screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set
-everyone’s ear tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the others
-expressed by all talking at once, and it was so strange that she must
-herself have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone else would have
-been amazed at it at any other time. “Uncle” himself twisted up the
-hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his horse’s back as if by
-that gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with an air of not
-wishing to speak to anyone, mounted his bay and rode off. The others all
-followed, dispirited and shamefaced, and only much later were they able
-to regain their former affectation of indifference. For a long time they
-continued to look at red Rugáy who, his arched back spattered with
-mud and clanking the ring of his leash, walked along just behind
-“Uncle’s” horse with the serene air of a conqueror.
-
-“Well, I am like any other dog as long as it’s not a question of
-coursing. But when it is, then look out!” his appearance seemed to
-Nicholas to be saying.
-
-When, much later, “Uncle” rode up to Nicholas and began talking
-to him, he felt flattered that, after what had happened, “Uncle”
-deigned to speak to him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-Toward evening Ilágin took leave of Nicholas, who found that they were
-so far from home that he accepted “Uncle’s” offer that the hunting
-party should spend the night in his little village of Mikháylovna.
-
-“And if you put up at my house that will be better still. That’s it,
-come on!” said “Uncle.” “You see it’s damp weather, and you
-could rest, and the little countess could be driven home in a trap.”
-
-“Uncle’s” offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to Otrádnoe for
-a trap, while Nicholas rode with Natásha and Pétya to “Uncle’s”
-house.
-
-Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out to the front
-porch to meet their master. A score of women serfs, old and young, as
-well as children, popped out from the back entrance to have a look at
-the hunters who were arriving. The presence of Natásha—a woman, a
-lady, and on horseback—raised the curiosity of the serfs to such a
-degree that many of them came up to her, stared her in the face, and
-unabashed by her presence made remarks about her as though she were some
-prodigy on show and not a human being able to hear or understand what
-was said about her.
-
-“Arínka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her skirt
-dangles.... See, she’s got a little hunting horn!”
-
-“Goodness gracious! See her knife?...”
-
-“Isn’t she a Tartar!”
-
-“How is it you didn’t go head over heels?” asked the boldest of
-all, addressing Natásha directly.
-
-“Uncle” dismounted at the porch of his little wooden house which
-stood in the midst of an overgrown garden and, after a glance at his
-retainers, shouted authoritatively that the superfluous ones should take
-themselves off and that all necessary preparations should be made to
-receive the guests and the visitors.
-
-The serfs all dispersed. “Uncle” lifted Natásha off her horse and
-taking her hand led her up the rickety wooden steps of the porch. The
-house, with its bare, unplastered log walls, was not overclean—it
-did not seem that those living in it aimed at keeping it spotless—but
-neither was it noticeably neglected. In the entry there was a smell of
-fresh apples, and wolf and fox skins hung about.
-
-“Uncle” led the visitors through the anteroom into a small hall with
-a folding table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a round
-birchwood table and a sofa, and finally into his private room where
-there was a tattered sofa, a worn carpet, and portraits of Suvórov, of
-the host’s father and mother, and of himself in military uniform. The
-study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. “Uncle” asked his visitors
-to sit down and make themselves at home, and then went out of the room.
-Rugáy, his back still muddy, came into the room and lay down on the
-sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and teeth. Leading from the study
-was a passage in which a partition with ragged curtains could be
-seen. From behind this came women’s laughter and whispers. Natásha,
-Nicholas, and Pétya took off their wraps and sat down on the sofa.
-Pétya, leaning on his elbow, fell asleep at once. Natásha and Nicholas
-were silent. Their faces glowed, they were hungry and very cheerful.
-They looked at one another (now that the hunt was over and they were in
-the house, Nicholas no longer considered it necessary to show his manly
-superiority over his sister), Natásha gave him a wink, and neither
-refrained long from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before
-they had a pretext ready to account for it.
-
-After a while “Uncle” came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and
-small top boots. And Natásha felt that this costume, the very one she
-had regarded with surprise and amusement at Otrádnoe, was just the
-right thing and not at all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat.
-“Uncle” too was in high spirits and far from being offended by the
-brother’s and sister’s laughter (it could never enter his head that
-they might be laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the
-merriment.
-
-“That’s right, young countess, that’s it, come on! I never saw
-anyone like her!” said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with a long stem
-and, with a practiced motion of three fingers, taking down another that
-had been cut short. “She’s ridden all day like a man, and is as
-fresh as ever!”
-
-Soon after “Uncle’s” reappearance the door was opened, evidently
-from the sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout, rosy, good-looking
-woman of about forty, with a double chin and full red lips, entered
-carrying a large loaded tray. With hospitable dignity and cordiality in
-her glance and in every motion, she looked at the visitors and, with
-a pleasant smile, bowed respectfully. In spite of her exceptional
-stoutness, which caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and throw
-back her head, this woman (who was “Uncle’s” housekeeper) trod
-very lightly. She went to the table, set down the tray, and with her
-plump white hands deftly took from it the bottles and various hors
-d’oeuvres and dishes and arranged them on the table. When she had
-finished, she stepped aside and stopped at the door with a smile on her
-face. “Here I am. I am she! Now do you understand ‘Uncle’?” her
-expression said to Rostóv. How could one help understanding? Not only
-Nicholas, but even Natásha understood the meaning of his puckered brow
-and the happy complacent smile that slightly puckered his lips when
-Anísya Fëdorovna entered. On the tray was a bottle of herb wine,
-different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye cakes made with
-buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling mead, apples,
-nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey sweets. Afterwards she brought
-a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves made with honey, and preserves
-made with sugar.
-
-All this was the fruit of Anísya Fëdorovna’s housekeeping, gathered
-and prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a smack
-of Anísya Fëdorovna herself: a savor of juiciness, cleanliness,
-whiteness, and pleasant smiles.
-
-“Take this, little Lady-Countess!” she kept saying, as she offered
-Natásha first one thing and then another.
-
-Natásha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten such
-buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets, or such
-a chicken anywhere. Anísya Fëdorovna left the room.
-
-After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostóv and “Uncle” talked
-of past and future hunts, of Rugáy and Ilágin’s dogs, while Natásha
-sat upright on the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried
-several times to wake Pétya that he might eat something, but he
-only muttered incoherent words without waking up. Natásha felt so
-lighthearted and happy in these novel surroundings that she only feared
-the trap would come for her too soon. After a casual pause, such as
-often occurs when receiving friends for the first time in one’s own
-house, “Uncle,” answering a thought that was in his visitors’
-minds, said:
-
-“This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will come.
-That’s it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?”
-
-“Uncle’s” face was very significant and even handsome as he said
-this. Involuntarily Rostóv recalled all the good he had heard about
-him from his father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province
-“Uncle” had the reputation of being the most honorable and
-disinterested of cranks. They called him in to decide family disputes,
-chose him as executor, confided secrets to him, elected him to be a
-justice and to other posts; but he always persistently refused public
-appointments, passing the autumn and spring in the fields on his bay
-gelding, sitting at home in winter, and lying in his overgrown garden in
-summer.
-
-“Why don’t you enter the service, Uncle?”
-
-“I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That’s it, come
-on! I can’t make head or tail of it. That’s for you—I haven’t
-brains enough. Now, hunting is another matter—that’s it, come on!
-Open the door, there!” he shouted. “Why have you shut it?”
-
-The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen’s room, as they
-called the room for the hunt servants.
-
-There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the
-door into the huntsmen’s room, from which came the clear sounds of a
-balaláyka on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was
-playing. Natásha had been listening to those strains for some time and
-now went out into the passage to hear better.
-
-“That’s Mítka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balaláyka.
-I’m fond of it,” said “Uncle.”
-
-It was the custom for Mítka to play the balaláyka in the huntsmen’s
-room when “Uncle” returned from the chase. “Uncle” was fond of
-such music.
-
-“How good! Really very good!” said Nicholas with some unintentional
-superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the sounds pleased him
-very much.
-
-“Very good?” said Natásha reproachfully, noticing her brother’s
-tone. “Not ‘very good’ it’s simply delicious!”
-
-Just as “Uncle’s” pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had
-seemed to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that moment,
-seemed to her the acme of musical delight.
-
-“More, please, more!” cried Natásha at the door as soon as the
-balaláyka ceased. Mítka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming
-the balaláyka to the air of My Lady, with trills and variations.
-“Uncle” sat listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side.
-The air was repeated a hundred times. The balaláyka was retuned several
-times and the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did
-not grow weary of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anísya
-Fëdorovna came in and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.
-
-“You like listening?” she said to Natásha, with a smile extremely
-like “Uncle’s.” “That’s a good player of ours,” she added.
-
-“He doesn’t play that part right!” said “Uncle” suddenly, with
-an energetic gesture. “Here he ought to burst out—that’s it, come
-on!—ought to burst out.”
-
-“Do you play then?” asked Natásha.
-
-“Uncle” did not answer, but smiled.
-
-“Anísya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I
-haven’t touched it for a long time. That’s it—come on! I’ve
-given it up.”
-
-Anísya Fëdorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her
-errand and brought back the guitar.
-
-Without looking at anyone, “Uncle” blew the dust off it and, tapping
-the case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself in
-his armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard, arching
-his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a wink at
-Anísya Fëdorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous, and then
-quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow time, not
-My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the street. The
-tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to thrill in the
-hearts of Nicholas and Natásha, arousing in them the same kind of
-sober mirth as radiated from Anísya Fëdorovna’s whole being. Anísya
-Fëdorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her face went laughing
-out of the room. “Uncle” continued to play correctly, carefully,
-with energetic firmness, looking with a changed and inspired expression
-at the spot where Anísya Fëdorovna had just stood. Something seemed to
-be laughing a little on one side of his face under his gray mustaches,
-especially as the song grew brisker and the time quicker and when, here
-and there, as he ran his fingers over the strings, something seemed to
-snap.
-
-“Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!” shouted Natásha as soon as
-he had finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. “Nicholas,
-Nicholas!” she said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: “What
-is it moves me so?”
-
-Nicholas too was greatly pleased by “Uncle’s” playing, and
-“Uncle” played the piece over again. Anísya Fëdorovna’s smiling
-face reappeared in the doorway and behind hers other faces...
-
- Fetching water clear and sweet,
- Stop, dear maiden, I entreat—
-
-played “Uncle” once more, running his fingers skillfully over the
-strings, and then he stopped short and jerked his shoulders.
-
-“Go on, Uncle dear,” Natásha wailed in an imploring tone as if her
-life depended on it.
-
-“Uncle” rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of
-them smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow struck
-a naïve and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance.
-
-“Now then, niece!” he exclaimed, waving to Natásha the hand that
-had just struck a chord.
-
-Natásha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to face
-“Uncle,” and setting her arms akimbo also made a motion with her
-shoulders and struck an attitude.
-
-Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an émigrée
-French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that spirit
-and obtained that manner which the pas de châle * would, one would have
-supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the movements were
-those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that “Uncle” had
-expected of her. As soon as she had struck her pose, and smiled
-triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that had at
-first seized Nicholas and the others that she might not do the right
-thing was at an end, and they were already admiring her.
-
- * The French shawl dance.
-
-She did the right thing with such precision, such complete precision,
-that Anísya Fëdorovna, who had at once handed her the handkerchief she
-needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she
-watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in silks and velvets and so
-different from herself, who yet was able to understand all that was
-in Anísya and in Anísya’s father and mother and aunt, and in every
-Russian man and woman.
-
-“Well, little countess; that’s it—come on!” cried “Uncle,”
-with a joyous laugh, having finished the dance. “Well done, niece! Now
-a fine young fellow must be found as husband for you. That’s it—come
-on!”
-
-“He’s chosen already,” said Nicholas smiling.
-
-“Oh?” said “Uncle” in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natásha,
-who nodded her head with a happy smile.
-
-“And such a one!” she said. But as soon as she had said it a new
-train of thoughts and feelings arose in her. “What did Nicholas’
-smile mean when he said ‘chosen already’? Is he glad of it or not?
-It is as if he thought my Bolkónski would not approve of or understand
-our gaiety. But he would understand it all. Where is he now?” she
-thought, and her face suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a
-second. “Don’t dare to think about it,” she said to herself,
-and sat down again smilingly beside “Uncle,” begging him to play
-something more.
-
-“Uncle” played another song and a valse; then after a pause he
-cleared his throat and sang his favorite hunting song:
-
- As ‘twas growing dark last night
- Fell the snow so soft and light...
-
-“Uncle” sang as peasants sing, with full and naïve conviction that
-the whole meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune comes
-of itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which exists
-only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the unconsidered
-tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily good. Natásha was in
-ecstasies over “Uncle’s” singing. She resolved to give up learning
-the harp and to play only the guitar. She asked “Uncle” for his
-guitar and at once found the chords of the song.
-
-After nine o’clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been sent
-to look for them, arrived to fetch Natásha and Pétya. The count and
-countess did not know where they were and were very anxious, said one of
-the men.
-
-Pétya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two
-traps. Natásha and Nicholas got into the other. “Uncle” wrapped
-Natásha up warmly and took leave of her with quite a new tenderness. He
-accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be crossed,
-so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent huntsmen to ride
-in front with lanterns.
-
-“Good-by, dear niece,” his voice called out of the darkness—not
-the voice Natásha had known previously, but the one that had sung As
-‘twas growing dark last night.
-
-In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a
-cheerful smell of smoke.
-
-“What a darling Uncle is!” said Natásha, when they had come out
-onto the highroad.
-
-“Yes,” returned Nicholas. “You’re not cold?”
-
-“No. I’m quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!” answered
-Natásha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long
-while. The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but
-only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.
-
-What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly caught
-and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did they all
-find place in her? But she was very happy. As they were nearing home she
-suddenly struck up the air of As ‘twas growing dark last night—the
-tune of which she had all the way been trying to get and had at last
-caught.
-
-“Got it?” said Nicholas.
-
-“What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?” inquired
-Natásha.
-
-They were fond of asking one another that question.
-
-“I?” said Nicholas, trying to remember. “Well, you see, first I
-thought that Rugáy, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were
-a man he would always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then
-for his manner. What a good fellow Uncle is! Don’t you think so?...
-Well, and you?”
-
-“I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving
-along and imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows
-where we are really going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive and
-suddenly find that we are not in Otrádnoe, but in Fairyland. And then I
-thought... No, nothing else.”
-
-“I know, I expect you thought of him,” said Nicholas, smiling as
-Natásha knew by the sound of his voice.
-
-“No,” said Natásha, though she had in reality been thinking about
-Prince Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would
-have liked “Uncle.” “And then I was saying to myself all the way,
-‘How well Anísya carried herself, how well!’” And Nicholas heard
-her spontaneous, happy, ringing laughter. “And do you know,” she
-suddenly said, “I know that I shall never again be as happy and
-tranquil as I am now.”
-
-“Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!” exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought:
-“How charming this Natásha of mine is! I have no other friend like
-her and never shall have. Why should she marry? We might always drive
-about together!”
-
-“What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!” thought Natásha.
-
-“Ah, there are still lights in the drawing room!” she said, pointing
-to the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the moist velvety
-darkness of the night.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-Count Ilyá Rostóv had resigned the position of Marshal of the Nobility
-because it involved him in too much expense, but still his affairs
-did not improve. Natásha and Nicholas often noticed their parents
-conferring together anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of
-selling the fine ancestral Rostóv house and estate near Moscow. It was
-not necessary to entertain so freely as when the count had been Marshal,
-and life at Otrádnoe was quieter than in former years, but still the
-enormous house and its lodges were full of people and more than twenty
-sat down to table every day. These were all their own people who had
-settled down in the house almost as members of the family, or persons
-who were, it seemed, obliged to live in the count’s house. Such were
-Dimmler the musician and his wife, Vogel the dancing master and his
-family, Belóva, an old maiden lady, an inmate of the house, and many
-others such as Pétya’s tutors, the girls’ former governess, and
-other people who simply found it preferable and more advantageous to
-live in the count’s house than at home. They had not as many visitors
-as before, but the old habits of life without which the count and
-countess could not conceive of existence remained unchanged. There was
-still the hunting establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the
-same fifty horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive
-presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days; there
-were still the count’s games of whist and boston, at which—spreading
-out his cards so that everybody could see them—he let himself be
-plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors, who looked
-upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostóv as a most
-profitable source of income.
-
-The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to believe
-that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every step, and
-feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work carefully and
-patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt
-that her children were being ruined, that it was not the count’s fault
-for he could not help being what he was—that (though he tried to
-hide it) he himself suffered from the consciousness of his own and
-his children’s ruin, and she tried to find means of remedying the
-position. From her feminine point of view she could see only one
-solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry a rich heiress. She felt this to
-be their last hope and that if Nicholas refused the match she had found
-for him, she would have to abandon the hope of ever getting matters
-right. This match was with Julie Karágina, the daughter of excellent
-and virtuous parents, a girl the Rostóvs had known from childhood, and
-who had now become a wealthy heiress through the death of the last of
-her brothers.
-
-The countess had written direct to Julie’s mother in Moscow suggesting
-a marriage between their children and had received a favorable answer
-from her. Karágina had replied that for her part she was agreeable, and
-everything depend on her daughter’s inclination. She invited Nicholas
-to come to Moscow.
-
-Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son that
-now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him
-married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that
-were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid girl
-and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.
-
-At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to
-Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his
-mother’s remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations
-induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope
-of getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie
-Karágina.
-
-“But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would
-you expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of
-money?” he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question
-and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness.
-
-“No, you have not understood me,” said his mother, not knowing how
-to justify herself. “You have not understood me, Nikólenka. It is
-your happiness I wish for,” she added, feeling that she was telling an
-untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.
-
-“Mamma, don’t cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I
-will give my life, anything, to put you at ease,” said Nicholas. “I
-would sacrifice anything for you—even my feelings.”
-
-But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did not
-want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a sacrifice
-for him.
-
-“No, you have not understood me, don’t let us talk about it,” she
-replied, wiping away her tears.
-
-“Maybe I do love a poor girl,” said Nicholas to himself. “Am I to
-sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could
-speak so to me. Because Sónya is poor I must not love her,” he
-thought, “must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should
-certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can
-always sacrifice my feelings for my family’s welfare,” he said to
-himself, “but I can’t coerce my feelings. If I love Sónya, that
-feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else.”
-
-Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
-conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and sometimes
-with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and
-the portionless Sónya. Though she blamed herself for it, she could
-not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sónya, often pulling her up
-without reason, addressing her stiffly as “my dear,” and using the
-formal “you” instead of the intimate “thou” in speaking to her.
-The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with Sónya because that
-poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind, so devotedly
-grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully, unchangingly, and
-unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were no grounds for
-finding fault with her.
-
-Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter had
-come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he would have
-been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound unexpectedly
-reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to defer his return till
-the beginning of the new year. Natásha was still as much in love with
-her betrothed, found the same comfort in that love, and was still as
-ready to throw herself into all the pleasures of life as before; but at
-the end of the fourth month of their separation she began to have fits
-of depression which she could not master. She felt sorry for herself:
-sorry that she was being wasted all this time and of no use to
-anyone—while she felt herself so capable of loving and being loved.
-
-Things were not cheerful in the Rostóvs’ home.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and
-wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and the
-new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities, though
-the calm frost of twenty degrees Réaumur, the dazzling sunshine by day,
-and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some special
-celebration of the season.
-
-On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the
-inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest time
-of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that morning,
-was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was resting in his
-study. Sónya sat in the drawing room at the round table, copying a
-design for embroidery. The countess was playing patience. Nastásya
-Ivánovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the window with two old
-ladies. Natásha came into the room, went up to Sónya, glanced at
-what she was doing, and then went up to her mother and stood without
-speaking.
-
-“Why are you wandering about like an outcast?” asked her mother.
-“What do you want?”
-
-“Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!” said Natásha,
-with glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.
-
-The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.
-
-“Don’t look at me, Mamma! Don’t look; I shall cry directly.”
-
-“Sit down with me a little,” said the countess.
-
-“Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?”
-
-Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned quickly to
-hide them and left the room.
-
-She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and then
-went into the maids’ room. There an old maidservant was grumbling at
-a young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the cold from
-the serfs’ quarters.
-
-“Stop playing—there’s a time for everything,” said the old
-woman.
-
-“Let her alone, Kondrátevna,” said Natásha. “Go, Mavrúshka,
-go.”
-
-Having released Mavrúshka, Natásha crossed the dancing hall and went
-to the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing
-cards. They broke off and rose as she entered.
-
-“What can I do with them?” thought Natásha.
-
-“Oh, Nikíta, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the
-yard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some
-oats.”
-
-“Just a few oats?” said Misha, cheerfully and readily.
-
-“Go, go quickly,” the old man urged him.
-
-“And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk.”
-
-On her way past the butler’s pantry she told them to set a samovar,
-though it was not at all the time for tea.
-
-Fóka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house.
-Natásha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order and
-asked whether the samovar was really wanted.
-
-“Oh dear, what a young lady!” said Fóka, pretending to frown at
-Natásha.
-
-No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble as
-Natásha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to send
-them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of them would
-get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no one’s orders
-so readily as they did hers. “What can I do, where can I go?”
-thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.
-
-“Nastásya Ivánovna, what sort of children shall I have?” she asked
-the buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman’s jacket.
-
-“Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers,” answered the buffoon.
-
-“O Lord, O Lord, it’s always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What
-am I to do with myself?” And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly
-upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.
-
-Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which were
-plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were discussing
-whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natásha sat down,
-listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air, and then got
-up again.
-
-“The island of Madagascar,” she said, “Ma-da-gas-car,” she
-repeated, articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to
-Madame Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the
-room.
-
-Her brother Pétya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on him
-he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.
-
-“Pétya! Pétya!” she called to him. “Carry me downstairs.”
-
-Pétya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her
-arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.
-
-“No, don’t... the island of Madagascar!” she said, and jumping off
-his back she went downstairs.
-
-Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made
-sure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was dull,
-Natásha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar, sat down
-in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her fingers over
-the strings in the bass, picking out a passage she recalled from an
-opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew. What she drew from
-the guitar would have had no meaning for other listeners, but in her
-imagination a whole series of reminiscences arose from those sounds.
-She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a streak of light
-escaping from the pantry door and listened to herself and pondered. She
-was in a mood for brooding on the past.
-
-Sónya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natásha glanced
-at her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that
-she remembered the light falling through that crack once before and
-Sónya passing with a glass in her hand. “Yes it was exactly the
-same,” thought Natásha.
-
-“Sónya, what is this?” she cried, twanging a thick string.
-
-“Oh, you are there!” said Sónya with a start, and came near and
-listened. “I don’t know. A storm?” she ventured timidly, afraid of
-being wrong.
-
-“There! That’s just how she started and just how she came up smiling
-timidly when all this happened before,” thought Natásha, “and in
-just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her.”
-
-“No, it’s the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen!” and Natásha
-sang the air of the chorus so that Sónya should catch it. “Where were
-you going?” she asked.
-
-“To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design.”
-
-“You always find something to do, but I can’t,” said Natásha.
-“And where’s Nicholas?”
-
-“Asleep, I think.”
-
-“Sónya, go and wake him,” said Natásha. “Tell him I want him to
-come and sing.”
-
-She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened
-before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all regretting
-not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time when she was
-with him and he was looking at her with a lover’s eyes.
-
-“Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be!
-And, worst of all, I am growing old—that’s the thing! There won’t
-then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he’ll come today, will
-come immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing
-room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it.” She rose,
-put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.
-
-All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were already
-at the tea table. The servants stood round the table—but Prince Andrew
-was not there and life was going on as before.
-
-“Ah, here she is!” said the old count, when he saw Natásha enter.
-“Well, sit down by me.” But Natásha stayed by her mother and
-glanced round as if looking for something.
-
-“Mamma!” she muttered, “give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly,
-quickly!” and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.
-
-She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between the
-elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. “My God, my God!
-The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in the
-same way!” thought Natásha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion
-rising up in her for the whole household, because they were always the
-same.
-
-After tea, Nicholas, Sónya, and Natásha went to the sitting room, to
-their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-“Does it ever happen to you,” said Natásha to her brother, when
-they settled down in the sitting room, “does it ever happen to you to
-feel as if there were nothing more to come—nothing; that everything
-good is past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?”
-
-“I should think so!” he replied. “I have felt like that when
-everything was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has come
-into my mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must all
-die. Once in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where there
-was music... and suddenly I felt so depressed...”
-
-“Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!” Natásha interrupted him. “When
-I was quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when
-I was punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat
-sobbing in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and sorry
-for everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was innocent—that
-was the chief thing,” said Natásha. “Do you remember?”
-
-“I remember,” answered Nicholas. “I remember that I came to you
-afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt ashamed
-to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and wanted to give
-it to you. Do you remember?”
-
-“And do you remember,” Natásha asked with a pensive smile, “how
-once, long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us into
-the study—that was in the old house—and it was dark—we went in and
-suddenly there stood...”
-
-“A Negro,” chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. “Of course
-I remember. Even now I don’t know whether there really was a Negro, or
-if we only dreamed it or were told about him.”
-
-“He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and looked
-at us....”
-
-“Sónya, do you remember?” asked Nicholas.
-
-“Yes, yes, I do remember something too,” Sónya answered timidly.
-
-“You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro,” said
-Natásha, “and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you
-remember!”
-
-“Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them.”
-
-“How strange it is! It’s as if it were a dream! I like that.”
-
-“And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom,
-and suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was that
-real or not? Do you remember what fun it was?”
-
-“Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat fired a gun in
-the porch?”
-
-So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not the sad
-memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones—those impressions of
-one’s most distant past in which dreams and realities blend—and they
-laughed with quiet enjoyment.
-
-Sónya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they shared
-the same reminiscences.
-
-Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she
-recalled did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced. She
-simply enjoyed their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.
-
-She only really took part when they recalled Sónya’s first arrival.
-She told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because he had on a
-corded jacket and her nurse had told her that she, too, would be sewn up
-with cords.
-
-“And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a
-cabbage,” said Natásha, “and I remember that I dared not disbelieve
-it then, but knew that it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable.”
-
-While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other door of
-the sitting room.
-
-“They have brought the cock, Miss,” she said in a whisper.
-
-“It isn’t wanted, Pólya. Tell them to take it away,” replied
-Natásha.
-
-In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and
-went up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its cloth
-covering, and the harp gave out a jarring sound.
-
-“Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field,” came the
-old countess’ voice from the drawing room.
-
-Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natásha, Nicholas, and Sónya,
-remarked: “How quiet you young people are!”
-
-“Yes, we’re philosophizing,” said Natásha, glancing round for a
-moment and then continuing the conversation. They were now discussing
-dreams.
-
-Dimmler began to play; Natásha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the table,
-took up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself quietly
-in her former place. It was dark in the room especially where they were
-sitting on the sofa, but through the big windows the silvery light of
-the full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished the piece but
-still sat softly running his fingers over the strings, evidently
-uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.
-
-“Do you know,” said Natásha in a whisper, moving closer to Nicholas
-and Sónya, “that when one goes on and on recalling memories, one at
-last begins to remember what happened before one was in the world....”
-
-“That is metempsychosis,” said Sónya, who had always learned well,
-and remembered everything. “The Egyptians believed that our souls have
-lived in animals, and will go back into animals again.”
-
-“No, I don’t believe we ever were in animals,” said Natásha,
-still in a whisper though the music had ceased. “But I am certain that
-we were angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we
-remember....”
-
-“May I join you?” said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat
-down by them.
-
-“If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?” said Nicholas.
-“No, that can’t be!”
-
-“Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I
-was before?” Natásha rejoined with conviction. “The soul is
-immortal—well then, if I shall always live I must have lived before,
-lived for a whole eternity.”
-
-“Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity,” remarked Dimmler,
-who had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending smile but now
-spoke as quietly and seriously as they.
-
-“Why is it hard to imagine eternity?” said Natásha. “It is now
-today, and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday, and
-the day before....”
-
-“Natásha! Now it’s your turn. Sing me something,” they heard the
-countess say. “Why are you sitting there like conspirators?”
-
-“Mamma, I don’t at all want to,” replied Natásha, but all the
-same she rose.
-
-None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break off
-their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but
-Natásha got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing
-as usual in the middle of the hall and choosing the place where the
-resonance was best, Natásha began to sing her mother’s favorite song.
-
-She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had
-sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The
-count, from his study where he was talking to Mítenka, heard her and,
-like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in his talk
-while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped, while Mítenka
-stood in front of him also listening and smiling. Nicholas did not take
-his eyes off his sister and drew breath in time with her. Sónya, as she
-listened, thought of the immense difference there was between herself
-and her friend, and how impossible it was for her to be anything like as
-bewitching as her cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful yet sad
-smile and with tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She
-thought of Natásha and of her own youth, and of how there was something
-unnatural and dreadful in this impending marriage of Natásha and Prince
-Andrew.
-
-Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with
-closed eyes.
-
-“Ah, Countess,” he said at last, “that’s a European talent, she
-has nothing to learn—what softness, tenderness, and strength....”
-
-“Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!” said the countess,
-not realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her
-that Natásha had too much of something, and that because of this
-she would not be happy. Before Natásha had finished singing,
-fourteen-year-old Pétya rushed in delightedly, to say that some mummers
-had arrived.
-
-Natásha stopped abruptly.
-
-“Idiot!” she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair, threw
-herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop for a long
-time.
-
-“It’s nothing, Mamma, really it’s nothing; only Pétya startled
-me,” she said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs
-still choked her.
-
-The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks,
-innkeepers, and ladies—frightening and funny—bringing in with
-them the cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first
-timidly, into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed
-into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily
-and heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas
-games. The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their
-costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom,
-smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had
-disappeared.
-
-Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the
-ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt—this was Nicholas. A Turkish
-girl was Pétya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natásha, and a
-Circassian was Sónya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.
-
-After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from those
-who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided that their
-costumes were so good that they ought to be shown elsewhere.
-
-Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to take
-them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them about a
-dozen of the serf mummers and drive to “Uncle’s.”
-
-“No, why disturb the old fellow?” said the countess. “Besides,
-you wouldn’t have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the
-Melyukóvs’.”
-
-Melyukóva was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and
-governesses, lived three miles from the Rostóvs.
-
-“That’s right, my dear,” chimed in the old count, thoroughly
-aroused. “I’ll dress up at once and go with them. I’ll make
-Pashette open her eyes.”
-
-But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad leg all
-these last days. It was decided that the count must not go, but that if
-Louisa Ivánovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies
-might go to the Melyukóvs’, Sónya, generally so timid and shy, more
-urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivánovna not to refuse.
-
-Sónya’s costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows were
-extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very handsome,
-and she was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with her. Some
-inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be decided, and
-in her male attire she seemed quite a different person. Louisa Ivánovna
-consented to go, and in half an hour four troyka sleighs with large and
-small bells, their runners squeaking and whistling over the frozen snow,
-drove up to the porch.
-
-Natásha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing
-from one to another, grew stronger and reached its climax when they all
-came out into the frost and got into the sleighs, talking, calling to
-one another, laughing, and shouting.
-
-Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was the
-old count’s with a trotter from the Orlóv stud as shaft horse,
-the fourth was Nicholas’ own with a short shaggy black shaft horse.
-Nicholas, in his old lady’s dress over which he had belted his hussar
-overcoat, stood in the middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.
-
-It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the metal
-harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked round in alarm
-at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof.
-
-Natásha, Sónya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas’
-sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Pétya, into the old count’s, and the
-rest of the mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.
-
-“You go ahead, Zakhár!” shouted Nicholas to his father’s
-coachman, wishing for a chance to race past him.
-
-The old count’s troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward,
-squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its deep-toned
-bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts of the
-middle horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered like sugar,
-and threw it up.
-
-Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the others
-moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove at a steady
-trot along the narrow road. While they drove past the garden the shadows
-of the bare trees often fell across the road and hid the brilliant
-moonlight, but as soon as they were past the fence, the snowy plain
-bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out before them glittering
-like diamonds and dappled with bluish shadows. Bang, bang! went the
-first sleigh over a cradle hole in the snow of the road, and each of
-the other sleighs jolted in the same way, and rudely breaking the
-frost-bound stillness, the troykas began to speed along the road, one
-after the other.
-
-“A hare’s track, a lot of tracks!” rang out Natásha’s voice
-through the frost-bound air.
-
-“How light it is, Nicholas!” came Sónya’s voice.
-
-Nicholas glanced round at Sónya, and bent down to see her face closer.
-Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches peeped up
-at him from her sable furs—so close and yet so distant—in the
-moonlight.
-
-“That used to be Sónya,” thought he, and looked at her closer and
-smiled.
-
-“What is it, Nicholas?”
-
-“Nothing,” said he and turned again to the horses.
-
-When they came out onto the beaten highroad—polished by sleigh runners
-and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were visible in the
-moonlight—the horses began to tug at the reins of their own accord and
-increased their pace. The near side horse, arching his head and breaking
-into a short canter, tugged at his traces. The shaft horse swayed from
-side to side, moving his ears as if asking: “Isn’t it time to begin
-now?” In front, already far ahead the deep bell of the sleigh ringing
-farther and farther off, the black horses driven by Zakhár could be
-clearly seen against the white snow. From that sleigh one could hear the
-shouts, laughter, and voices of the mummers.
-
-“Gee up, my darlings!” shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one
-side and flourishing the whip.
-
-It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given by the
-side horses who pulled harder—ever increasing their gallop—that
-one noticed how fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back. With
-screams squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft horses
-to gallop—the other sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung steadily
-beneath the bow over its head, with no thought of slackening pace and
-ready to put on speed when required.
-
-Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and
-coming out upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river.
-
-“Where are we?” thought he. “It’s the Kosóy meadow, I suppose.
-But no—this is something new I’ve never seen before. This isn’t
-the Kosóy meadow nor the Dëmkin hill, and heaven only knows what it
-is! It is something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be...”
-And shouting to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.
-
-Zakhár held back his horses and turned his face, which was already
-covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.
-
-Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhár, stretching out his arms,
-clucked his tongue and let his horses go.
-
-“Now, look out, master!” he cried.
-
-Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved
-the feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead.
-Zakhár, while still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with the
-reins.
-
-“No you won’t, master!” he shouted.
-
-Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhár. The horses
-showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh—beside
-them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused glimpses of
-swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they were passing.
-The whistling sound of the runners on the snow and the voices of girls
-shrieking were heard from different sides.
-
-Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were still
-surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled with
-stars.
-
-“Zakhár is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the
-left?” thought Nicholas. “Are we getting to the Melyukóvs’? Is
-this Melyukóvka? Heaven only knows where we are going, and heaven knows
-what is happening to us—but it is very strange and pleasant whatever
-it is.” And he looked round in the sleigh.
-
-“Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!” said one of the
-strange, pretty, unfamiliar people—the one with fine eyebrows and
-mustache.
-
-“I think this used to be Natásha,” thought Nicholas, “and that
-was Madame Schoss, but perhaps it’s not, and this Circassian with the
-mustache I don’t know, but I love her.”
-
-“Aren’t you cold?” he asked.
-
-They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh behind
-shouted something—probably something funny—but they could not make
-out what he said.
-
-“Yes, yes!” some voices answered, laughing.
-
-“But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a glitter
-of diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver roofs of fairy
-buildings and the shrill yells of some animals. And if this is really
-Melyukóvka, it is still stranger that we drove heaven knows where and
-have come to Melyukóvka,” thought Nicholas.
-
-It really was Melyukóvka, and maids and footmen with merry faces came
-running, out to the porch carrying candles.
-
-“Who is it?” asked someone in the porch.
-
-“The mummers from the count’s. I know by the horses,” replied some
-voices.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-Pelagéya Danílovna Melyukóva, a broadly built, energetic woman
-wearing spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress, surrounded
-by her daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling dull. They
-were quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at the shadows
-the wax figures would throw on the wall, when they heard the steps and
-voices of new arrivals in the vestibule.
-
-Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their
-throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule,
-came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The
-clown—Dimmler—and the lady—Nicholas—started a dance. Surrounded
-by the screaming children the mummers, covering their faces and
-disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess and arranged themselves
-about the room.
-
-“Dear me! there’s no recognizing them! And Natásha! See whom
-she looks like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr
-Dimmler—isn’t he good! I didn’t know him! And how he dances. Dear
-me, there’s a Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sónya.
-And who is that? Well, you have cheered us up! Nikíta and Vanya—clear
-away the tables! And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The
-hussar, the hussar! Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can’t look at
-him...” different voices were saying.
-
-Natásha, the young Melyukóvs’ favorite, disappeared with them into
-the back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male garments
-were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish arms from
-behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young Melyukóvs joined the
-mummers.
-
-Pelagéya Danílovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the
-visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs,
-went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles, peering
-into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to recognize any
-of them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostóvs she failed to
-recognize, she did not even recognize her own daughters, or her late
-husband’s, dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put on.
-
-“And who is this?” she asked her governess, peering into the face of
-her own daughter dressed up as a Kazán-Tartar. “I suppose it is one
-of the Rostóvs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve in?”
-she asked Natásha. “Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!”
-she ordered the butler who was handing things round. “That’s not
-forbidden by his law.”
-
-Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by the
-dancers, who—having decided once for all that being disguised, no one
-would recognize them—were not at all shy, Pelagéya Danílovna hid
-her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook with
-irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.
-
-“My little Sásha! Look at Sásha!” she said.
-
-After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelagéya Danílovna
-made the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a string,
-and a silver ruble were fetched and they all played games together.
-
-In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The corked
-eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring, flushed,
-and merry faces. Pelagéya Danílovna began to recognize the mummers,
-admired their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly how they
-suited the young ladies, and she thanked them all for having entertained
-her so well. The visitors were invited to supper in the drawing room,
-and the serfs had something served to them in the ballroom.
-
-“Now to tell one’s fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!”
-said an old maid who lived with the Melyukóvs, during supper.
-
-“Why?” said the eldest Melyukóv girl.
-
-“You wouldn’t go, it takes courage....”
-
-“I’ll go,” said Sónya.
-
-“Tell what happened to the young lady!” said the second Melyukóv
-girl.
-
-“Well,” began the old maid, “a young lady once went out, took a
-cock, laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down. After sitting
-a while, she suddenly hears someone coming... a sleigh drives up with
-harness bells; she hears him coming! He comes in, just in the shape of a
-man, like an officer—comes in and sits down to table with her.”
-
-“Ah! ah!” screamed Natásha, rolling her eyes with horror.
-
-“Yes? And how... did he speak?”
-
-“Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began persuading
-her; and she should have kept him talking till cockcrow, but she got
-frightened, just got frightened and hid her face in her hands. Then he
-caught her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just then....”
-
-“Now, why frighten them?” said Pelagéya Danílovna.
-
-“Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself...” said her daughter.
-
-“And how does one do it in a barn?” inquired Sónya.
-
-“Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on what
-you hear; hammering and knocking—that’s bad; but a sound of shifting
-grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too.”
-
-“Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn.”
-
-Pelagéya Danílovna smiled.
-
-“Oh, I’ve forgotten...” she replied. “But none of you would
-go?”
-
-“Yes, I will; Pelagéya Danílovna, let me! I’ll go,” said Sónya.
-
-“Well, why not, if you’re not afraid?”
-
-“Louisa Ivánovna, may I?” asked Sónya.
-
-Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game or
-talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sónya’s side, and gazed at her
-with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today, thanks
-to that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to know her. And
-really, that evening, Sónya was brighter, more animated, and prettier
-than Nicholas had ever seen her before.
-
-“So that’s what she is like; what a fool I have been!” he thought
-gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous
-smile dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never seen before.
-
-“I’m not afraid of anything,” said Sónya. “May I go at once?”
-She got up.
-
-They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and listen,
-and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her head and
-shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.
-
-“What a darling that girl is!” thought he. “And what have I been
-thinking of till now?”
-
-Sónya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went
-hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of people
-really had made the house stuffy.
-
-Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but even
-brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow sparkled with
-so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the sky and the real
-stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary, while the earth was
-gay.
-
-“I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?” thought
-Nicholas, and running out from the porch he went round the corner of
-the house and along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sónya
-would pass that way. Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood and
-across and along them a network of shadows from the bare old lime trees
-fell on the snow and on the path. This path led to the barn. The log
-walls of the barn and its snow-covered roof, that looked as if hewn out
-of some precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A tree in the garden
-snapped with the frost, and then all was again perfectly silent. His
-bosom seemed to inhale not air but the strength of eternal youth and
-gladness.
-
-From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the
-bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he heard
-the voice of an old maidservant saying, “Straight, straight, along the
-path, Miss. Only, don’t look back.”
-
-“I am not afraid,” answered Sónya’s voice, and along the path
-toward Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sónya’s feet
-in her thin shoes.
-
-Sónya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of paces
-away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas she had
-known and always slightly feared. He was in a woman’s dress, with
-tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sónya. She ran rapidly toward
-him.
-
-“Quite different and yet the same,” thought Nicholas, looking at her
-face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the cloak
-that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and kissed her
-on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt cork. Sónya
-kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little hands pressed
-them to his cheeks.
-
-“Sónya!... Nicholas!”... was all they said. They ran to the barn
-and then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back
-porch.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-When they all drove back from Pelagéya Danílovna’s, Natásha, who
-always saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss
-should go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sónya with Nicholas and
-the maids.
-
-On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing and
-kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sónya’s
-face and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former and
-his present Sónya from whom he had resolved never to be parted again.
-He looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new Sónya, and
-being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the sensation of her kiss,
-inhaled the frosty air with a full breast and, looking at the ground
-flying beneath him and at the sparkling sky, felt himself again in
-fairyland.
-
-“Sónya, is it well with thee?” he asked from time to time.
-
-“Yes!” she replied. “And with thee?”
-
-When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and ran for
-a moment to Natásha’s sleigh and stood on its wing.
-
-“Natásha!” he whispered in French, “do you know I have made up my
-mind about Sónya?”
-
-“Have you told her?” asked Natásha, suddenly beaming all over with
-joy.
-
-“Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!...
-Natásha—are you glad?”
-
-“I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I did
-not tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart she
-has, Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be happy
-while Sónya was not,” continued Natásha. “Now I am so glad! Well,
-run back to her.”
-
-“No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!” cried Nicholas, peering
-into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual, and
-bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before. “Natásha,
-it’s magical, isn’t it?”
-
-“Yes,” she replied. “You have done splendidly.”
-
-“Had I seen her before as she is now,” thought Nicholas, “I should
-long ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me,
-and all would have been well.”
-
-“So you are glad and I have done right?”
-
-“Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it.
-Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing! I
-nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of
-Sónya, for there is nothing but good in her.”
-
-“Then it’s all right?” said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the
-expression of his sister’s face to see if she was in earnest. Then he
-jumped down and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his sleigh.
-The same happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and beaming eyes
-looking up from under a sable hood, was still sitting there, and that
-Circassian was Sónya, and that Sónya was certainly his future happy
-and loving wife.
-
-When they reached home and had told their mother how they had spent the
-evening at the Melyukóvs’, the girls went to their bedroom. When they
-had undressed, but without washing off the cork mustaches, they sat a
-long time talking of their happiness. They talked of how they would live
-when they were married, how their husbands would be friends, and how
-happy they would be. On Natásha’s table stood two looking glasses
-which Dunyásha had prepared beforehand.
-
-“Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too
-good!” said Natásha, rising and going to the looking glasses.
-
-“Sit down, Natásha; perhaps you’ll see him,” said Sónya.
-
-Natásha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking
-glasses, and sat down.
-
-“I see someone with a mustache,” said Natásha, seeing her own face.
-
-“You mustn’t laugh, Miss,” said Dunyásha.
-
-With Sónya’s help and the maid’s, Natásha got the glass she held
-into the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious
-expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the
-receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting (from
-tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew, in that
-last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was to take the
-smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin, she saw nothing.
-She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the looking glasses.
-
-“Why is it others see things and I don’t?” she said. “You sit
-down now, Sónya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I
-feel so frightened!”
-
-Sónya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began
-looking.
-
-“Now, Miss Sónya is sure to see something,” whispered Dunyásha;
-“while you do nothing but laugh.”
-
-Sónya heard this and Natásha’s whisper:
-
-“I know she will. She saw something last year.”
-
-For about three minutes all were silent.
-
-“Of course she will!” whispered Natásha, but did not finish...
-suddenly Sónya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her
-eyes with her hand.
-
-“Oh, Natásha!” she cried.
-
-“Did you see? Did you? What was it?” exclaimed Natásha, holding up
-the looking glass.
-
-Sónya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to get
-up when she heard Natásha say, “Of course she will!” She did not
-wish to disappoint either Dunyásha or Natásha, but it was hard to sit
-still. She did not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped her
-when she covered her eyes.
-
-“You saw him?” urged Natásha, seizing her hand.
-
-“Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him,” Sónya could not help saying, not
-yet knowing whom Natásha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew.
-
-“But why shouldn’t I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who
-can tell whether I saw anything or not?” flashed through Sónya’s
-mind.
-
-“Yes, I saw him,” she said.
-
-“How? Standing or lying?”
-
-“No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him lying
-down.”
-
-“Andrew lying? Is he ill?” asked Natásha, her frightened eyes fixed
-on her friend.
-
-“No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he
-turned to me.” And when saying this she herself fancied she had really
-seen what she described.
-
-“Well, and then, Sónya?...”
-
-“After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and
-red....”
-
-“Sónya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how
-afraid I am for him and for myself and about everything!...” Natásha
-began, and without replying to Sónya’s words of comfort she got into
-bed, and long after her candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless,
-gazing at the moonlight through the frosty windowpanes.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his mother of his love
-for Sónya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who
-had long noticed what was going on between them and was expecting this
-declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her son that he
-might marry whom he pleased, but that neither she nor his father would
-give their blessing to such a marriage. Nicholas, for the first time,
-felt that his mother was displeased with him and that, despite her love
-for him, she would not give way. Coldly, without looking at her son,
-she sent for her husband and, when he came, tried briefly and coldly to
-inform him of the facts, in her son’s presence, but unable to restrain
-herself she burst into tears of vexation and left the room. The old
-count began irresolutely to admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon his
-purpose. Nicholas replied that he could not go back on his word, and his
-father, sighing and evidently disconcerted, very soon became silent and
-went in to the countess. In all his encounters with his son, the count
-was always conscious of his own guilt toward him for having wasted the
-family fortune, and so he could not be angry with him for refusing to
-marry an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sónya. On this occasion, he
-was only more vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had not
-been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sónya could have
-been wished for, and that no one but himself with his Mítenka and
-his uncomfortable habits was to blame for the condition of the family
-finances.
-
-The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son again,
-but a few days later the countess sent for Sónya and, with a cruelty
-neither of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to catch
-Nicholas and for ingratitude. Sónya listened silently with downcast
-eyes to the countess’ cruel words, without understanding what
-was required of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her
-benefactors. Self-sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this case
-she could not see what she ought to sacrifice, or for whom. She could
-not help loving the countess and the whole Rostóv family, but neither
-could she help loving Nicholas and knowing that his happiness depended
-on that love. She was silent and sad and did not reply. Nicholas felt
-the situation to be intolerable and went to have an explanation with his
-mother. He first implored her to forgive him and Sónya and consent to
-their marriage, then he threatened that if she molested Sónya he would
-at once marry her secretly.
-
-The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in her before,
-replied that he was of age, that Prince Andrew was marrying without his
-father’s consent, and he could do the same, but that she would never
-receive that intriguer as her daughter.
-
-Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his voice, told
-his mother he had never expected her to try to force him to sell his
-feelings, but if that were so, he would say for the last time.... But he
-had no time to utter the decisive word which the expression of his face
-caused his mother to await with terror, and which would perhaps have
-forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He had not time to say it,
-for Natásha, with a pale and set face, entered the room from the door
-at which she had been listening.
-
-“Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I
-tell you!...” she almost screamed, so as to drown his voice.
-
-“Mamma darling, it’s not at all so... my poor, sweet darling,” she
-said to her mother, who conscious that they had been on the brink of
-a rupture gazed at her son with terror, but in the obstinacy and
-excitement of the conflict could not and would not give way.
-
-“Nicholas, I’ll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma darling,”
-said Natásha.
-
-Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which she
-was aiming.
-
-The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter’s breast,
-while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room.
-
-Natásha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded
-that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sónya should not
-be troubled, while he on his side promised not to undertake anything
-without his parents’ knowledge.
-
-Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment,
-to retire from the army and return and marry Sónya, Nicholas, serious,
-sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him,
-passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his
-regiment.
-
-After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostóv household were more
-depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.
-
-Sónya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more so on
-account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting toward
-her. The count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of his
-affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town house and
-estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they had to
-go to Moscow. But the countess’ health obliged them to delay their
-departure from day to day.
-
-Natásha, who had borne the first period of separation from her
-betrothed lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and
-impatient every day. The thought that her best days, which she would
-have employed in loving him, were being vainly wasted, with no advantage
-to anyone, tormented her incessantly. His letters for the most part
-irritated her. It hurt her to think that while she lived only in the
-thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing new places and new
-people that interested him. The more interesting his letters were
-the more vexed she felt. Her letters to him, far from giving her any
-comfort, seemed to her a wearisome and artificial obligation. She could
-not write, because she could not conceive the possibility of expressing
-sincerely in a letter even a thousandth part of what she expressed by
-voice, smile, and glance. She wrote to him formal, monotonous, and dry
-letters, to which she attached no importance herself, and in the rough
-copies of which the countess corrected her mistakes in spelling.
-
-There was still no improvement in the countess’ health, but it was
-impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natásha’s
-trousseau had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince Andrew
-was expected in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkónski was spending the
-winter, and Natásha felt sure he had already arrived.
-
-So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sónya
-and Natásha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-After Prince Andrew’s engagement to Natásha, Pierre without any
-apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as before.
-Firmly convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by his
-benefactor, and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner man, to
-which he had devoted himself with such ardor—all the zest of such a
-life vanished after the engagement of Andrew and Natásha and the death
-of Joseph Alexéevich, the news of which reached him almost at the same
-time. Only the skeleton of life remained: his house, a brilliant wife
-who now enjoyed the favors of a very important personage, acquaintance
-with all Petersburg, and his court service with its dull formalities.
-And this life suddenly seemed to Pierre unexpectedly loathsome. He
-ceased keeping a diary, avoided the company of the Brothers, began going
-to the club again, drank a great deal, and came once more in touch
-with the bachelor sets, leading such a life that the Countess Hélène
-thought it necessary to speak severely to him about it. Pierre felt that
-she was right, and to avoid compromising her went away to Moscow.
-
-In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded and
-fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as soon as,
-driving through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with innumerable
-tapers burning before the golden covers of the icons, the Krémlin
-Square with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh drivers and
-hovels of the Sívtsev Vrazhók, those old Moscovites who desired
-nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending their days leisurely; when he
-saw those old Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls, and the English Club, he
-felt himself at home in a quiet haven. In Moscow he felt at peace, at
-home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing gown.
-
-Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received Pierre
-like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready awaiting him.
-For Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest, most intellectual,
-merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a heedless, genial nobleman of
-the old Russian type. His purse was always empty because it was open to
-everyone.
-
-Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent societies,
-gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees, Freemasons,
-churches, and books—no one and nothing met with a refusal from him,
-and had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large sums from
-him and taken him under their protection, he would have given everything
-away. There was never a dinner or soiree at the club without him. As
-soon as he sank into his place on the sofa after two bottles of Margaux
-he was surrounded, and talking, disputing, and joking began. When there
-were quarrels, his kindly smile and well-timed jests reconciled the
-antagonists. The Masonic dinners were dull and dreary when he was not
-there.
-
-When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly smile,
-yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive off somewhere
-with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the young men.
-At balls he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies, married and
-unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of them, he was
-equally amiable to all, especially after supper. “Il est charmant; il
-n’a pas de sexe,” * they said of him.
-
- * “He is charming; he has no sex.”
-
-
-Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of whom there were
-hundreds good-humoredly ending their days in Moscow.
-
-How horrified he would have been seven years before, when he first
-arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him
-to seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally
-predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in
-his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one
-time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia;
-then himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then
-a strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not seen the
-possibility of, and passionately desired, the regeneration of the sinful
-human race, and his own progress to the highest degree of perfection?
-Had he not established schools and hospitals and liberated his serfs?
-
-But instead of all that—here he was, the wealthy husband of an
-unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of eating and
-drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the government
-a bit, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal favorite in
-Moscow society. For a long time he could not reconcile himself to the
-idea that he was one of those same retired Moscow gentlemen-in-waiting
-he had so despised seven years before.
-
-Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was only living
-this life temporarily; but then he was shocked by the thought of how
-many, like himself, had entered that life and that club temporarily,
-with all their teeth and hair, and had only left it when not a single
-tooth or hair remained.
-
-In moments of pride, when he thought of his position it seemed to
-him that he was quite different and distinct from those other retired
-gentlemen-in-waiting he had formerly despised: they were empty, stupid,
-contented fellows, satisfied with their position, “while I am still
-discontented and want to do something for mankind. But perhaps all these
-comrades of mine struggled just like me and sought something new, a
-path in life of their own, and like me were brought by force of
-circumstances, society, and race—by that elemental force against which
-man is powerless—to the condition I am in,” said he to himself in
-moments of humility; and after living some time in Moscow he no longer
-despised, but began to grow fond of, to respect, and to pity his
-comrades in destiny, as he pitied himself.
-
-Pierre no longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust
-with life, but the malady that had formerly found expression in such
-acute attacks was driven inwards and never left him for a moment.
-“What for? Why? What is going on in the world?” he would ask himself
-in perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to reflect
-anew on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by experience
-that there were no answers to these questions he made haste to turn away
-from them, and took up a book, or hurried off to the club or to Apollón
-Nikoláevich’s, to exchange the gossip of the town.
-
-“Hélène, who has never cared for anything but her own body and
-is one of the stupidest women in the world,” thought Pierre, “is
-regarded by people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they
-pay homage to her. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he
-was great, but now that he has become a wretched comedian the Emperor
-Francis wants to offer him his daughter in an illegal marriage. The
-Spaniards, through the Catholic clergy, offer praise to God for their
-victory over the French on the fourteenth of June, and the French,
-also through the Catholic clergy, offer praise because on that same
-fourteenth of June they defeated the Spaniards. My brother Masons swear
-by the blood that they are ready to sacrifice everything for their
-neighbor, but they do not give a ruble each to the collections for the
-poor, and they intrigue, the Astraea Lodge against the Manna Seekers,
-and fuss about an authentic Scotch carpet and a charter that nobody
-needs, and the meaning of which the very man who wrote it does not
-understand. We all profess the Christian law of forgiveness of injuries
-and love of our neighbors, the law in honor of which we have built in
-Moscow forty times forty churches—but yesterday a deserter was knouted
-to death and a minister of that same law of love and forgiveness, a
-priest, gave the soldier a cross to kiss before his execution.” So
-thought Pierre, and the whole of this general deception which everyone
-accepts, accustomed as he was to it, astonished him each time as if it
-were something new. “I understand the deception and confusion,” he
-thought, “but how am I to tell them all that I see? I have tried, and
-have always found that they too in the depths of their souls understand
-it as I do, and only try not to see it. So it appears that it must
-be so! But I—what is to become of me?” thought he. He had the
-unfortunate capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and
-believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the
-evil and falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part
-in it. Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with evil and
-deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil and
-falsehood of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity. Yet he
-had to live and to find occupation. It was too dreadful to be under
-the burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned himself to
-any distraction in order to forget them. He frequented every kind of
-society, drank much, bought pictures, engaged in building, and above
-all—read.
-
-He read, and read everything that came to hand. On coming home, while
-his valets were still taking off his things, he picked up a book and
-began to read. From reading he passed to sleeping, from sleeping to
-gossip in drawing rooms of the club, from gossip to carousals and women;
-from carousals back to gossip, reading, and wine. Drinking became more
-and more a physical and also a moral necessity. Though the doctors
-warned him that with his corpulence wine was dangerous for him, he
-drank a great deal. He was only quite at ease when having poured several
-glasses of wine mechanically into his large mouth he felt a pleasant
-warmth in his body, an amiability toward all his fellows, and a
-readiness to respond superficially to every idea without probing it
-deeply. Only after emptying a bottle or two did he feel dimly that the
-terribly tangled skein of life which previously had terrified him was
-not as dreadful as he had thought. He was always conscious of some
-aspect of that skein, as with a buzzing in his head after dinner or
-supper he chatted or listened to conversation or read. But under the
-influence of wine he said to himself: “It doesn’t matter. I’ll
-get it unraveled. I have a solution ready, but have no time now—I’ll
-think it all out later on!” But the later on never came.
-
-In the morning, on an empty stomach, all the old questions appeared as
-insoluble and terrible as ever, and Pierre hastily picked up a book, and
-if anyone came to see him he was glad.
-
-Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when
-entrenched under the enemy’s fire, if they have nothing to do, try
-hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To
-Pierre all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life:
-some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women,
-some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some
-in wine, and some in governmental affairs. “Nothing is trivial, and
-nothing is important, it’s all the same—only to save oneself from it
-as best one can,” thought Pierre. “Only not to see it, that dreadful
-it!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkónski and his daughter
-moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor Alexander’s
-regime had weakened and a patriotic and anti-French tendency prevailed
-there, and this, together with his past and his intellect and his
-originality, at once made Prince Nicholas Bolkónski an object of
-particular respect to the Moscovites and the center of the Moscow
-opposition to the government.
-
-The prince had aged very much that year. He showed marked signs of
-senility by a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of quite recent
-events, remembrance of remote ones, and the childish vanity with which
-he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of this
-the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of respectful
-veneration—especially of an evening when he came in to tea in his
-old-fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone, told his
-abrupt stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and scathing
-criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned house with
-its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered footmen, and
-the stern shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past century) with his
-gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who were reverently devoted
-to him presented a majestic and agreeable spectacle. But the visitors
-did not reflect that besides the couple of hours during which they saw
-their host, there were also twenty-two hours in the day during which the
-private and intimate life of the house continued.
-
-Latterly that private life had become very trying for Princess Mary.
-There in Moscow she was deprived of her greatest pleasures—talks with
-the pilgrims and the solitude which refreshed her at Bald Hills—and
-she had none of the advantages and pleasures of city life. She did not
-go out into society; everyone knew that her father would not let her
-go anywhere without him, and his failing health prevented his going out
-himself, so that she was not invited to dinners and evening parties. She
-had quite abandoned the hope of getting married. She saw the coldness
-and malevolence with which the old prince received and dismissed the
-young men, possible suitors, who sometimes appeared at their house. She
-had no friends: during this visit to Moscow she had been disappointed in
-the two who had been nearest to her. Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom
-she had never been able to be quite frank, had now become unpleasant to
-her, and for various reasons Princess Mary avoided her. Julie, with whom
-she had corresponded for the last five years, was in Moscow, but proved
-to be quite alien to her when they met. Just then Julie, who by the
-death of her brothers had become one of the richest heiresses in Moscow,
-was in the full whirl of society pleasures. She was surrounded by young
-men who, she fancied, had suddenly learned to appreciate her worth.
-Julie was at that stage in the life of a society woman when she feels
-that her last chance of marrying has come and that her fate must be
-decided now or never. On Thursdays Princess Mary remembered with a
-mournful smile that she now had no one to write to, since Julie—whose
-presence gave her no pleasure was here and they met every week. Like the
-old émigré who declined to marry the lady with whom he had spent his
-evenings for years, she regretted Julie’s presence and having no one
-to write to. In Moscow Princess Mary had no one to talk to, no one to
-whom to confide her sorrow, and much sorrow fell to her lot just then.
-The time for Prince Andrew’s return and marriage was approaching, but
-his request to her to prepare his father for it had not been carried
-out; in fact, it seemed as if matters were quite hopeless, for at every
-mention of the young Countess Rostóva the old prince (who apart from
-that was usually in a bad temper) lost control of himself. Another
-lately added sorrow arose from the lessons she gave her six year-old
-nephew. To her consternation she detected in herself in relation to
-little Nicholas some symptoms of her father’s irritability. However
-often she told herself that she must not get irritable when teaching her
-nephew, almost every time that, pointer in hand, she sat down to show
-him the French alphabet, she so longed to pour her own knowledge quickly
-and easily into the child—who was already afraid that Auntie might at
-any moment get angry—that at his slightest inattention she trembled,
-became flustered and heated, raised her voice, and sometimes pulled him
-by the arm and put him in the corner. Having put him in the corner
-she would herself begin to cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little
-Nicholas, following her example, would sob, and without permission would
-leave his corner, come to her, pull her wet hands from her face, and
-comfort her. But what distressed the princess most of all was her
-father’s irritability, which was always directed against her and had
-of late amounted to cruelty. Had he forced her to prostrate herself to
-the ground all night, had he beaten her or made her fetch wood or water,
-it would never have entered her mind to think her position hard; but
-this loving despot—the more cruel because he loved her and for that
-reason tormented himself and her—knew how not merely to hurt and
-humiliate her deliberately, but to show her that she was always to blame
-for everything. Of late he had exhibited a new trait that tormented
-Princess Mary more than anything else; this was his ever-increasing
-intimacy with Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at the first moment
-of receiving the news of his son’s intentions had occurred to him in
-jest—that if Andrew got married he himself would marry Bourienne—had
-evidently pleased him, and latterly he had persistently, and as it
-seemed to Princess Mary merely to offend her, shown special endearments
-to the companion and expressed his dissatisfaction with his daughter by
-demonstrations of love of Bourienne.
-
-One day in Moscow in Princess Mary’s presence (she thought her father
-did it purposely when she was there) the old prince kissed Mademoiselle
-Bourienne’s hand and, drawing her to him, embraced her affectionately.
-Princess Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few minutes later
-Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess Mary’s room smiling and
-making cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess Mary hastily
-wiped away her tears, went resolutely up to Mademoiselle Bourienne,
-and evidently unconscious of what she was doing began shouting in angry
-haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice breaking: “It’s horrible, vile,
-inhuman, to take advantage of the weakness...” She did not finish.
-“Leave my room,” she exclaimed, and burst into sobs.
-
-Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter, but she noticed
-that at dinner he gave orders that Mademoiselle Bourienne should be
-served first. After dinner, when the footman handed coffee and from
-habit began with the princess, the prince suddenly grew furious,
-threw his stick at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to have him
-conscripted for the army.
-
-“He doesn’t obey... I said it twice... and he doesn’t obey! She
-is the first person in this house; she’s my best friend,” cried
-the prince. “And if you allow yourself,” he screamed in a fury,
-addressing Princess Mary for the first time, “to forget yourself again
-before her as you dared to do yesterday, I will show you who is master
-in this house. Go! Don’t let me set eyes on you; beg her pardon!”
-
-Princess Mary asked Mademoiselle Bourienne’s pardon, and also her
-father’s pardon for herself and for Philip the footman, who had begged
-for her intervention.
-
-At such moments something like a pride of sacrifice gathered in her
-soul. And suddenly that father whom she had judged would look for his
-spectacles in her presence, fumbling near them and not seeing them, or
-would forget something that had just occurred, or take a false step with
-his failing legs and turn to see if anyone had noticed his feebleness,
-or, worst of all, at dinner when there were no visitors to excite him
-would suddenly fall asleep, letting his napkin drop and his shaking
-head sink over his plate. “He is old and feeble, and I dare to condemn
-him!” she thought at such moments, with a feeling of revulsion against
-herself.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor—Métivier—who had
-rapidly become the fashion. He was enormously tall, handsome, amiable
-as Frenchmen are, and was, as all Moscow said, an extraordinarily clever
-doctor. He was received in the best houses not merely as a doctor, but
-as an equal.
-
-Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but latterly on
-Mademoiselle Bourienne’s advice had allowed this doctor to visit him
-and had grown accustomed to him. Métivier came to see the prince about
-twice a week.
-
-On December 6—St. Nicholas’ Day and the prince’s name day—all
-Moscow came to the prince’s front door but he gave orders to admit no
-one and to invite to dinner only a small number, a list of whom he gave
-to Princess Mary.
-
-Métivier, who came in the morning with his felicitations, considered
-it proper in his quality of doctor de forcer la consigne, * as he told
-Princess Mary, and went in to see the prince. It happened that on that
-morning of his name day the prince was in one of his worst moods. He had
-been going about the house all the morning finding fault with everyone
-and pretending not to understand what was said to him and not to be
-understood himself. Princess Mary well knew this mood of quiet absorbed
-querulousness, which generally culminated in a burst of rage, and she
-went about all that morning as though facing a cocked and loaded gun
-and awaited the inevitable explosion. Until the doctor’s arrival the
-morning had passed off safely. After admitting the doctor, Princess Mary
-sat down with a book in the drawing room near the door through which she
-could hear all that passed in the study.
-
- * To force the guard.
-
-At first she heard only Métivier’s voice, then her father’s, then
-both voices began speaking at the same time, the door was flung open,
-and on the threshold appeared the handsome figure of the terrified
-Métivier with his shock of black hair, and the prince in his dressing
-gown and fez, his face distorted with fury and the pupils of his eyes
-rolled downwards.
-
-“You don’t understand?” shouted the prince, “but I do! French
-spy, slave of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be off, I tell
-you...” and he slammed the door.
-
-Métivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne
-who at the sound of shouting had run in from an adjoining room.
-
-“The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the head. Keep
-calm, I will call again tomorrow,” said Métivier; and putting his
-fingers to his lips he hastened away.
-
-Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet and the cry:
-“Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment’s peace in my
-own house!”
-
-After Métivier’s departure the old prince called his daughter in, and
-the whole weight of his wrath fell on her. She was to blame that a spy
-had been admitted. Had he not told her, yes, told her to make a list,
-and not to admit anyone who was not on that list? Then why was that
-scoundrel admitted? She was the cause of it all. With her, he said, he
-could not have a moment’s peace and could not die quietly.
-
-“No, ma’am! We must part, we must part! Understand that, understand
-it! I cannot endure any more,” he said, and left the room. Then, as if
-afraid she might find some means of consolation, he returned and trying
-to appear calm added: “And don’t imagine I have said this in a
-moment of anger. I am calm. I have thought it over, and it will be
-carried out—we must part; so find some place for yourself....” But
-he could not restrain himself and with the virulence of which only one
-who loves is capable, evidently suffering himself, he shook his fists at
-her and screamed:
-
-“If only some fool would marry her!” Then he slammed the door, sent
-for Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study.
-
-At two o’clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner.
-
-These guests—the famous Count Rostopchín, Prince Lopukhín with his
-nephew, General Chatróv an old war comrade of the prince’s, and
-of the younger generation Pierre and Borís Drubetskóy—awaited the
-prince in the drawing room.
-
-Borís, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been
-anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkónski, and had contrived
-to ingratiate himself so well that the old prince in his case made an
-exception to the rule of not receiving bachelors in his house.
-
-The prince’s house did not belong to what is known as fashionable
-society, but his little circle—though not much talked about in
-town—was one it was more flattering to be received in than any other.
-Borís had realized this the week before when the commander in chief in
-his presence invited Rostopchín to dinner on St. Nicholas’ Day, and
-Rostopchín had replied that he could not come:
-
-“On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince
-Nicholas Bolkónski.”
-
-“Oh, yes, yes!” replied the commander in chief. “How is he?...”
-
-The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty old-fashioned
-drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn gathering of
-a court of justice. All were silent or talked in low tones. Prince
-Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary seemed even quieter
-and more diffident than usual. The guests were reluctant to address
-her, feeling that she was in no mood for their conversation. Count
-Rostopchín alone kept the conversation going, now relating the latest
-town news, and now the latest political gossip.
-
-Lopukhín and the old general occasionally took part in the
-conversation. Prince Bolkónski listened as a presiding judge receives a
-report, only now and then, silently or by a brief word, showing that
-he took heed of what was being reported to him. The tone of the
-conversation was such as indicated that no one approved of what was
-being done in the political world. Incidents were related evidently
-confirming the opinion that everything was going from bad to worse, but
-whether telling a story or giving an opinion the speaker always stopped,
-or was stopped, at the point beyond which his criticism might touch the
-sovereign himself.
-
-At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon’s
-seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg’s territory, and the Russian Note,
-hostile to Napoleon, which had been sent to all the European courts.
-
-“Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel,” said
-Count Rostopchín, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times
-before. “One only wonders at the long-suffering or blindness of the
-crowned heads. Now the Pope’s turn has come and Bonaparte doesn’t
-scruple to depose the head of the Catholic Church—yet all keep silent!
-Our sovereign alone has protested against the seizure of the Duke
-of Oldenburg’s territory, and even...” Count Rostopchín paused,
-feeling that he had reached the limit beyond which censure was
-impossible.
-
-“Other territories have been offered in exchange for the Duchy of
-Oldenburg,” said Prince Bolkónski. “He shifts the Dukes about as
-I might move my serfs from Bald Hills to Boguchárovo or my Ryazán
-estates.”
-
-“The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable
-strength of character and resignation,” remarked Borís, joining in
-respectfully.
-
-He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the honor
-of being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkónski glanced at the
-young man as if about to say something in reply, but changed his mind,
-evidently considering him too young.
-
-“I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and was surprised
-how badly the Note was worded,” remarked Count Rostopchín in the
-casual tone of a man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.
-
-Pierre looked at Rostopchín with naïve astonishment, not understanding
-why he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the Note.
-
-“Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded,” he asked, “so
-long as its substance is forcible?”
-
-“My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops it should be
-easy to have a good style,” returned Count Rostopchín.
-
-Pierre now understood the count’s dissatisfaction with the wording of
-the Note.
-
-“One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung up,”
-remarked the old prince. “There in Petersburg they are always
-writing—not notes only but even new laws. My Andrew there has written
-a whole volume of laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!”
-and he laughed unnaturally.
-
-There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the old general cleared
-his throat to draw attention.
-
-“Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg? The
-figure cut by the new French ambassador.”
-
-“Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward in His
-Majesty’s presence.”
-
-“His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division and to the march
-past,” continued the general, “and it seems the ambassador took
-no notice and allowed himself to reply that: ‘We in France pay no
-attention to such trifles!’ The Emperor did not condescend to reply.
-At the next review, they say, the Emperor did not once deign to address
-him.”
-
-All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it was
-impossible to pass any judgment.
-
-“Impudent fellows!” said the prince. “You know Métivier? I turned
-him out of my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him in
-spite of my request that they should let no one in,” he went on,
-glancing angrily at his daughter.
-
-And he narrated his whole conversation with the French doctor and
-the reasons that convinced him that Métivier was a spy. Though these
-reasons were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.
-
-After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to congratulate
-the old prince. Princess Mary, too, went round to him.
-
-He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled,
-clean-shaven cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his face told
-her that he had not forgotten the morning’s talk, that his decision
-remained in force, and only the presence of visitors hindered his
-speaking of it to her now.
-
-When they went into the drawing room where coffee was served, the old
-men sat together.
-
-Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his views on the
-impending war.
-
-He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long as we
-sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into European
-affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit. “We
-ought not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political
-interests are all in the East, and in regard to Bonaparte the only thing
-is to have an armed frontier and a firm policy, and he will never dare
-to cross the Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!”
-
-“How can we fight the French, Prince?” said Count Rostopchín.
-“Can we arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at
-our youths, look at our ladies! The French are our Gods: Paris is our
-Kingdom of Heaven.”
-
-He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone.
-
-“French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now, you turned
-Métivier out by the scruff of his neck because he is a Frenchman and
-a scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after him on their knees. I went to
-a party last night, and there out of five ladies three were Roman
-Catholics and had the Pope’s indulgence for doing woolwork on Sundays.
-And they themselves sit there nearly naked, like the signboards at our
-Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when one looks at our young people,
-Prince, one would like to take Peter the Great’s old cudgel out of the
-museum and belabor them in the Russian way till all the nonsense jumps
-out of them.”
-
-All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchín with a smile and
-wagged his head approvingly.
-
-“Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!” said Rostopchín,
-getting up with characteristic briskness and holding out his hand to the
-prince.
-
-“Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never tire of
-hearing him!” said the old prince, keeping hold of the hand and
-offering his cheek to be kissed.
-
-Following Rostopchín’s example the others also rose.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men’s talk and
-faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard; she only wondered
-whether the guests had all observed her father’s hostile attitude
-toward her. She did not even notice the special attentions and
-amiabilities shown her during dinner by Borís Drubetskóy, who was
-visiting them for the third time already.
-
-Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning look to Pierre, who
-hat in hand and with a smile on his face was the last of the guests to
-approach her after the old prince had gone out and they were left alone
-in the drawing room.
-
-“May I stay a little longer?” he said, letting his stout body sink
-into an armchair beside her.
-
-“Oh yes,” she answered. “You noticed nothing?” her look asked.
-
-Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked straight before
-him and smiled quietly.
-
-“Have you known that young man long, Princess?” he asked.
-
-“Who?”
-
-“Drubetskóy.”
-
-“No, not long....”
-
-“Do you like him?”
-
-“Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me that?” said
-Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning’s conversation with her
-father.
-
-“Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from
-Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an
-heiress.”
-
-“You have observed that?” said Princess Mary.
-
-“Yes,” returned Pierre with a smile, “and this young man now
-manages matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is
-too. I can read him like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay
-siege to—you or Mademoiselle Julie Karágina. He is very attentive to
-her.”
-
-“He visits them?”
-
-“Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?” said
-Pierre with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good
-humored raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his diary.
-
-“No,” replied Princess Mary.
-
-“To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is very
-melancholy with Mademoiselle Karágina,” said Pierre.
-
-“Really?” asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre’s kindly
-face and still thinking of her own sorrow. “It would be a relief,”
-thought she, “if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone.
-I should like to tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It
-would be a relief. He would give me advice.”
-
-“Would you marry him?”
-
-“Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would marry anybody!”
-she cried suddenly to her own surprise and with tears in her voice.
-“Ah, how bitter it is to love someone near to you and to feel
-that...” she went on in a trembling voice, “that you can do nothing
-for him but grieve him, and to know that you cannot alter this. Then
-there is only one thing left—to go away, but where could I go?”
-
-“What is wrong? What is it, Princess?”
-
-But without finishing what she was saying, Princess Mary burst into
-tears.
-
-“I don’t know what is the matter with me today. Don’t take any
-notice—forget what I have said!”
-
-Pierre’s gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the
-princess, asked her to speak out fully and confide her grief to him; but
-she only repeated that she begged him to forget what she had said, that
-she did not remember what she had said, and that she had no trouble
-except the one he knew of—that Prince Andrew’s marriage threatened
-to cause a rupture between father and son.
-
-“Have you any news of the Rostóvs?” she asked, to change the
-subject. “I was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting Andrew
-any day. I should like them to meet here.”
-
-“And how does he now regard the matter?” asked Pierre, referring to
-the old prince.
-
-Princess Mary shook her head.
-
-“What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The thing
-is impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first moments.
-I wish they would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her. You have
-known them a long time,” said Princess Mary. “Tell me honestly
-the whole truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you think of
-her?—The real truth, because you know Andrew is risking so much doing
-this against his father’s will that I should like to know....”
-
-An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and
-repeated requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on
-the princess’ part toward her future sister-in-law and a wish that
-he should disapprove of Andrew’s choice; but in reply he said what he
-felt rather than what he thought.
-
-“I don’t know how to answer your question,” he said, blushing
-without knowing why. “I really don’t know what sort of girl she is;
-I can’t analyze her at all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I
-don’t know. That is all one can say about her.”
-
-Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face said: “Yes,
-that’s what I expected and feared.”
-
-“Is she clever?” she asked.
-
-Pierre considered.
-
-“I think not,” he said, “and yet—yes. She does not deign to be
-clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all.”
-
-Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.
-
-“Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do.”
-
-“I hear they are expected very soon,” said Pierre.
-
-Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her future
-sister-in-law as soon as the Rostóvs arrived and to try to accustom the
-old prince to her.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-Borís had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg, so
-with the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered between
-the two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though Princess
-Mary despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than Julie, he,
-without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to her. When they
-had last met on the old prince’s name day, she had answered at random
-all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently not listening to what
-he was saying.
-
-Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a
-manner peculiar to herself.
-
-She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become
-very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself not
-merely as good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She
-was confirmed in this delusion by the fact that she had become a very
-wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she grew the less
-dangerous she became to men, and the more freely they could associate
-with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and the animated
-company that assembled at her house, without incurring any obligation.
-A man who would have been afraid ten years before of going every day
-to the house when there was a girl of seventeen there, for fear of
-compromising her and committing himself, would now go boldly every day
-and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a sexless acquaintance.
-
-That winter the Karágins’ house was the most agreeable and hospitable
-in Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner parties, a large
-company, chiefly of men, gathered there every day, supping at midnight
-and staying till three in the morning. Julie never missed a ball, a
-promenade, or a play. Her dresses were always of the latest fashion.
-But in spite of that she seemed to be disillusioned about everything and
-told everyone that she did not believe either in friendship or in love,
-or any of the joys of life, and expected peace only “yonder.” She
-adopted the tone of one who has suffered a great disappointment, like a
-girl who has either lost the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by
-him. Though nothing of the kind had happened to her she was regarded in
-that light, and had even herself come to believe that she had suffered
-much in life. This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing
-herself, did not hinder the young people who came to her house from
-passing the time pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid
-his tribute to the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then amused
-himself with society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, and bouts
-rimés, which were in vogue at the Karágins’. Only a few of these
-young men, among them Borís, entered more deeply into Julie’s
-melancholy, and with these she had prolonged conversations in private
-on the vanity of all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums
-filled with mournful sketches, maxims, and verses.
-
-To Borís, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early
-disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship
-as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and showed him
-her album. Borís sketched two trees in the album and wrote: “Rustic
-trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me.”
-
-On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:
-
- La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.
- Ah! contre les douleurs il n’y a pas d’autre asile. *
-
- * Death gives relief and death is peaceful.
-
-Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.
-
-Julie said this was charming
-
-“There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy,” she
-said to Borís, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a
-book. “It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness
-and despair, showing the possibility of consolation.”
-
-In reply Borís wrote these lines:
-
- Aliment de poison d’une âme trop sensible,
- Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,
- Tendre mélancholie, ah, viens me consoler,
- Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,
- Et mêle une douceur secrète
- A ces pleurs que je sens couler. *
-
- *Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,
- Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,
- Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,
- Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,
- And mingle a secret sweetness
- With these tears that I feel to be flowing.
-
-For Borís, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Borís
-read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the reading
-because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large gatherings
-Julie and Borís looked on one another as the only souls who understood
-one another in a world of indifferent people.
-
-Anna Mikháylovna, who often visited the Karágins, while playing cards
-with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie’s dowry (she was
-to have two estates in Pénza and the Nizhegórod forests). Anna
-Mikháylovna regarded the refined sadness that united her son to the
-wealthy Julie with emotion, and resignation to the Divine will.
-
-“You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie,” she said to
-the daughter. “Borís says his soul finds repose at your house. He has
-suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive,” said she to
-the mother. “Ah, my dear, I can’t tell you how fond I have grown
-of Julie latterly,” she said to her son. “But who could help loving
-her? She is an angelic being! Ah, Borís, Borís!”—she paused.
-“And how I pity her mother,” she went on; “today she showed me her
-accounts and letters from Pénza (they have enormous estates there), and
-she, poor thing, has no one to help her, and they do cheat her so!”
-
-Borís smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother. He
-laughed blandly at her naïve diplomacy but listened to what she had
-to say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Pénza and
-Nizhegórod estates.
-
-Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy adorer and
-was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of repulsion for her,
-for her passionate desire to get married, for her artificiality, and
-a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility of real love still
-restrained Borís. His leave was expiring. He spent every day and whole
-days at the Karágins’, and every day on thinking the matter over
-told himself that he would propose tomorrow. But in Julie’s presence,
-looking at her red face and chin (nearly always powdered), her moist
-eyes, and her expression of continual readiness to pass at once from
-melancholy to an unnatural rapture of married bliss, Borís could not
-utter the decisive words, though in imagination he had long regarded
-himself as the possessor of those Pénza and Nizhegórod estates and
-had apportioned the use of the income from them. Julie saw Borís’
-indecision, and sometimes the thought occurred to her that she was
-repulsive to him, but her feminine self-deception immediately supplied
-her with consolation, and she told herself that he was only shy from
-love. Her melancholy, however, began to turn to irritability, and not
-long before Borís’ departure she formed a definite plan of action.
-Just as Borís’ leave of absence was expiring, Anatole Kurágin made
-his appearance in Moscow, and of course in the Karágins’ drawing
-room, and Julie, suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became cheerful and
-very attentive to Kurágin.
-
-“My dear,” said Anna Mikháylovna to her son, “I know from a
-reliable source that Prince Vasíli has sent his son to Moscow to get
-him married to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be sorry for
-her. What do you think of it, my dear?”
-
-The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that whole
-month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing all
-the revenue from the Pénza estates which he had already mentally
-apportioned and put to proper use fall into the hands of another, and
-especially into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Borís. He drove
-to the Karágins’ with the firm intention of proposing. Julie met
-him in a gay, careless manner, spoke casually of how she had enjoyed
-yesterday’s ball, and asked when he was leaving. Though Borís had
-come intentionally to speak of his love and therefore meant to be
-tender, he began speaking irritably of feminine inconstancy, of how
-easily women can turn from sadness to joy, and how their moods depend
-solely on who happens to be paying court to them. Julie was offended and
-replied that it was true that a woman needs variety, and the same thing
-over and over again would weary anyone.
-
-“Then I should advise you...” Borís began, wishing to sting her;
-but at that instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might
-have to leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have
-vainly wasted his efforts—which was a thing he never allowed to
-happen.
-
-He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes to
-avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and said:
-
-“I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary...”
-
-He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability had
-suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were fixed on
-him with greedy expectation. “I can always arrange so as not to see
-her often,” thought Borís. “The affair has been begun and must be
-finished!” He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and said:
-
-“You know my feelings for you!”
-
-There was no need to say more: Julie’s face shone with triumph and
-self-satisfaction; but she forced Borís to say all that is said on such
-occasions—that he loved her and had never loved any other woman more
-than her. She knew that for the Pénza estates and Nizhegórod forests
-she could demand this, and she received what she demanded.
-
-The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom and
-melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house in
-Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant wedding.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-At the end of January old Count Rostóv went to Moscow with Natásha and
-Sónya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it was
-impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in
-Moscow any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near
-Moscow had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting his
-future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkónski while he was in Moscow
-could not be missed. The Rostóvs’ Moscow house had not been heated
-that winter and, as they had come only for a short time and the countess
-was not with them, the count decided to stay with Márya Dmítrievna
-Akhrosímova, who had long been pressing her hospitality on them.
-
-Late one evening the Rostóvs’ four sleighs drove into Márya
-Dmítrievna’s courtyard in the old Konyúsheny street. Márya
-Dmítrievna lived alone. She had already married off her daughter, and
-her sons were all in the service.
-
-She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly,
-loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach
-to others for any weakness, passion, or temptation—the possibility of
-which she did not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing
-jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out:
-on holy days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on
-affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary days, after
-dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of whom there
-were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing meal
-at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she played
-a game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a new book read
-to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception and went out to
-pay visits, and then only to the most important persons in the town.
-
-She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostóvs arrived and the pulley of
-the hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the Rostóvs and their
-servants. Márya Dmítrievna, with her spectacles hanging down on her
-nose and her head flung back, stood in the hall doorway looking with
-a stern, grim face at the new arrivals. One might have thought she was
-angry with the travelers and would immediately turn them out, had she
-not at the same time been giving careful instructions to the servants
-for the accommodation of the visitors and their belongings.
-
-“The count’s things? Bring them here,” she said, pointing to the
-portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. “The young ladies’? There
-to the left. Now what are you dawdling for?” she cried to the maids.
-“Get the samovar ready!... You’ve grown plumper and prettier,” she
-remarked, drawing Natásha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold)
-to her by the hood. “Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things,
-quick!” she shouted to the count who was going to kiss her hand.
-“You’re half frozen, I’m sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour,
-Sónya dear!” she added, turning to Sónya and indicating by this
-French greeting her slightly contemptuous though affectionate attitude
-toward her.
-
-When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things and
-tidied themselves up after their journey, Márya Dmítrievna kissed them
-all in due order.
-
-“I’m heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was
-high time,” she said, giving Natásha a significant look. “The old
-man is here and his son’s expected any day. You’ll have to make his
-acquaintance. But we’ll speak of that later on,” she added, glancing
-at Sónya with a look that showed she did not want to speak of it in her
-presence. “Now listen,” she said to the count. “What do you want
-tomorrow? Whom will you send for? Shinshín?” she crooked one of her
-fingers. “The sniveling Anna Mikháylovna? That’s two. She’s here
-with her son. The son is getting married! Then Bezúkhov, eh? He is here
-too, with his wife. He ran away from her and she came galloping after
-him. He dined with me on Wednesday. As for them”—and she pointed to
-the girls—“tomorrow I’ll take them first to the Iberian shrine
-of the Mother of God, and then we’ll drive to the Super-Rogue’s.
-I suppose you’ll have everything new. Don’t judge by me: sleeves
-nowadays are this size! The other day young Princess Irína Vasílevna
-came to see me; she was an awful sight—looked as if she had put two
-barrels on her arms. You know not a day passes now without some new
-fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?” she asked the count
-sternly.
-
-“One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a
-purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If you
-will be so kind, I’ll fix a time and go down to the estate just for a
-day, and leave my lassies with you.”
-
-“All right. All right. They’ll be safe with me, as safe as in
-Chancery! I’ll take them where they must go, scold them a bit, and
-pet them a bit,” said Márya Dmítrievna, touching her goddaughter and
-favorite, Natásha, on the cheek with her large hand.
-
-Next morning Márya Dmítrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian
-shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so
-afraid of Márya Dmítrievna that she always let her have costumes at
-a loss merely to get rid of her. Márya Dmítrievna ordered almost the
-whole trousseau. When they got home she turned everybody out of the room
-except Natásha, and then called her pet to her armchair.
-
-“Well, now we’ll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed.
-You’ve hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I’ve known
-him since he was so high.” She held her hand a couple of feet from the
-ground. Natásha blushed happily. “I like him and all his family.
-Now listen! You know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son’s
-marrying. The old fellow’s crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not
-a child and can shift without him, but it’s not nice to enter a family
-against a father’s will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly.
-You’re a clever girl and you’ll know how to manage. Be kind, and use
-your wits. Then all will be well.”
-
-Natásha remained silent, from shyness Márya Dmítrievna supposed, but
-really because she disliked anyone interfering in what touched her love
-of Prince Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human affairs
-that no one could understand it. She loved and knew Prince Andrew, he
-loved her only, and was to come one of these days and take her. She
-wanted nothing more.
-
-“You see I have known him a long time and am also fond of Mary, your
-future sister-in-law. ‘Husbands’ sisters bring up blisters,’
-but this one wouldn’t hurt a fly. She has asked me to bring you two
-together. Tomorrow you’ll go with your father to see her. Be very
-nice and affectionate to her: you’re younger than she. When he comes,
-he’ll find you already know his sister and father and are liked by
-them. Am I right or not? Won’t that be best?”
-
-“Yes, it will,” Natásha answered reluctantly.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-Next day, by Márya Dmítrievna’s advice, Count Rostóv took Natásha
-to call on Prince Nicholas Bolkónski. The count did not set out
-cheerfully on this visit, at heart he felt afraid. He well remembered
-the last interview he had had with the old prince at the time of the
-enrollment, when in reply to an invitation to dinner he had had to
-listen to an angry reprimand for not having provided his full quota of
-men. Natásha, on the other hand, having put on her best gown, was in
-the highest spirits. “They can’t help liking me,” she thought.
-“Everybody always has liked me, and I am so willing to do anything
-they wish, so ready to be fond of him—for being his father—and of
-her—for being his sister—that there is no reason for them not to
-like me....”
-
-They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvízhenka and entered
-the vestibule.
-
-“Well, the Lord have mercy on us!” said the count, half in jest,
-half in earnest; but Natásha noticed that her father was flurried on
-entering the anteroom and inquired timidly and softly whether the prince
-and princess were at home.
-
-When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the
-servants. The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by
-another in the large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a
-maidservant ran into the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning
-the princess. At last an old, cross looking footman came and announced
-to the Rostóvs that the prince was not receiving, but that the princess
-begged them to walk up. The first person who came to meet the visitors
-was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father and daughter
-with special politeness and showed them to the princess’ room. The
-princess, looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in patches, ran
-in to meet the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly trying to appear
-cordial and at ease. From the first glance Princess Mary did not like
-Natásha. She thought her too fashionably dressed, frivolously gay and
-vain. She did not at all realize that before having seen her future
-sister-in-law she was prejudiced against her by involuntary envy of her
-beauty, youth, and happiness, as well as by jealousy of her brother’s
-love for her. Apart from this insuperable antipathy to her, Princess
-Mary was agitated just then because on the Rostóvs’ being announced,
-the old prince had shouted that he did not wish to see them, that
-Princess Mary might do so if she chose, but they were not to be admitted
-to him. She had decided to receive them, but feared lest the prince
-might at any moment indulge in some freak, as he seemed much upset by
-the Rostóvs’ visit.
-
-“There, my dear princess, I’ve brought you my songstress,” said
-the count, bowing and looking round uneasily as if afraid the old prince
-might appear. “I am so glad you should get to know one another... very
-sorry the prince is still ailing,” and after a few more commonplace
-remarks he rose. “If you’ll allow me to leave my Natásha in your
-hands for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I’ll drive round to see Anna
-Semënovna, it’s quite near in the Dogs’ Square, and then I’ll
-come back for her.”
-
-The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told his
-daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an opportunity to talk
-to one another freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of
-encountering the old prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not mention
-this to his daughter, but Natásha noticed her father’s nervousness
-and anxiety and felt mortified by it. She blushed for him, grew still
-angrier at having blushed, and looked at the princess with a bold and
-defiant expression which said that she was not afraid of anybody. The
-princess told the count that she would be delighted, and only begged him
-to stay longer at Anna Semënovna’s, and he departed.
-
-Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary—who wished
-to have a tête-à-tête with Natásha—Mademoiselle Bourienne
-remained in the room and persistently talked about Moscow amusements and
-theaters. Natásha felt offended by the hesitation she had noticed in
-the anteroom, by her father’s nervousness, and by the unnatural manner
-of the princess who—she thought—was making a favor of receiving her,
-and so everything displeased her. She did not like Princess Mary, whom
-she thought very plain, affected, and dry. Natásha suddenly shrank
-into herself and involuntarily assumed an offhand air which alienated
-Princess Mary still more. After five minutes of irksome, constrained
-conversation, they heard the sound of slippered feet rapidly
-approaching. Princess Mary looked frightened.
-
-The door opened and the old prince, in a dressing gown and a white
-nightcap, came in.
-
-“Ah, madam!” he began. “Madam, Countess... Countess Rostóva, if
-I am not mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me... I did not
-know, madam. God is my witness, I did not know you had honored us with
-a visit, and I came in such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg you
-to excuse me... God is my witness, I didn’t know—” he repeated,
-stressing the word “God” so unnaturally and so unpleasantly that
-Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to look either at her
-father or at Natásha.
-
-Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what to do.
-Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled agreeably.
-
-“I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness, I did not
-know,” muttered the old man, and after looking Natásha over from head
-to foot he went out.
-
-Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this
-apparition and began speaking about the prince’s indisposition.
-Natásha and Princess Mary looked at one another in silence, and the
-longer they did so without saying what they wanted to say, the greater
-grew their antipathy to one another.
-
-When the count returned, Natásha was impolitely pleased and hastened
-to get away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who
-could place her in such an embarrassing position and had spent half an
-hour with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. “I couldn’t
-begin talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman,” thought
-Natásha. The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary. She
-knew what she ought to have said to Natásha, but she had been unable
-to say it because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way, and because,
-without knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of the
-marriage. When the count was already leaving the room, Princess Mary
-went up hurriedly to Natásha, took her by the hand, and said with a
-deep sigh:
-
-“Wait, I must...”
-
-Natásha glanced at her ironically without knowing why.
-
-“Dear Natalie,” said Princess Mary, “I want you to know that I am
-glad my brother has found happiness....”
-
-She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth. Natásha noticed
-this and guessed its reason.
-
-“I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that now,”
-she said with external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears
-choking her.
-
-“What have I said and what have I done?” thought she, as soon as she
-was out of the room.
-
-They waited a long time for Natásha to come to dinner that day. She sat
-in her room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing. Sónya
-stood beside her, kissing her hair.
-
-“Natásha, what is it about?” she asked. “What do they matter to
-you? It will all pass, Natásha.”
-
-“But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I...”
-
-“Don’t talk about it, Natásha. It wasn’t your fault so why should
-you mind? Kiss me,” said Sónya.
-
-Natásha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed
-her wet face against her.
-
-“I can’t tell you, I don’t know. No one’s to blame,” said
-Natásha—“It’s my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why
-doesn’t he come?...”
-
-She came in to dinner with red eyes. Márya Dmítrievna, who knew how
-the prince had received the Rostóvs, pretended not to notice how upset
-Natásha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the count
-and the other guests.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-That evening the Rostóvs went to the Opera, for which Márya
-Dmítrievna had taken a box.
-
-Natásha did not want to go, but could not refuse Márya Dmítrievna’s
-kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she came ready
-dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and looking in the large
-mirror there saw that she was pretty, very pretty, she felt even more
-sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness.
-
-“O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but
-differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply
-embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those searching
-inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me, and then I
-would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes—how I see those
-eyes!” thought Natásha. “And what do his father and sister matter
-to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those eyes, with
-his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not think of
-him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for the present.
-I can’t bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!” and she
-turned away from the glass, making an effort not to cry. “And how
-can Sónya love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so long and so
-patiently?” thought she, looking at Sónya, who also came in quite
-ready, with a fan in her hand. “No, she’s altogether different. I
-can’t!”
-
-Natásha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not
-enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at
-once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words of
-love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside her
-father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps flickering on
-the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in love, and forgot
-where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into the line of
-carriages, the Rostóvs’ carriage drove up to the theater, its wheels
-squeaking over the snow. Natásha and Sónya, holding up their dresses,
-jumped out quickly. The count got out helped by the footmen, and,
-passing among men and women who were entering and the program sellers,
-they all three went along the corridor to the first row of boxes.
-Through the closed doors the music was already audible.
-
-“Natásha, your hair!...” whispered Sónya.
-
-An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and
-opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the
-door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and
-shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered before
-their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of feminine envy
-at Natásha. The curtain had not yet risen and the overture was being
-played. Natásha, smoothing her gown, went in with Sónya and sat down,
-scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite. A sensation she had not
-experienced for a long time—that of hundreds of eyes looking at
-her bare arms and neck—suddenly affected her both agreeably and
-disagreeably and called up a whole crowd of memories, desires and
-emotions associated with that feeling.
-
-The two remarkably pretty girls, Natásha and Sónya, with Count Rostóv
-who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted general
-attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natásha’s engagement
-to Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostóvs had lived in the country
-ever since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancée who was making
-one of the best matches in Russia.
-
-Natásha’s looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the country,
-and that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly pretty.
-She struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and beauty,
-combined with her indifference to everything about her. Her black eyes
-looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her delicate arm, bare
-to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the box, while, evidently
-unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in time to the music,
-crumpling her program. “Look, there’s Alénina,” said Sónya,
-“with her mother, isn’t it?”
-
-“Dear me, Michael Kirílovich has grown still stouter!” remarked the
-count.
-
-“Look at our Anna Mikháylovna—what a headdress she has on!”
-
-“The Karágins, Julie—and Borís with them. One can see at once that
-they’re engaged....”
-
-“Drubetskóy has proposed?”
-
-“Oh yes, I heard it today,” said Shinshín, coming into the
-Rostóvs’ box.
-
-Natásha looked in the direction in which her father’s eyes were
-turned and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on her
-face and a string of pearls round her thick red neck—which Natásha
-knew was covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and leaning
-over with an ear to Julie’s mouth, was Borís’ handsome smoothly
-brushed head. He looked at the Rostóvs from under his brows and said
-something, smiling, to his betrothed.
-
-“They are talking about us, about me and him!” thought Natásha.
-“And he no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn’t trouble
-themselves! If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of
-them.”
-
-Behind them sat Anna Mikháylovna wearing a green headdress and with a
-happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their box was
-pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which Natásha knew
-so well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly remembered all
-that had been so humiliating in her morning’s visit.
-
-“What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh,
-better not think of it—not till he comes back!” she told herself,
-and began looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in
-the stalls. In the front, in the very center, leaning back against
-the orchestra rail, stood Dólokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair
-brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience,
-well aware that he was attracting everyone’s attention, yet as much at
-ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow’s
-most brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated.
-
-The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sónya and pointed to her
-former adorer.
-
-“Do you recognize him?” said he. “And where has he sprung from?”
-he asked, turning to Shinshín. “Didn’t he vanish somewhere?”
-
-“He did,” replied Shinshín. “He was in the Caucasus and ran
-away from there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling
-prince in Persia, where he killed the Shah’s brother. Now all the
-Moscow ladies are mad about him! It’s ‘Dólokhov the Persian’ that
-does it! We never hear a word but Dólokhov is mentioned. They swear
-by him, they offer him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet.
-Dólokhov and Anatole Kurágin have turned all our ladies’ heads.”
-
-A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed
-plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string of
-large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk dress
-and took a long time settling into her place.
-
-Natásha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and pearls
-and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the pearls.
-While Natásha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time the lady
-looked round and, meeting the count’s eyes, nodded to him and smiled.
-She was the Countess Bezúkhova, Pierre’s wife, and the count, who
-knew everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.
-
-“Have you been here long, Countess?” he inquired. “I’ll call,
-I’ll call to kiss your hand. I’m here on business and have brought
-my girls with me. They say Semënova acts marvelously. Count Pierre
-never used to forget us. Is he here?”
-
-“Yes, he meant to look in,” answered Hélène, and glanced
-attentively at Natásha.
-
-Count Rostóv resumed his seat.
-
-“Handsome, isn’t she?” he whispered to Natásha.
-
-“Wonderful!” answered Natásha. “She’s a woman one could easily
-fall in love with.”
-
-Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the conductor
-tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in the stalls,
-and the curtain rose.
-
-As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent, and
-all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and all the
-women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole attention with
-eager curiosity to the stage. Natásha too began to look at it.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides was
-some painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a cloth
-stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls in red
-bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk dress sat
-apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of green cardboard
-was glued. They all sang something. When they had finished their song
-the girl in white went up to the prompter’s box and a man with tight
-silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding a plume and a dagger,
-went up to her and began singing, waving his arms about.
-
-First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang, then they
-both paused while the orchestra played and the man fingered the hand
-of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to start singing with
-her. They sang together and everyone in the theater began clapping
-and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage—who represented
-lovers—began smiling, spreading out their arms, and bowing.
-
-After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood, all this
-seemed grotesque and amazing to Natásha. She could not follow the opera
-nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted cardboard and the
-queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke, and sang so strangely in
-that brilliant light. She knew what it was all meant to represent, but
-it was so pretentiously false and unnatural that she first felt ashamed
-for the actors and then amused at them. She looked at the faces of the
-audience, seeking in them the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she
-herself experienced, but they all seemed attentive to what was happening
-on the stage, and expressed delight which to Natásha seemed feigned.
-“I suppose it has to be like this!” she thought. She kept looking
-round in turn at the rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at
-the seminude women in the boxes, especially at Hélène in the next box,
-who—apparently quite unclothed—sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not
-taking her eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that flooded
-the whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd, Natásha little
-by little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not
-experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she
-was, nor what was going on before her. As she looked and thought, the
-strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through her
-mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of the box and
-singing the air the actress was singing, then she wished to touch with
-her fan an old gentleman sitting not far from her, then to lean over to
-Hélène and tickle her.
-
-At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song, a door
-leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostóvs’ box creaked,
-and the steps of a belated arrival were heard. “There’s Kurágin!”
-whispered Shinshín. Countess Bezúkhova turned smiling to the newcomer,
-and Natásha, following the direction of that look, saw an exceptionally
-handsome adjutant approaching their box with a self-assured yet
-courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kurágin whom she had seen
-and noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was now in an
-adjutant’s uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot. He moved with
-a restrained swagger which would have been ridiculous had he not been
-so good-looking and had his handsome face not worn such an expression
-of good-humored complacency and gaiety. Though the performance was
-proceeding, he walked deliberately down the carpeted gangway, his sword
-and spurs slightly jingling and his handsome perfumed head held high.
-Having looked at Natásha he approached his sister, laid his well gloved
-hand on the edge of her box, nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a
-question, with a motion toward Natásha.
-
-“Mais charmante!” said he, evidently referring to Natásha, who did
-not exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of his
-lips. Then he took his place in the first row of the stalls and sat down
-beside Dólokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and offhand way
-that Dólokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He winked at him gaily,
-smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra screen.
-
-“How like the brother is to the sister,” remarked the count. “And
-how handsome they both are!”
-
-Shinshín, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some intrigue
-of Kurágin’s in Moscow, and Natásha tried to overhear it just
-because he had said she was “charmante.”
-
-The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about, going
-out and coming in.
-
-Borís came to the Rostóvs’ box, received their congratulations very
-simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile conveyed to
-Natásha and Sónya his fiancée’s invitation to her wedding, and
-went away. Natásha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and
-congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Borís with whom
-she had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication she was in,
-everything seemed simple and natural.
-
-The scantily clad Hélène smiled at everyone in the same way, and
-Natásha gave Borís a similar smile.
-
-Hélène’s box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most
-distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another
-in their wish to let everyone see that they knew her.
-
-During the whole of that entr’acte Kurágin stood with Dólokhov
-in front of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostóvs’ box.
-Natásha knew he was talking about her and this afforded her pleasure.
-She even turned so that he should see her profile in what she thought
-was its most becoming aspect. Before the beginning of the second act
-Pierre appeared in the stalls. The Rostóvs had not seen him since
-their arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since
-Natásha last saw him. He passed up to the front rows, not noticing
-anyone. Anatole went up to him and began speaking to him, looking at and
-indicating the Rostóvs’ box. On seeing Natásha Pierre grew animated
-and, hastily passing between the rows, came toward their box. When he
-got there he leaned on his elbows and, smiling, talked to her for a long
-time. While conversing with Pierre, Natásha heard a man’s voice in
-Countess Bezúkhova’s box and something told her it was Kurágin. She
-turned and their eyes met. Almost smiling, he gazed straight into her
-eyes with such an enraptured caressing look that it seemed strange to be
-so near him, to look at him like that, to be so sure he admired her, and
-not to be acquainted with him.
-
-In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there was a
-round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were raised over
-the footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep notes while many
-people appeared from right and left wearing black cloaks and holding
-things like daggers in their hands. They began waving their arms. Then
-some other people ran in and began dragging away the maiden who had been
-in white and was now in light blue. They did not drag her away at once,
-but sang with her for a long time and then at last dragged her off, and
-behind the scenes something metallic was struck three times and
-everyone knelt down and sang a prayer. All these things were repeatedly
-interrupted by the enthusiastic shouts of the audience.
-
-During this act every time Natásha looked toward the stalls she saw
-Anatole Kurágin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair,
-staring at her. She was pleased to see that he was captivated by her and
-it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong in it.
-
-When the second act was over Countess Bezúkhova rose, turned to the
-Rostóvs’ box—her whole bosom completely exposed—beckoned the old
-count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had
-entered her box began talking to him with an amiable smile.
-
-“Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters,” said she.
-“The whole town is singing their praises and I don’t even know
-them!”
-
-Natásha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so pleased
-by praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with pleasure.
-
-“I want to become a Moscovite too, now,” said Hélène. “How is it
-you’re not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?”
-
-Countess Bezúkhova quite deserved her reputation of being a fascinating
-woman. She could say what she did not think—especially what was
-flattering—quite simply and naturally.
-
-“Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I am
-not staying here long this time—nor are you—I will try to amuse
-them. I have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get
-to know you,” said she to Natásha with her stereotyped and lovely
-smile. “I had heard about you from my page, Drubetskóy. Have you
-heard he is getting married? And also from my husband’s friend
-Bolkónski, Prince Andrew Bolkónski,” she went on with special
-emphasis, implying that she knew of his relation to Natásha. To get
-better acquainted she asked that one of the young ladies should come
-into her box for the rest of the performance, and Natásha moved over to
-it.
-
-The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many candles
-were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on the
-walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a queen. The
-king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang something badly
-and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had been first in white
-and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and stood beside the
-throne with her hair down. She sang something mournfully, addressing the
-queen, but the king waved his arm severely, and men and women with bare
-legs came in from both sides and began dancing all together. Then the
-violins played very shrilly and merrily and one of the women with thick
-bare legs and thin arms, separating from the others, went behind the
-wings, adjusted her bodice, returned to the middle of the stage, and
-began jumping and striking one foot rapidly against the other. In the
-stalls everyone clapped and shouted “bravo!” Then one of the men
-went into a corner of the stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra
-struck up more loudly, and this man with bare legs jumped very high and
-waved his feet about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty
-thousand rubles a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes,
-and galleries began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the
-man stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides. Then other men
-and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted to the
-sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm
-came on, chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the
-orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number away,
-and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible noise and
-clatter among the audience, and with rapturous faces everyone began
-shouting: “Duport! Duport! Duport!” Natásha no longer thought this
-strange. She looked about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.
-
-“Isn’t Duport delightful?” Hélène asked her.
-
-“Oh, yes,” replied Natásha.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-During the entr’acte a whiff of cold air came into Hélène’s box,
-the door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush
-against anyone.
-
-“Let me introduce my brother to you,” said Hélène, her eyes
-shifting uneasily from Natásha to Anatole.
-
-Natásha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young officer
-and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was as handsome
-at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her and told her he
-had long wished to have this happiness—ever since the Narýshkins’
-ball in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered pleasure of seeing
-her. Kurágin was much more sensible and simple with women than among
-men. He talked boldly and naturally, and Natásha was strangely and
-agreeably struck by the fact that there was nothing formidable in this
-man about whom there was so much talk, but that on the contrary his
-smile was most naïve, cheerful, and good-natured.
-
-Kurágin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a
-previous performance Semënova had fallen down on the stage.
-
-“And do you know, Countess,” he said, suddenly addressing her as an
-old, familiar acquaintance, “we are getting up a costume tournament;
-you ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We shall all meet at
-the Karágins’! Please come! No! Really, eh?” said he.
-
-While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face,
-her neck, and her bare arms. Natásha knew for certain that he was
-enraptured by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel
-constrained and oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt that
-he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his eye
-so that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking into his
-eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not that barrier of
-modesty she had always felt between herself and other men. She did not
-know how it was that within five minutes she had come to feel herself
-terribly near to this man. When she turned away she feared he might
-seize her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her on the neck. They
-spoke of most ordinary things, yet she felt that they were closer to
-one another than she had ever been to any man. Natásha kept turning to
-Hélène and to her father, as if asking what it all meant, but Hélène
-was engaged in conversation with a general and did not answer her
-look, and her father’s eyes said nothing but what they always said:
-“Having a good time? Well, I’m glad of it!”
-
-During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole’s
-prominent eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natásha, to break
-the silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the question and
-blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she was doing
-something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage her.
-
-“At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant
-ce sont les jolies femmes, * isn’t that so? But now I like it very
-much indeed,” he said, looking at her significantly. “You’ll come
-to the costume tournament, Countess? Do come!” and putting out his
-hand to her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, “You will be the
-prettiest there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as a
-pledge!”
-
- * Are the pretty women.
-
-Natásha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did
-himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an improper
-intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if she had
-not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she felt that
-he was there, behind, so close behind her.
-
-“How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?” she
-asked herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked
-straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the
-good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just
-as he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt with
-horror that no barrier lay between him and her.
-
-The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay. Natásha
-went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive to the
-world she found herself in. All that was going on before her now seemed
-quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous thoughts of her
-betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country did not once
-recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote past.
-
-In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his arm
-about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he disappeared
-down below. That was the only part of the fourth act that Natásha saw.
-She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of this was Kurágin whom
-she could not help watching. As they were leaving the theater Anatole
-came up to them, called their carriage, and helped them in. As he was
-putting Natásha in he pressed her arm above the elbow. Agitated and
-flushed she turned round. He was looking at her with glittering eyes,
-smiling tenderly.
-
-
-Only after she had reached home was Natásha able clearly to think over
-what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince Andrew she
-was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after the opera, she
-gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the room.
-
-“O God! I am lost!” she said to herself. “How could I let him?”
-She sat for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to
-realize what had happened to her, but was unable either to understand
-what had happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark, obscure,
-and terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater where the
-bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped about to the
-music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the nearly
-naked Hélène with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried
-“bravo!”—there in the presence of that Hélène it had all seemed
-clear and simple; but now, alone by herself, it was incomprehensible.
-“What is it? What was that terror I felt of him? What is this gnawing
-of conscience I am feeling now?” she thought.
-
-Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natásha have told all
-she was feeling. She knew that Sónya with her severe and simple views
-would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at such
-a confession. So Natásha tried to solve what was torturing her by
-herself.
-
-“Am I spoiled for Andrew’s love or not?” she asked herself, and
-with soothing irony replied: “What a fool I am to ask that! What did
-happen to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn’t lead him on
-at all. Nobody will know and I shall never see him again,” she told
-herself. “So it is plain that nothing has happened and there is
-nothing to repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But why ‘still?’
-O God, why isn’t he here?” Natásha quieted herself for a moment,
-but again some instinct told her that though all this was true, and
-though nothing had happened, yet the former purity of her love for
-Prince Andrew had perished. And again in imagination she went over her
-whole conversation with Kurágin, and again saw the face, gestures, and
-tender smile of that bold handsome man when he pressed her arm.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-Anatole Kurágin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent him
-away from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand rubles
-a year in cash, besides running up debts for as much more, which his
-creditors demanded from his father.
-
-His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for the
-last time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as adjutant to
-the commander in chief—a post his father had procured for him—and
-would at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to him
-Princess Mary and Julie Karágina.
-
-Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre’s
-house. Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him
-after a while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and gave
-him money under the guise of loans.
-
-As Shinshín had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had
-turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that
-he slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French
-actresses—with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to
-be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at Danílov’s
-or other Moscow revelers’, drank whole nights through, outvying
-everyone else, and was at all the balls and parties of the best society.
-There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies, and he flirted
-with a few of them at the balls. But he did not run after the unmarried
-girls, especially the rich heiresses who were most of them plain.
-There was a special reason for this, as he had got married two years
-before—a fact known only to his most intimate friends. At that time
-while with his regiment in Poland, a Polish landowner of small means had
-forced him to marry his daughter. Anatole had very soon abandoned his
-wife and, for a payment which he agreed to send to his father-in-law,
-had arranged to be free to pass himself off as a bachelor.
-
-Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with
-others. He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that it was
-impossible for him to live otherwise than as he did and that he had
-never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of considering
-how his actions might affect others or what the consequences of this or
-that action of his might be. He was convinced that, as a duck is so made
-that it must live in water, so God had made him such that he must spend
-thirty thousand rubles a year and always occupy a prominent position in
-society. He believed this so firmly that others, looking at him, were
-persuaded of it too and did not refuse him either a leading place
-in society or money, which he borrowed from anyone and everyone and
-evidently would not repay.
-
-He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning. He was
-not vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still less could
-he be accused of ambition. More than once he had vexed his father by
-spoiling his own career, and he laughed at distinctions of all kinds. He
-was not mean, and did not refuse anyone who asked of him. All he cared
-about was gaiety and women, and as according to his ideas there
-was nothing dishonorable in these tastes, and he was incapable of
-considering what the gratification of his tastes entailed for others,
-he honestly considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues
-and bad people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high.
-
-Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence
-similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope of
-forgiveness. “All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all
-will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much.”
-
-Dólokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and
-his Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling, and
-dissipation, associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kurágin and
-made use of him for his own ends.
-
-Anatole was sincerely fond of Dólokhov for his cleverness and
-audacity. Dólokhov, who needed Anatole Kurágin’s name, position, and
-connections as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set, made
-use of him and amused himself at his expense without letting the other
-feel it. Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole, the very
-process of dominating another’s will was in itself a pleasure, a
-habit, and a necessity to Dólokhov.
-
-Natásha had made a strong impression on Kurágin. At supper after
-the opera he described to Dólokhov with the air of a connoisseur the
-attractions of her arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his
-intention of making love to her. Anatole had no notion and was incapable
-of considering what might come of such love-making, as he never had any
-notion of the outcome of any of his actions.
-
-“She’s first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us,” replied
-Dólokhov.
-
-“I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner,” said Anatole.
-“Eh?”
-
-“You’d better wait till she’s married....”
-
-“You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once,”
-pursued Anatole.
-
-“You have been caught once already by a ‘little girl,’” said
-Dólokhov who knew of Kurágin’s marriage. “Take care!”
-
-“Well, that can’t happen twice! Eh?” said Anatole, with a
-good-humored laugh.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-The day after the opera the Rostóvs went nowhere and nobody came to see
-them. Márya Dmítrievna talked to the count about something which they
-concealed from Natásha. Natásha guessed they were talking about the
-old prince and planning something, and this disquieted and offended her.
-She was expecting Prince Andrew any moment and twice that day sent a
-manservant to the Vozdvízhenka to ascertain whether he had come. He had
-not arrived. She suffered more now than during her first days in Moscow.
-To her impatience and pining for him were now added the unpleasant
-recollection of her interview with Princess Mary and the old prince,
-and a fear and anxiety of which she did not understand the cause. She
-continually fancied that either he would never come or that something
-would happen to her before he came. She could no longer think of him by
-herself calmly and continuously as she had done before. As soon as she
-began to think of him, the recollection of the old prince, of Princess
-Mary, of the theater, and of Kurágin mingled with her thoughts. The
-question again presented itself whether she was not guilty, whether she
-had not already broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found
-herself recalling to the minutest detail every word, every gesture, and
-every shade in the play of expression on the face of the man who had
-been able to arouse in her such an incomprehensible and terrifying
-feeling. To the family Natásha seemed livelier than usual, but she was
-far less tranquil and happy than before.
-
-On Sunday morning Márya Dmítrievna invited her visitors to Mass at her
-parish church—the Church of the Assumption built over the graves of
-victims of the plague.
-
-“I don’t like those fashionable churches,” she said, evidently
-priding herself on her independence of thought. “God is the same
-everywhere. We have an excellent priest, he conducts the service
-decently and with dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is
-there in giving concerts in the choir? I don’t like it, it’s just
-self-indulgence!”
-
-Márya Dmítrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her whole
-house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the
-servants worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church. At
-her table there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had vodka
-and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was the
-holiday so noticeable as in Márya Dmítrievna’s broad, stern face,
-which on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity.
-
-After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room
-where the loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a servant
-announced that the carriage was ready, and Márya Dmítrievna rose with
-a stern air. She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid calls, and
-announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas Bolkónski to have
-an explanation with him about Natásha.
-
-After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited on
-the Rostóvs, and Natásha, very glad of this diversion, having shut
-herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied herself trying
-on the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice without sleeves and
-only tacked together, and was turning her head to see in the glass how
-the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room the animated sounds
-of her father’s voice and another’s—a woman’s—that made her
-flush. It was Hélène. Natásha had not time to take off the bodice
-before the door opened and Countess Bezúkhova, dressed in a purple
-velvet gown with a high collar, came into the room beaming with
-good-humored amiable smiles.
-
-“Oh, my enchantress!” she cried to the blushing Natásha.
-“Charming! No, this is really beyond anything, my dear count,” said
-she to Count Rostóv who had followed her in. “How can you live in
-Moscow and go nowhere? No, I won’t let you off! Mademoiselle George
-will recite at my house tonight and there’ll be some people, and if
-you don’t bring your lovely girls—who are prettier than Mademoiselle
-George—I won’t know you! My husband is away in Tver or I would send
-him to fetch you. You must come. You positively must! Between eight and
-nine.”
-
-She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied
-respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the
-looking glass, draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely. She
-did not cease chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually praising
-Natásha’s beauty. She looked at Natásha’s dresses and praised
-them, as well as a new dress of her own made of “metallic gauze,”
-which she had received from Paris, and advised Natásha to have one like
-it.
-
-“But anything suits you, my charmer!” she remarked.
-
-A smile of pleasure never left Natásha’s face. She felt happy and as
-if she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess Bezúkhova
-who had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and important and was
-now so kind to her. Natásha brightened up and felt almost in love with
-this woman, who was so beautiful and so kind. Hélène for her part was
-sincerely delighted with Natásha and wished to give her a good time.
-Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natásha together, and she was
-calling on the Rostóvs for that purpose. The idea of throwing her
-brother and Natásha together amused her.
-
-Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natásha
-for drawing Borís away, she did not think of that now, and in her own
-way heartily wished Natásha well. As she was leaving the Rostóvs she
-called her protégée aside.
-
-“My brother dined with me yesterday—we nearly died of laughter—he
-ate nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly, quite
-madly, in love with you, my dear.”
-
-Natásha blushed scarlet when she heard this.
-
-“How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!” said Hélène. “You
-must certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a
-reason to shut yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your
-fiancé would wish you to go into society rather than be bored to
-death.”
-
-“So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre—that good
-Pierre—have talked and laughed about this. So it’s all right.” And
-again, under Hélène’s influence, what had seemed terrible now seemed
-simple and natural. “And she is such a grande dame, so kind, and
-evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?” thought
-Natásha, gazing at Hélène with wide-open, wondering eyes.
-
-Márya Dmítrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having
-evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince’s. She was still too
-agitated by the encounter to be able to talk of the affair calmly. In
-answer to the count’s inquiries she replied that things were all
-right and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of Countess
-Bezúkhova’s visit and the invitation for that evening, Márya
-Dmítrievna remarked:
-
-“I don’t care to have anything to do with Bezúkhova and don’t
-advise you to; however, if you’ve promised—go. It will divert your
-thoughts,” she added, addressing Natásha.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-Count Rostóv took the girls to Countess Bezúkhova’s. There were
-a good many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natásha. Count
-Rostóv was displeased to see that the company consisted almost entirely
-of men and women known for the freedom of their conduct. Mademoiselle
-George was standing in a corner of the drawing room surrounded by young
-men. There were several Frenchmen present, among them Métivier who from
-the time Hélène reached Moscow had been an intimate in her house. The
-count decided not to sit down to cards or let his girls out of his sight
-and to get away as soon as Mademoiselle George’s performance was over.
-
-Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostóvs.
-Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natásha and followed
-her. As soon as she saw him she was seized by the same feeling she had
-had at the opera—gratified vanity at his admiration of her and fear at
-the absence of a moral barrier between them.
-
-Hélène welcomed Natásha delightedly and was loud in admiration of her
-beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George went
-out of the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people began
-arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a chair for
-Natásha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count, who never
-lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat down behind her.
-
-Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red shawl
-draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for her, and
-assumed an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was audible.
-
-Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience and
-began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for her
-son. In some places she raised her voice, in others she whispered,
-lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse
-sounds, rolling her eyes.
-
-“Adorable! divine! delicious!” was heard from every side.
-
-Natásha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor
-understood anything of what went on before her. She only felt herself
-again completely borne away into this strange senseless world—so
-remote from her old world—a world in which it was impossible to know
-what was good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat Anatole,
-and conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened sense of
-expectancy.
-
-After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded
-Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.
-
-“How beautiful she is!” Natásha remarked to her father who had also
-risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.
-
-“I don’t think so when I look at you!” said Anatole, following
-Natásha. He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him. “You
-are enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never ceased...”
-
-“Come, come, Natásha!” said the count, as he turned back for his
-daughter. “How beautiful she is!” Natásha without saying anything
-stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring
-eyes.
-
-After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and Countess
-Bezúkhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.
-
-The count wished to go home, but Hélène entreated him not to spoil her
-improvised ball, and the Rostóvs stayed on. Anatole asked Natásha for
-a valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand and told her
-she was bewitching and that he loved her. During the écossaise, which
-she also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when they happened to be
-by themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natásha lifted her frightened
-eyes to him, but there was such confident tenderness in his affectionate
-look and smile that she could not, whilst looking at him, say what she
-had to say. She lowered her eyes.
-
-“Don’t say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another,”
-she said rapidly.... She glanced at him.
-
-Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.
-
-“Don’t speak to me of that! What can I do?” said he. “I tell
-you I am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are
-enchanting?... It’s our turn to begin.”
-
-Natásha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open
-frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly
-anything that went on that evening. They danced the écossaise and the
-Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to remain.
-Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt his eyes
-upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her father to let
-her go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that Hélène had
-followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother’s love, and that she
-again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Hélène had disappeared
-leaving them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and said in a tender
-voice:
-
-“I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never see
-you? I love you madly. Can I never...?” and, blocking her path, he
-brought his face close to hers.
-
-His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she saw
-nothing but them.
-
-“Natalie?” he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being
-painfully pressed. “Natalie?”
-
-“I don’t understand. I have nothing to say,” her eyes replied.
-
-Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she felt
-herself released, and Hélène’s footsteps and the rustle of her dress
-were heard in the room. Natásha looked round at her, and then, red
-and trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and moved
-toward the door.
-
-“One word, just one, for God’s sake!” cried Anatole.
-
-She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to her what
-had happened and to which she could find no answer.
-
-“Natalie, just a word, only one!” he kept repeating, evidently not
-knowing what to say and he repeated it till Hélène came up to them.
-
-Hélène returned with Natásha to the drawing room. The Rostóvs went
-away without staying for supper.
-
-After reaching home Natásha did not sleep all night. She was tormented
-by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or Prince Andrew.
-She loved Prince Andrew—she remembered distinctly how deeply she loved
-him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there was no doubt. “Else how
-could all this have happened?” thought she. “If, after that, I could
-return his smile when saying good-by, if I was able to let it come to
-that, it means that I loved him from the first. It means that he is
-kind, noble, and splendid, and I could not help loving him. What am I to
-do if I love him and the other one too?” she asked herself, unable to
-find an answer to these terrible questions.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began
-to move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Márya Dmítrievna
-appeared, and they were called to breakfast. Natásha kept looking
-uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to intercept
-every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the same as usual.
-
-After breakfast, which was her best time, Márya Dmítrievna sat down in
-her armchair and called Natásha and the count to her.
-
-“Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is
-my advice,” she began. “Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince
-Bolkónski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to
-begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had
-to say!”
-
-“Well, and he?” asked the count.
-
-“He? He’s crazy... he did not want to listen. But what’s the use
-of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out,” said Márya
-Dmítrievna. “My advice to you is finish your business and go back
-home to Otrádnoe... and wait there.”
-
-“Oh, no!” exclaimed Natásha.
-
-“Yes, go back,” said Márya Dmítrievna, “and wait there. If your
-betrothed comes here now—there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but
-alone with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to
-you.”
-
-Count Rostóv approved of this suggestion, appreciating its
-reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better to
-visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the wedding,
-against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otrádnoe.
-
-“That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took
-her,” said the old count.
-
-“No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But if he
-won’t—that’s his affair,” said Márya Dmítrievna, looking for
-something in her reticule. “Besides, the trousseau is ready, so there
-is nothing to wait for; and what is not ready I’ll send after you.
-Though I don’t like letting you go, it is the best way. So go, with
-God’s blessing!”
-
-Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed it to
-Natásha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.
-
-“She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She’s
-afraid you might think that she does not like you.”
-
-“But she doesn’t like me,” said Natásha.
-
-“Don’t talk nonsense!” cried Márya Dmítrievna.
-
-“I shan’t believe anyone, I know she doesn’t like me,” replied
-Natásha boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold
-and angry resolution that caused Márya Dmítrievna to look at her more
-intently and to frown.
-
-“Don’t answer like that, my good girl!” she said. “What I say is
-true! Write an answer!”
-
-Natásha did not reply and went to her own room to read Princess
-Mary’s letter.
-
-Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the misunderstanding that
-had occurred between them. Whatever her father’s feelings might be,
-she begged Natásha to believe that she could not help loving her as
-the one chosen by her brother, for whose happiness she was ready to
-sacrifice everything.
-
-“Do not think, however,” she wrote, “that my father is
-ill-disposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be
-forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes his
-son happy.” Princess Mary went on to ask Natásha to fix a time when
-she could see her again.
-
-After reading the letter Natásha sat down at the writing table
-to answer it. “Dear Princess,” she wrote in French quickly and
-mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after all that
-had happened the evening before? “Yes, yes! All that has happened, and
-now all is changed,” she thought as she sat with the letter she had
-begun before her. “Must I break off with him? Must I really? That’s
-awful...” and to escape from these dreadful thoughts she went to
-Sónya and began sorting patterns with her.
-
-After dinner Natásha went to her room and again took up Princess
-Mary’s letter. “Can it be that it is all over?” she thought.
-“Can it be that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all
-that went before?” She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its
-former strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kurágin. She
-vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew’s wife, and the scenes of
-happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and
-at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of
-yesterday’s interview with Anatole.
-
-“Why could that not be as well?” she sometimes asked herself in
-complete bewilderment. “Only so could I be completely happy; but now I
-have to choose, and I can’t be happy without either of them. Only,”
-she thought, “to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide
-it from him are both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is
-spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew’s
-love, in which I have lived so long?”
-
-“Please, Miss!” whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious
-air. “A man told me to give you this—” and she handed Natásha a
-letter.
-
-“Only, for Christ’s sake...” the girl went on, as Natásha,
-without thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter
-from Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only
-that it was a letter from him—from the man she loved. Yes, she loved
-him, or else how could that have happened which had happened? And how
-could she have a love letter from him in her hand?
-
-With trembling hands Natásha held that passionate love letter which
-Dólokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she found in it
-an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.
-
-“Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you
-or to die. There is no other way for me,” the letter began. Then he
-went on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him—for
-this there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her—but that if
-she loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power could
-hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her away and
-carry her off to the ends of the earth.
-
-“Yes, yes! I love him!” thought Natásha, reading the letter for the
-twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each word of
-it.
-
-That evening Márya Dmítrievna was going to the Akhárovs’ and
-proposed to take the girls with her. Natásha, pleading a headache,
-remained at home.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-On returning late in the evening Sónya went to Natásha’s room, and
-to her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open on
-the table, beside her lay Anatole’s letter. Sónya picked it up and
-read it.
-
-As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natásha, trying to find in her
-face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find it. Her
-face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep herself
-from choking, Sónya, pale and trembling with fear and agitation, sat
-down in an armchair and burst into tears.
-
-“How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she have
-left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kurágin go to
-such lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that’s plain! What will
-Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is
-the meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before
-yesterday, yesterday, and today,” thought Sónya. “But it can’t be
-that she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who
-it was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a
-thing!”
-
-Sónya wiped away her tears and went up to Natásha, again scanning her
-face.
-
-“Natásha!” she said, just audibly.
-
-Natásha awoke and saw Sónya.
-
-“Ah, you’re back?”
-
-And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment of
-awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sónya’s look of
-embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.
-
-“Sónya, you’ve read that letter?” she demanded.
-
-“Yes,” answered Sónya softly.
-
-Natásha smiled rapturously.
-
-“No, Sónya, I can’t any longer!” she said. “I can’t hide it
-from you any longer. You know, we love one another! Sónya, darling, he
-writes... Sónya...”
-
-Sónya stared open-eyed at Natásha, unable to believe her ears.
-
-“And Bolkónski?” she asked.
-
-“Ah, Sónya, if you only knew how happy I am!” cried Natásha.
-“You don’t know what love is....”
-
-“But, Natásha, can that be all over?”
-
-Natásha looked at Sónya with wide-open eyes as if she could not grasp
-the question.
-
-“Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?” said Sónya.
-
-“Oh, you don’t understand anything! Don’t talk nonsense, just
-listen!” said Natásha, with momentary vexation.
-
-“But I can’t believe it,” insisted Sónya. “I don’t
-understand. How is it you have loved a man for a whole year and
-suddenly... Why, you have only seen him three times! Natásha, I don’t
-believe you, you’re joking! In three days to forget everything and
-so...”
-
-“Three days?” said Natásha. “It seems to me I’ve loved him a
-hundred years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You
-can’t understand it.... Sónya, wait a bit, sit here,” and Natásha
-embraced and kissed her.
-
-“I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it
-too, but it’s only now that I feel such love. It’s not the same as
-before. As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his slave,
-and that I could not help loving him. Yes, his slave! Whatever he orders
-I shall do. You don’t understand that. What can I do? What can I do,
-Sónya?” cried Natásha with a happy yet frightened expression.
-
-“But think what you are doing,” cried Sónya. “I can’t leave
-it like this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so
-far?” she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.
-
-“I told you that I have no will,” Natásha replied. “Why can’t
-you understand? I love him!”
-
-“Then I won’t let it come to that... I shall tell!” cried Sónya,
-bursting into tears.
-
-“What do you mean? For God’s sake... If you tell, you are my
-enemy!” declared Natásha. “You want me to be miserable, you want us
-to be separated....”
-
-When she saw Natásha’s fright, Sónya shed tears of shame and pity
-for her friend.
-
-“But what has happened between you?” she asked. “What has he said
-to you? Why doesn’t he come to the house?”
-
-Natásha did not answer her questions.
-
-“For God’s sake, Sónya, don’t tell anyone, don’t torture
-me,” Natásha entreated. “Remember no one ought to interfere in such
-matters! I have confided in you....”
-
-“But why this secrecy? Why doesn’t he come to the house?” asked
-Sónya. “Why doesn’t he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince
-Andrew gave you complete freedom—if it is really so; but I don’t
-believe it! Natásha, have you considered what these secret reasons can
-be?”
-
-Natásha looked at Sónya with astonishment. Evidently this question
-presented itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know how
-to answer it.
-
-“I don’t know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!”
-
-Sónya sighed and shook her head incredulously.
-
-“If there were reasons...” she began.
-
-But Natásha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.
-
-“Sónya, one can’t doubt him! One can’t, one can’t! Don’t you
-understand?” she cried.
-
-“Does he love you?”
-
-“Does he love me?” Natásha repeated with a smile of pity at her
-friend’s lack of comprehension. “Why, you have read his letter and
-you have seen him.”
-
-“But if he is dishonorable?”
-
-“He! dishonorable? If you only knew!” exclaimed Natásha.
-
-“If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions or
-cease seeing you; and if you won’t do this, I will. I will write to
-him, and I will tell Papa!” said Sónya resolutely.
-
-“But I can’t live without him!” cried Natásha.
-
-“Natásha, I don’t understand you. And what are you saying! Think of
-your father and of Nicholas.”
-
-“I don’t want anyone, I don’t love anyone but him. How dare you
-say he is dishonorable? Don’t you know that I love him?” screamed
-Natásha. “Go away, Sónya! I don’t want to quarrel with you, but
-go, for God’s sake go! You see how I am suffering!” Natásha cried
-angrily, in a voice of despair and repressed irritation. Sónya burst
-into sobs and ran from the room.
-
-Natásha went to the table and without a moment’s reflection wrote
-that answer to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all
-the morning. In this letter she said briefly that all their
-misunderstandings were at an end; that availing herself of the
-magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her
-freedom, she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive her
-if she had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his
-wife. At that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to
-Natásha.
-
-
-On Friday the Rostóvs were to return to the country, but on Wednesday
-the count went with the prospective purchaser to his estate near Moscow.
-
-On the day the count left, Sónya and Natásha were invited to a big
-dinner party at the Karágins’, and Márya Dmítrievna took them
-there. At that party Natásha again met Anatole, and Sónya noticed
-that she spoke to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through
-dinner she was more agitated than ever. When they got home Natásha was
-the first to begin the explanation Sónya expected.
-
-“There, Sónya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,”
-Natásha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to be
-praised. “We have had an explanation today.”
-
-“Well, what happened? What did he say? Natásha, how glad I am
-you’re not angry with me! Tell me everything—the whole truth. What
-did he say?”
-
-Natásha became thoughtful.
-
-“Oh, Sónya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I
-had promised Bolkónski. He was glad I was free to refuse him.”
-
-Sónya sighed sorrowfully.
-
-“But you haven’t refused Bolkónski?” said she.
-
-“Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkónski. Why do
-you think so badly of me?”
-
-“I don’t think anything, only I don’t understand this...”
-
-“Wait a bit, Sónya, you’ll understand everything. You’ll see what
-a man he is! Now don’t think badly of me or of him. I don’t think
-badly of anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?”
-
-Sónya did not succumb to the tender tone Natásha used toward her.
-The more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natásha’s face
-became, the more serious and stern grew Sónya’s.
-
-“Natásha,” said she, “you asked me not to speak to you, and I
-haven’t spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don’t trust him,
-Natásha. Why this secrecy?”
-
-“Again, again!” interrupted Natásha.
-
-“Natásha, I am afraid for you!”
-
-“Afraid of what?”
-
-“I am afraid you’re going to your ruin,” said Sónya resolutely,
-and was herself horrified at what she had said.
-
-Anger again showed in Natásha’s face.
-
-“And I’ll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It’s not
-your business! It won’t be you, but I, who’ll suffer. Leave me
-alone, leave me alone! I hate you!”
-
-“Natásha!” moaned Sónya, aghast.
-
-“I hate you, I hate you! You’re my enemy forever!” And Natásha
-ran out of the room.
-
-Natásha did not speak to Sónya again and avoided her. With the same
-expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the house,
-taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once abandoning them.
-
-Hard as it was for Sónya, she watched her friend and did not let her
-out of her sight.
-
-The day before the count was to return, Sónya noticed that Natásha sat
-by the drawing room window all the morning as if expecting something and
-that she made a sign to an officer who drove past, whom Sónya took to
-be Anatole.
-
-Sónya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed that
-at dinner and all that evening Natásha was in a strange and unnatural
-state. She answered questions at random, began sentences she did not
-finish, and laughed at everything.
-
-After tea Sónya noticed a housemaid at Natásha’s door timidly
-waiting to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at
-the door learned that another letter had been delivered.
-
-Then suddenly it became clear to Sónya that Natásha had some dreadful
-plan for that evening. Sónya knocked at her door. Natásha did not let
-her in.
-
-“She will run away with him!” thought Sónya. “She is capable of
-anything. There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in
-her face today. She cried as she said good-by to Uncle,” Sónya
-remembered. “Yes, that’s it, she means to elope with him, but
-what am I to do?” thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly
-indicated that Natásha had some terrible intention. “The count is
-away. What am I to do? Write to Kurágin demanding an explanation? But
-what is there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince Andrew
-asked me to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she really
-has already refused Bolkónski—she sent a letter to Princess Mary
-yesterday. And Uncle is away....” To tell Márya Dmítrievna who had
-such faith in Natásha seemed to Sónya terrible. “Well, anyway,”
-thought Sónya as she stood in the dark passage, “now or never I must
-prove that I remember the family’s goodness to me and that I love
-Nicholas. Yes! If I don’t sleep for three nights I’ll not leave this
-passage and will hold her back by force and will and not let the family
-be disgraced,” thought she.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-Anatole had lately moved to Dólokhov’s. The plan for Natalie
-Rostóva’s abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by
-Dólokhov a few days before, and on the day that Sónya, after listening
-at Natásha’s door, resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been
-put into execution. Natásha had promised to come out to Kurágin at the
-back porch at ten that evening. Kurágin was to put her into a troyka
-he would have ready and to drive her forty miles to the village of
-Kámenka, where an unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a
-marriage ceremony over them. At Kámenka a relay of horses was to wait
-which would take them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they would
-hasten abroad with post horses.
-
-Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand rubles
-he had taken from his sister and another ten thousand borrowed with
-Dólokhov’s help.
-
-Two witnesses for the mock marriage—Khvóstikov, a retired petty
-official whom Dólokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and
-Makárin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an unbounded
-affection for Kurágin—were sitting at tea in Dólokhov’s front
-room.
-
-In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with
-Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dólokhov in a traveling cloak
-and high boots, at an open desk on which lay an abacus and some bundles
-of paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to and fro from
-the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the study to the room
-behind, where his French valet and others were packing the last of his
-things. Dólokhov was counting the money and noting something down.
-
-“Well,” he said, “Khvóstikov must have two thousand.”
-
-“Give it to him, then,” said Anatole.
-
-“Makárka” (their name for Makárin) “will go through fire and
-water for you for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled,” said
-Dólokhov, showing him the memorandum. “Is that right?”
-
-“Yes, of course,” returned Anatole, evidently not listening to
-Dólokhov and looking straight before him with a smile that did not
-leave his face.
-
-Dólokhov banged down the lid of his desk and turned to Anatole with an
-ironic smile:
-
-“Do you know? You’d really better drop it all. There’s still
-time!”
-
-“Fool,” retorted Anatole. “Don’t talk nonsense! If you only
-knew... it’s the devil knows what!”
-
-“No, really, give it up!” said Dólokhov. “I am speaking
-seriously. It’s no joke, this plot you’ve hatched.”
-
-“What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?” said Anatole, making a
-grimace. “Really it’s no time for your stupid jokes,” and he left
-the room.
-
-Dólokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly when Anatole had
-gone out.
-
-“You wait a bit,” he called after him. “I’m not joking, I’m
-talking sense. Come here, come here!”
-
-Anatole returned and looked at Dólokhov, trying to give him his
-attention and evidently submitting to him involuntarily.
-
-“Now listen to me. I’m telling you this for the last time. Why
-should I joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything for
-you? Who found the priest and got the passport? Who raised the money? I
-did it all.”
-
-“Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?” And
-Anatole sighed and embraced Dólokhov.
-
-“I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth; it is a
-dangerous business, and if you think about it—a stupid business. Well,
-you’ll carry her off—all right! Will they let it stop at that? It
-will come out that you’re already married. Why, they’ll have you in
-the criminal court....”
-
-“Oh, nonsense, nonsense!” Anatole ejaculated and again made a
-grimace. “Didn’t I explain to you? What?” And Anatole, with the
-partiality dull-witted people have for any conclusion they have reached
-by their own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already put to
-Dólokhov a hundred times. “Didn’t I explain to you that I have come
-to this conclusion: if this marriage is invalid,” he went on, crooking
-one finger, “then I have nothing to answer for; but if it is valid, no
-matter! Abroad no one will know anything about it. Isn’t that so? And
-don’t talk to me, don’t, don’t.”
-
-“Seriously, you’d better drop it! You’ll only get yourself into a
-mess!”
-
-“Go to the devil!” cried Anatole and, clutching his hair, left the
-room, but returned at once and dropped into an armchair in front of
-Dólokhov with his feet turned under him. “It’s the very devil!
-What? Feel how it beats!” He took Dólokhov’s hand and put it on his
-heart. “What a foot, my dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!” he
-added in French. “What?”
-
-Dólokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome insolent eyes
-looked at him—evidently wishing to get some more amusement out of him.
-
-“Well and when the money’s gone, what then?”
-
-“What then? Eh?” repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a thought
-of the future. “What then?... Then, I don’t know.... But why talk
-nonsense!” He glanced at his watch. “It’s time!”
-
-Anatole went into the back room.
-
-“Now then! Nearly ready? You’re dawdling!” he shouted to the
-servants.
-
-Dólokhov put away the money, called a footman whom he ordered to bring
-something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went into
-the room where Khvóstikov and Makárin were sitting.
-
-Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow and smiling
-pensively, while his handsome lips muttered tenderly to himself.
-
-“Come and eat something. Have a drink!” Dólokhov shouted to him
-from the other room.
-
-“I don’t want to,” answered Anatole continuing to smile.
-
-“Come! Balagá is here.”
-
-Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balagá was a famous troyka
-driver who had known Dólokhov and Anatole some six years and had given
-them good service with his troykas. More than once when Anatole’s
-regiment was stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in the
-evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak, and driven him back again
-the next night. More than once he had enabled Dólokhov to escape when
-pursued. More than once he had driven them through the town with gypsies
-and “ladykins” as he called the cocottes. More than once in their
-service he had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles in the streets
-of Moscow and had always been protected from the consequences by “my
-gentlemen” as he called them. He had ruined more than one horse in
-their service. More than once they had beaten him, and more than once
-they had made him drunk on champagne and Madeira, which he loved; and
-he knew more than one thing about each of them which would long ago have
-sent an ordinary man to Siberia. They often called Balagá into their
-orgies and made him drink and dance at the gypsies’, and more than one
-thousand rubles of their money had passed through his hands. In their
-service he risked his skin and his life twenty times a year, and in
-their service had lost more horses than the money he had from them would
-buy. But he liked them; liked that mad driving at twelve miles an hour,
-liked upsetting a driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at
-full gallop through the Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild,
-tipsy shouts behind him: “Get on! Get on!” when it was impossible
-to go any faster. He liked giving a painful lash on the neck to some
-peasant who, more dead than alive, was already hurrying out of his way.
-“Real gentlemen!” he considered them.
-
-Anatole and Dólokhov liked Balagá too for his masterly driving and
-because he liked the things they liked. With others Balagá bargained,
-charging twenty-five rubles for a two hours’ drive, and rarely
-drove himself, generally letting his young men do so. But with “his
-gentlemen” he always drove himself and never demanded anything for
-his work. Only a couple of times a year—when he knew from their valets
-that they had money in hand—he would turn up of a morning quite sober
-and with a deep bow would ask them to help him. The gentlemen always
-made him sit down.
-
-“Do help me out, Theodore Iványch, sir,” or “your excellency,”
-he would say. “I am quite out of horses. Let me have what you can to
-go to the fair.”
-
-And Anatole and Dólokhov, when they had money, would give him a
-thousand or a couple of thousand rubles.
-
-Balagá was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about
-twenty-seven; red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck, glittering
-little eyes, and a small beard. He wore a fine, dark-blue, silk-lined
-cloth coat over a sheepskin.
-
-On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning toward the front
-corner of the room, and went up to Dólokhov, holding out a small, black
-hand.
-
-“Theodore Iványch!” he said, bowing.
-
-“How d’you do, friend? Well, here he is!”
-
-“Good day, your excellency!” he said, again holding out his hand to
-Anatole who had just come in.
-
-“I say, Balagá,” said Anatole, putting his hands on the man’s
-shoulders, “do you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do me a service....
-What horses have you come with? Eh?”
-
-“As your messenger ordered, your special beasts,” replied Balagá.
-
-“Well, listen, Balagá! Drive all three to death but get me there in
-three hours. Eh?”
-
-“When they are dead, what shall I drive?” said Balagá with a wink.
-
-“Mind, I’ll smash your face in! Don’t make jokes!” cried
-Anatole, suddenly rolling his eyes.
-
-“Why joke?” said the driver, laughing. “As if I’d grudge my
-gentlemen anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast
-we’ll go!”
-
-“Ah!” said Anatole. “Well, sit down.”
-
-“Yes, sit down!” said Dólokhov.
-
-“I’ll stand, Theodore Iványch.”
-
-“Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!” said Anatole, and filled a large
-glass of Madeira for him.
-
-The driver’s eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After refusing
-it for manners’ sake, he drank it and wiped his mouth with a red silk
-handkerchief he took out of his cap.
-
-“And when are we to start, your excellency?”
-
-“Well...” Anatole looked at his watch. “We’ll start at once.
-Mind, Balagá! You’ll get there in time? Eh?”
-
-“That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn’t we be
-there in time?” replied Balagá. “Didn’t we get you to Tver in
-seven hours? I think you remember that, your excellency?”
-
-“Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver,” said Anatole,
-smilingly at the recollection and turning to Makárin who gazed
-rapturously at him with wide-open eyes. “Will you believe it,
-Makárka, it took one’s breath away, the rate we flew. We came across
-a train of loaded sleighs and drove right over two of them. Eh?”
-
-“Those were horses!” Balagá continued the tale. “That time I’d
-harnessed two young side horses with the bay in the shafts,” he went
-on, turning to Dólokhov. “Will you believe it, Theodore Iványch,
-those animals flew forty miles? I couldn’t hold them in, my hands grew
-numb in the sharp frost so that I threw down the reins—‘Catch hold
-yourself, your excellency!’ says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom
-of the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn’t a case of urging them on,
-there was no holding them in till we reached the place. The devils took
-us there in three hours! Only the near one died of it.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later wearing
-a fur coat girt with a silver belt, and a sable cap jauntily set on one
-side and very becoming to his handsome face. Having looked in a mirror,
-and standing before Dólokhov in the same pose he had assumed before it,
-he lifted a glass of wine.
-
-“Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and farewell!” said
-Anatole. “Well, comrades and friends...” he considered for a moment “...
-of my youth, farewell!” he said, turning to Makárin and the others.
-
-Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently wished to make
-something touching and solemn out of this address to his comrades. He
-spoke slowly in a loud voice and throwing out his chest slightly swayed
-one leg.
-
-“All take glasses; you too, Balagá. Well, comrades and friends of my
-youth, we’ve had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when
-shall we meet again? I am going abroad. We have had a good time—now
-farewell, lads! To our health! Hurrah!...” he cried, and emptying his
-glass flung it on the floor.
-
-“To your health!” said Balagá who also emptied his glass, and wiped his
-mouth with his handkerchief.
-
-Makárin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.
-
-“Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!
-
-“Let’s go. Let’s go!” cried Anatole.
-
-Balagá was about to leave the room.
-
-“No, stop!” said Anatole. “Shut the door; we have first to sit down.
-That’s the way.”
-
-They shut the door and all sat down.
-
-“Now, quick march, lads!” said Anatole, rising.
-
-Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber, and they all
-went out into the vestibule.
-
-“And where’s the fur cloak?” asked Dólokhov. “Hey, Ignátka! Go to
-Matrëna Matrévna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what
-elopements are like,” continued Dólokhov with a wink. “Why, she’ll rush
-out more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if you delay
-at all there’ll be tears and ‘Papa’ and ‘Mamma,’ and she’s frozen in a
-minute and must go back—but you wrap the fur cloak round her first thing
-and carry her to the sleigh.”
-
-The valet brought a woman’s fox-lined cloak.
-
-“Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrëna, the sable!” he shouted so
-that his voice rang far through the rooms.
-
-A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black eyes
-and curly blue-black hair, wearing a red shawl, ran out with a sable
-mantle on her arm.
-
-“Here, I don’t grudge it—take it!” she said, evidently afraid of her
-master and yet regretful of her cloak.
-
-Dólokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over Matrëna, and
-wrapped her up in it.
-
-“That’s the way,” said Dólokhov, “and then so!” and he turned the collar
-up round her head, leaving only a little of the face uncovered. “And
-then so, do you see?” and he pushed Anatole’s head forward to meet the
-gap left by the collar, through which Matrëna’s brilliant smile was
-seen.
-
-“Well, good-by, Matrëna,” said Anatole, kissing her. “Ah, my revels here
-are over. Remember me to Stëshka. There, good-by! Good-by, Matrëna, wish
-me luck!”
-
-“Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!” said Matrëna in her gypsy
-accent.
-
-Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers were
-holding the horses. Balagá took his seat in the front one and holding
-his elbows high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and Dólokhov
-got in with him. Makárin, Khvóstikov, and a valet seated themselves in
-the other sleigh.
-
-“Well, are you ready?” asked Balagá.
-
-“Go!” he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka tore
-down the Nikítski Boulevard.
-
-“Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!...” The shouting of Balagá
-and of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could
-be heard. On the Arbát Square the troyka caught against a carriage;
-something cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the
-Arbát Street.
-
-After taking a turn along the Podnovínski Boulevard, Balagá began to
-rein in, and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old Konyúsheny
-Street.
-
-The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and Anatole
-and Dólokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the gate
-Dólokhov whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant ran out.
-
-“Come into the courtyard or you’ll be seen; she’ll come out directly,”
-said she.
-
-Dólokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the
-courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into the porch.
-
-He was met by Gabriel, Márya Dmítrievna’s gigantic footman.
-
-“Come to the mistress, please,” said the footman in his deep bass,
-intercepting any retreat.
-
-“To what Mistress? Who are you?” asked Anatole in a breathless whisper.
-
-“Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in.”
-
-“Kurágin! Come back!” shouted Dólokhov. “Betrayed! Back!”
-
-Dólokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the wicket gate and was
-struggling with the yard porter who was trying to lock it. With a last
-desperate effort Dólokhov pushed the porter aside, and when Anatole ran
-back seized him by the arm, pulled him through the wicket, and ran back
-with him to the troyka.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-Márya Dmítrievna, having found Sónya weeping in the corridor, made her
-confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natásha she read it and
-went into Natásha’s room with it in her hand.
-
-“You shameless good-for-nothing!” said she. “I won’t hear a word.”
-
-Pushing back Natásha who looked at her with astonished but tearless
-eyes, she locked her in; and having given orders to the yard porter to
-admit the persons who would be coming that evening, but not to let them
-out again, and having told the footman to bring them up to her, she
-seated herself in the drawing room to await the abductors.
-
-When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had come had run
-away again, she rose frowning, and clasping her hands behind her paced
-through the rooms a long time considering what she should do. Toward
-midnight she went to Natásha’s room fingering the key in her pocket.
-Sónya was sitting sobbing in the corridor. “Márya Dmítrievna, for God’s
-sake let me in to her!” she pleaded, but Márya Dmítrievna unlocked
-the door and went in without giving her an answer.... “Disgusting,
-abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I’m only sorry for her
-father!” thought she, trying to restrain her wrath. “Hard as it may
-be, I’ll tell them all to hold their tongues and will hide it from the
-count.” She entered the room with resolute steps. Natásha lying on the
-sofa, her head hidden in her hands, and she did not stir. She was in
-just the same position in which Márya Dmítrievna had left her.
-
-“A nice girl! Very nice!” said Márya Dmítrievna. “Arranging meetings
-with lovers in my house! It’s no use pretending: you listen when I speak
-to you!” And Márya Dmítrievna touched her arm. “Listen when I speak!
-You’ve disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I’d treat you
-differently, but I’m sorry for your father, so I will conceal it.”
-
-Natásha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved with
-noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Márya Dmítrievna glanced
-round at Sónya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natásha.
-
-“It’s lucky for him that he escaped me; but I’ll find him!” she said in
-her rough voice. “Do you hear what I am saying or not?” she added.
-
-She put her large hand under Natásha’s face and turned it toward her.
-Both Márya Dmítrievna and Sónya were amazed when they saw how Natásha
-looked. Her eyes were dry and glistening, her lips compressed, her
-cheeks sunken.
-
-“Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!” she muttered,
-wrenching herself from Márya Dmítrievna’s hands with a vicious effort
-and sinking down again into her former position.
-
-“Natalie!” said Márya Dmítrievna. “I wish for your good. Lie still,
-stay like that then, I won’t touch you. But listen. I won’t tell you how
-guilty you are. You know that yourself. But when your father comes back
-tomorrow what am I to tell him? Eh?”
-
-Again Natásha’s body shook with sobs.
-
-“Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?”
-
-“I have no betrothed: I have refused him!” cried Natásha.
-
-“That’s all the same,” continued Márya Dmítrievna. “If they hear of
-this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if he
-challenges him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?”
-
-“Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who asked
-you to?” shouted Natásha, raising herself on the sofa and looking
-malignantly at Márya Dmítrievna.
-
-“But what did you want?” cried Márya Dmítrievna, growing angry again.
-“Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to the house?
-Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing girl?... Well, if he
-had carried you off... do you think they wouldn’t have found him?
-Your father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he’s a scoundrel, a
-wretch—that’s a fact!”
-
-“He is better than any of you!” exclaimed Natásha getting up. “If you
-hadn’t interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it? Sónya,
-why?... Go away!”
-
-And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which people
-bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned. Márya
-Dmítrievna was to speak again but Natásha cried out:
-
-“Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!” and she threw herself
-back on the sofa.
-
-Márya Dmítrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on her
-that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that nobody
-would know anything about it if only Natásha herself would undertake
-to forget it all and not let anyone see that something had happened.
-Natásha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she grew cold
-and had a shivering fit. Márya Dmítrievna put a pillow under her head,
-covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her some lime-flower
-water, but Natásha did not respond to her.
-
-“Well, let her sleep,” said Márya Dmítrievna as she went out of the room
-supposing Natásha to be asleep.
-
-But Natásha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open eyes she
-looked straight before her. All that night she did not sleep or weep and
-did not speak to Sónya who got up and went to her several times.
-
-Next day Count Rostóv returned from his estate near Moscow in time for
-lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the affair with
-the purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was nothing to keep
-him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess whom he missed. Márya
-Dmítrievna met him and told him that Natásha had been very unwell the
-day before and that they had sent for the doctor, but that she was
-better now. Natásha had not left her room that morning. With compressed
-and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she sat at the window, uneasily
-watching the people who drove past and hurriedly glancing round at
-anyone who entered the room. She was evidently expecting news of him and
-that he would come or would write to her.
-
-When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the sound
-of a man’s footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and malevolent
-expression. She did not even get up to greet him. “What is the matter
-with you, my angel? Are you ill?” asked the count.
-
-After a moment’s silence Natásha answered: “Yes, ill.”
-
-In reply to the count’s anxious inquiries as to why she was so dejected
-and whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she assured him
-that nothing had happened and asked him not to worry. Márya Dmítrievna
-confirmed Natásha’s assurances that nothing had happened. From
-the pretense of illness, from his daughter’s distress, and by the
-embarrassed faces of Sónya and Márya Dmítrievna, the count saw clearly
-that something had gone wrong during his absence, but it was so terrible
-for him to think that anything disgraceful had happened to his beloved
-daughter, and he so prized his own cheerful tranquillity, that he
-avoided inquiries and tried to assure himself that nothing particularly
-had happened; and he was only dissatisfied that her indisposition
-delayed their return to the country.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to go
-away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostóvs came
-to Moscow the effect Natásha had on him made him hasten to carry out
-his intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexéevich’s widow, who
-had long since promised to hand over to him some papers of her deceased
-husband’s.
-
-When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Márya
-Dmítrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great
-importance relating to Andrew Bolkónski and his betrothed. Pierre had
-been avoiding Natásha because it seemed to him that his feeling for her
-was stronger than a married man’s should be for his friend’s fiancée.
-Yet some fate constantly threw them together.
-
-“What can have happened? And what can they want with me?” thought he
-as he dressed to go to Márya Dmítrievna’s. “If only Prince Andrew would
-hurry up and come and marry her!” thought he on his way to the house.
-
-On the Tverskóy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him.
-
-“Pierre! Been back long?” someone shouted. Pierre raised his head. In
-a sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering the
-dashboard with snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makárin dashed
-past. Anatole was sitting upright in the classic pose of military
-dandies, the lower part of his face hidden by his beaver collar and his
-head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his white-plumed hat,
-tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded hair besprinkled
-with powdery snow.
-
-“Yes, indeed, that’s a true sage,” thought Pierre. “He sees nothing
-beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so he is
-always cheerful, satisfied, and serene. What wouldn’t I give to be like
-him!” he thought enviously.
-
-In Márya Dmítrievna’s anteroom the footman who helped him off with his
-fur coat said that the mistress asked him to come to her bedroom.
-
-When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natásha sitting at the
-window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face. She glanced round at him,
-frowned, and left the room with an expression of cold dignity.
-
-“What has happened?” asked Pierre, entering Márya Dmítrievna’s room.
-
-“Fine doings!” answered Dmítrievna. “For fifty-eight years have I lived
-in this world and never known anything so disgraceful!”
-
-And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him,
-Márya Dmítrievna informed him that Natásha had refused Prince Andrew
-without her parents’ knowledge and that the cause of this was Anatole
-Kurágin into whose society Pierre’s wife had thrown her and with whom
-Natásha had tried to elope during her father’s absence, in order to be
-married secretly.
-
-Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was told
-him, scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince Andrew’s
-deeply loved affianced wife—the same Natásha Rostóva who used to be so
-charming—should give up Bolkónski for that fool Anatole who was already
-secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in love with him as
-to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre could not conceive
-and could not imagine.
-
-He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natásha, whom
-he had known from a child, with this new conception of her baseness,
-folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. “They are all alike!” he
-said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man unfortunate
-enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied Prince Andrew to
-the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded pride, and the more
-he pitied his friend the more did he think with contempt and even with
-disgust of that Natásha who had just passed him in the ballroom with
-such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that Natásha’s soul was
-overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation, and that it was not
-her fault that her face happened to assume an expression of calm dignity
-and severity.
-
-“But how get married?” said Pierre, in answer to Márya Dmítrievna. “He
-could not marry—he is married!”
-
-“Things get worse from hour to hour!” ejaculated Márya Dmítrievna. “A
-nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she’s expecting him—expecting him
-since yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won’t go on
-expecting him.”
-
-After hearing the details of Anatole’s marriage from Pierre, and giving
-vent to her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Márya Dmítrievna
-told Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that the count or
-Bolkónski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew of this affair
-(which she hoped to hide from them) might challenge Anatole to a duel,
-and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his brother-in-law in her name to
-leave Moscow and not dare to let her set eyes on him again. Pierre—only
-now realizing the danger to the old count, Nicholas, and Prince
-Andrew—promised to do as she wished. Having briefly and exactly
-explained her wishes to him, she let him go to the drawing room.
-
-“Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know nothing either,”
-she said. “And I will go and tell her it is no use expecting him! And
-stay to dinner if you care to!” she called after Pierre.
-
-Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset. That morning
-Natásha had told him that she had rejected Bolkónski.
-
-“Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!” he said to Pierre. “What troubles
-one has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret having
-come here.... I will be frank with you. Have you heard she has broken
-off her engagement without consulting anybody? It’s true this engagement
-never was much to my liking. Of course he is an excellent man, but
-still, with his father’s disapproval they wouldn’t have been happy, and
-Natásha won’t lack suitors. Still, it has been going on so long, and
-to take such a step without father’s or mother’s consent! And now she’s
-ill, and God knows what! It’s hard, Count, hard to manage daughters in
-their mother’s absence....”
-
-Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to change the
-subject, but the count returned to his troubles.
-
-Sónya entered the room with an agitated face.
-
-“Natásha is not quite well; she’s in her room and would like to see you.
-Márya Dmítrievna is with her and she too asks you to come.”
-
-“Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkónski’s, no doubt she wants to send
-him a message,” said the count. “Oh dear! Oh dear! How happy it all
-was!”
-
-And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the count left the
-room.
-
-When Márya Dmítrievna told Natásha that Anatole was married, Natásha
-did not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by Pierre
-himself. Sónya told Pierre this as she led him along the corridor to
-Natásha’s room.
-
-Natásha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Márya Dmítrievna, and her
-eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a questioning look the
-moment he entered. She did not smile or nod, but only gazed fixedly at
-him, and her look asked only one thing: was he a friend, or like the
-others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he evidently did
-not exist for her.
-
-“He knows all about it,” said Márya Dmítrievna pointing to Pierre and
-addressing Natásha. “Let him tell you whether I have told the truth.”
-
-Natásha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded animal
-looks at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.
-
-“Natálya Ilyníchna,” Pierre began, dropping his eyes with a feeling of
-pity for her and loathing for the thing he had to do, “whether it is
-true or not should make no difference to you, because...”
-
-“Then it is not true that he’s married!”
-
-“Yes, it is true.”
-
-“Has he been married long?” she asked. “On your honor?...”
-
-Pierre gave his word of honor.
-
-“Is he still here?” she asked, quickly.
-
-“Yes, I have just seen him.”
-
-She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with her hands that
-they should leave her alone.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went away at once.
-He drove through the town seeking Anatole Kurágin, at the thought of
-whom now the blood rushed to his heart and he felt a difficulty in
-breathing. He was not at the ice hills, nor at the gypsies’, nor at
-Komoneno’s. Pierre drove to the Club. In the Club all was going on as
-usual. The members who were assembling for dinner were sitting about
-in groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town news. The footman
-having greeted him, knowing his habits and his acquaintances, told him
-there was a place left for him in the small dining room and that Prince
-Michael Zakhárych was in the library, but Paul Timoféevich had not yet
-arrived. One of Pierre’s acquaintances, while they were talking about
-the weather, asked if he had heard of Kurágin’s abduction of Rostóva
-which was talked of in the town, and was it true? Pierre laughed and
-said it was nonsense for he had just come from the Rostóvs’. He asked
-everyone about Anatole. One man told him he had not come yet, and
-another that he was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see this
-calm, indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was going on in his
-soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till everyone had come, and
-as Anatole had not turned up did not stay for dinner but drove home.
-
-Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day with Dólokhov,
-consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate affair. It seemed to
-him essential to see Natásha. In the evening he drove to his sister’s
-to discuss with her how to arrange a meeting. When Pierre returned home
-after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his valet informed him that Prince
-Anatole was with the countess. The countess’ drawing room was full of
-guests.
-
-Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen since his
-return—at that moment she was more repulsive to him than ever—entered
-the drawing room and seeing Anatole went up to him.
-
-“Ah, Pierre,” said the countess going up to her husband. “You don’t know
-what a plight our Anatole...”
-
-She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband’s head, in his
-glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the terrible indications of that
-rage and strength which she knew and had herself experienced after his
-duel with Dólokhov.
-
-“Where you are, there is vice and evil!” said Pierre to his wife.
-“Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you,” he added in French.
-
-Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively, ready to
-follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled him toward himself
-and was leading him from the room.
-
-“If you allow yourself in my drawing room...” whispered Hélène, but
-Pierre did not reply and went out of the room.
-
-Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his face betrayed
-anxiety.
-
-Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed Anatole
-without looking at him.
-
-“You promised Countess Rostóva to marry her and were about to elope with
-her, is that so?”
-
-“Mon cher,” answered Anatole (their whole conversation was in French),
-“I don’t consider myself bound to answer questions put to me in that
-tone.”
-
-Pierre’s face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He seized Anatole
-by the collar of his uniform with his big hand and shook him from side
-to side till Anatole’s face showed a sufficient degree of terror.
-
-“When I tell you that I must talk to you!...” repeated Pierre.
-
-“Come now, this is stupid. What?” said Anatole, fingering a button of
-his collar that had been wrenched loose with a bit of the cloth.
-
-“You’re a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don’t know what deprives
-me from the pleasure of smashing your head with this!” said Pierre,
-expressing himself so artificially because he was talking French.
-
-He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it threateningly, but at once put
-it back in its place.
-
-“Did you promise to marry her?”
-
-“I... I didn’t think of it. I never promised, because...”
-
-Pierre interrupted him.
-
-“Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?” he said, moving toward
-Anatole.
-
-Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his pocket
-and drew out his pocketbook.
-
-Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing aside a table
-that stood in his way, threw himself on the sofa.
-
-“I shan’t be violent, don’t be afraid!” said Pierre in answer to a
-frightened gesture of Anatole’s. “First, the letters,” said he, as if
-repeating a lesson to himself. “Secondly,” he continued after a short
-pause, again rising and again pacing the room, “tomorrow you must get
-out of Moscow.”
-
-“But how can I?...”
-
-“Thirdly,” Pierre continued without listening to him, “you must never
-breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess Rostóva.
-I know I can’t prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark of
-conscience...” Pierre paced the room several times in silence.
-
-Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.
-
-“After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there is such
-a thing as other people’s happiness and peace, and that you are ruining
-a whole life for the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse yourself with women
-like my wife—with them you are within your rights, for they know what
-you want of them. They are armed against you by the same experience
-of debauchery; but to promise a maid to marry her... to deceive, to
-kidnap.... Don’t you understand that it is as mean as beating an old man
-or a child?...”
-
-Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with a
-questioning look.
-
-“I don’t know about that, eh?” said Anatole, growing more confident as
-Pierre mastered his wrath. “I don’t know that and don’t want to,” he
-said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of his lower jaw,
-“but you have used such words to me—‘mean’ and so on—which as a man of
-honor I can’t allow anyone to use.”
-
-Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he
-wanted.
-
-“Though it was tête-à-tête,” Anatole continued, “still I can’t...”
-
-“Is it satisfaction you want?” said Pierre ironically.
-
-“You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do as
-you wish, eh?”
-
-“I take them back, I take them back!” said Pierre, “and I ask you to
-forgive me.” Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. “And if
-you require money for your journey...”
-
-Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile, which
-Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him.
-
-“Oh, vile and heartless brood!” he exclaimed, and left the room.
-
-Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-Pierre drove to Márya Dmítrievna’s to tell her of the fulfillment of her
-wish that Kurágin should be banished from Moscow. The whole house was in
-a state of alarm and commotion. Natásha was very ill, having, as Márya
-Dmítrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the night after she had
-been told that Anatole was married, with some arsenic she had stealthily
-procured. After swallowing a little she had been so frightened that she
-woke Sónya and told her what she had done. The necessary antidotes had
-been administered in time and she was now out of danger, though still so
-weak that it was out of the question to move her to the country, and
-so the countess had been sent for. Pierre saw the distracted count, and
-Sónya, who had a tear-stained face, but he could not see Natásha.
-
-Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip about
-the attempted abduction of Rostóva. He resolutely denied these
-rumors, assuring everyone that nothing had happened except that his
-brother-in-law had proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to
-Pierre that it was his duty to conceal the whole affair and re-establish
-Natásha’s reputation.
-
-He was awaiting Prince Andrew’s return with dread and went every day to
-the old prince’s for news of him.
-
-Old Prince Bolkónski heard all the rumors current in the town from
-Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which
-Natásha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits than
-usual and awaited his son with great impatience.
-
-Some days after Anatole’s departure Pierre received a note from Prince
-Andrew, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come to see him.
-
-As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his
-father Natásha’s note to Princess Mary breaking off her engagement
-(Mademoiselle Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Mary and given
-it to the old prince), and he heard from him the story of Natásha’s
-elopement, with additions.
-
-Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see him next
-morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andrew in almost the same state
-as Natásha and was therefore surprised on entering the drawing room
-to hear him in the study talking in a loud animated voice about some
-intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince’s voice and another now
-and then interrupted him. Princess Mary came out to meet Pierre. She
-sighed, looking toward the door of the room where Prince Andrew was,
-evidently intending to express her sympathy with his sorrow, but Pierre
-saw by her face that she was glad both at what had happened and at the
-way her brother had taken the news of Natásha’s faithlessness.
-
-“He says he expected it,” she remarked. “I know his pride will not let
-him express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far better,
-than I expected. Evidently it had to be....”
-
-“But is it possible that all is really ended?” asked Pierre.
-
-Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did not understand
-how he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the study. Prince
-Andrew, greatly changed and plainly in better health, but with a fresh
-horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in civilian dress facing
-his father and Prince Meshchérski, warmly disputing and vigorously
-gesticulating. The conversation was about Speránski—the news of whose
-sudden exile and alleged treachery had just reached Moscow.
-
-“Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about him
-a month ago,” Prince Andrew was saying, “and by those who were unable to
-understand his aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and to throw on
-him all the blame of other men’s mistakes is very easy, but I maintain
-that if anything good has been accomplished in this reign it was done by
-him, by him alone.”
-
-He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and immediately
-assumed a vindictive expression.
-
-“Posterity will do him justice,” he concluded, and at once turned to
-Pierre.
-
-“Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?” he said with animation, but
-the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened. “Yes, I am well,” he said in
-answer to Pierre’s question, and smiled.
-
-To Pierre that smile said plainly: “I am well, but my health is now of
-no use to anyone.”
-
-After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish
-frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre, and
-about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his son’s
-tutor, Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation about
-Speránski which was still going on between the two old men.
-
-“If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon,
-they would have been made public,” he said with warmth and haste. “I do
-not, and never did, like Speránski personally, but I like justice!”
-
-Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only too
-familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous matters
-in order to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too intimate.
-When Prince Meshchérski had left, Prince Andrew took Pierre’s arm and
-asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A bed had been made
-up there, and some open portmanteaus and trunks stood about. Prince
-Andrew went to one and took out a small casket, from which he drew a
-packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently and very quickly. He
-stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his lips compressed.
-
-“Forgive me for troubling you....”
-
-Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natásha, and his
-broad face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated Prince
-Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he continued:
-
-“I have received a refusal from Countess Rostóva and have heard reports
-of your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of that
-kind. Is that true?”
-
-“Both true and untrue,” Pierre began; but Prince Andrew interrupted him.
-
-“Here are her letters and her portrait,” said he.
-
-He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre.
-
-“Give this to the countess... if you see her.”
-
-“She is very ill,” said Pierre.
-
-“Then she is here still?” said Prince Andrew. “And Prince Kurágin?” he
-added quickly.
-
-“He left long ago. She has been at death’s door.”
-
-“I much regret her illness,” said Prince Andrew; and he smiled like his
-father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.
-
-“So Monsieur Kurágin has not honored Countess Rostóva with his hand?”
-said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times.
-
-“He could not marry, for he was married already,” said Pierre.
-
-Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his father.
-
-“And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?” he said.
-
-“He has gone to Peters... But I don’t know,” said Pierre.
-
-“Well, it doesn’t matter,” said Prince Andrew. “Tell Countess Rostóva
-that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all that is
-good.”
-
-Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember whether
-he had something more to say, or waiting to see if Pierre would say
-anything, looked fixedly at him.
-
-“I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?” asked Pierre,
-“about...”
-
-“Yes,” returned Prince Andrew hastily. “I said that a fallen woman
-should be forgiven, but I didn’t say I could forgive her. I can’t.”
-
-“But can this be compared...?” said Pierre.
-
-Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: “Yes, ask her hand
-again, be magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that would be very noble, but
-I am unable to follow in that gentleman’s footsteps. If you wish to be
-my friend never speak to me of that... of all that! Well, good-by. So
-you’ll give her the packet?”
-
-Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.
-
-The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same as
-always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed her
-satisfaction that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at them
-Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the
-Rostóvs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to mention
-the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone else.
-
-At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was becoming
-evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with his father,
-now with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an unnatural animation,
-the cause of which Pierre so well understood.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII
-
-That same evening Pierre went to the Rostóvs’ to fulfill the commission
-entrusted to him. Natásha was in bed, the count at the club, and Pierre,
-after giving the letters to Sónya, went to Márya Dmítrievna who was
-interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken the news. Ten minutes
-later Sónya came to Márya Dmítrievna.
-
-“Natásha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirílovich,” said she.
-
-“But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not been
-tidied up.”
-
-“No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room,” said Sónya.
-
-Márya Dmítrievna only shrugged her shoulders.
-
-“When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind, don’t
-tell her everything!” said she to Pierre. “One hasn’t the heart to scold
-her, she is so much to be pitied, so much to be pitied.”
-
-Natásha was standing in the middle of the drawing room, emaciated, with
-a pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected to find
-her. When he appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently undecided
-whether to go to meet him or to wait till he came up.
-
-Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him her hand as
-usual; but she, stepping up to him, stopped, breathing heavily, her arms
-hanging lifelessly just in the pose she used to stand in when she
-went to the middle of the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different
-expression of face.
-
-“Peter Kirílovich,” she began rapidly, “Prince Bolkónski was your
-friend—is your friend,” she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that
-everything that had once been must now be different.) “He told me once
-to apply to you...”
-
-Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till then he had
-reproached her in his heart and tried to despise her, but he now felt so
-sorry for her that there was no room in his soul for reproach.
-
-“He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!” She stopped and
-breathed still more quickly, but did not shed tears.
-
-“Yes... I will tell him,” answered Pierre; “but...”
-
-He did not know what to say.
-
-Natásha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what he might think she
-had meant.
-
-“No, I know all is over,” she said hurriedly. “No, that can never be.
-I’m only tormented by the wrong I have done him. Tell him only that I
-beg him to forgive, forgive, forgive me for everything....”
-
-She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.
-
-A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed Pierre’s heart.
-
-“I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more,” said Pierre.
-“But... I should like to know one thing....”
-
-“Know what?” Natásha’s eyes asked.
-
-“I should like to know, did you love...” Pierre did not know how to
-refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought of him—“did you love that
-bad man?”
-
-“Don’t call him bad!” said Natásha. “But I don’t know, don’t know at
-all....”
-
-She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness, and love
-welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle under his spectacles and
-hoped they would not be noticed.
-
-“We won’t speak of it any more, my dear,” said Pierre, and his gentle,
-cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange to Natásha.
-
-“We won’t speak of it, my dear—I’ll tell him everything; but one thing
-I beg of you, consider me your friend and if you want help, advice,
-or simply to open your heart to someone—not now, but when your mind is
-clearer think of me!” He took her hand and kissed it. “I shall be happy
-if it’s in my power...”
-
-Pierre grew confused.
-
-“Don’t speak to me like that. I am not worth it!” exclaimed Natásha and
-turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her hand.
-
-He knew he had something more to say to her. But when he said it he was
-amazed at his own words.
-
-“Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you,” said he to her.
-
-“Before me? No! All is over for me,” she replied with shame and
-self-abasement.
-
-“All over?” he repeated. “If I were not myself, but the handsomest,
-cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this moment
-ask on my knees for your hand and your love!”
-
-For the first time for many days Natásha wept tears of gratitude and
-tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went out of the room.
-
-Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom, restraining
-tears of tenderness and joy that choked him, and without finding the
-sleeves of his fur cloak threw it on and got into his sleigh.
-
-“Where to now, your excellency?” asked the coachman.
-
-“Where to?” Pierre asked himself. “Where can I go now? Surely not to the
-Club or to pay calls?” All men seemed so pitiful, so poor, in comparison
-with this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in comparison
-with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him through her
-tears.
-
-“Home!” said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of frost Fahrenheit
-he threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and inhaled the
-air with joy.
-
-It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the
-black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky
-did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane
-things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised.
-At the entrance to the Arbát Square an immense expanse of dark starry
-sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the
-Prechístenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars
-but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white
-light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant
-comet of 1812—the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes
-and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long
-luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed
-joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having
-traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable
-space, seemed suddenly—like an arrow piercing the earth—to remain
-fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and
-displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating stars. It
-seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in
-his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK NINE: 1812
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating of
-the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces—millions
-of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army—moved from the
-west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which since 1811 Russian
-forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth of June, 1812, the
-forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began,
-that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human
-nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable
-crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money,
-burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not
-recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which
-those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.
-
-What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The
-historians tell us with naïve assurance that its causes were the wrongs
-inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental
-System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the
-mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.
-
-Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich,
-Rumyántsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to have
-taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for Napoleon to
-have written to Alexander: “My respected Brother, I consent to restore
-the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg”—and there would have been no war.
-
-We can understand that the matter seemed like that to contemporaries.
-It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England’s
-intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). It naturally
-seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war
-was Napoleon’s ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the
-war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the
-war was the Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the generals
-and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of
-giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the
-need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of
-that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between
-Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed
-from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. It
-is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of other
-reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points
-of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to
-posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and
-perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient.
-To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and
-tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander
-was firm, or because England’s policy was astute or the Duke of
-Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances
-have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the
-Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed
-and ruined the people of Smolénsk and Moscow and were killed by them.
-
-To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried
-away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event
-with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes present
-themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of
-them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes appears
-to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its insignificance
-compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its impotence—apart
-from the cooperation of all the other coincident causes—to occasion the
-event. To us, the wish or objection of this or that French corporal to
-serve a second term appears as much a cause as Napoleon’s refusal to
-withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to restore the duchy of
-Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and had a second, a third,
-and a thousandth corporal and private also refused, there would have
-been so many less men in Napoleon’s army and the war could not have
-occurred.
-
-Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw
-beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would
-have been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a second
-term then also there could have been no war. Nor could there have been
-a war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of Oldenburg, and
-had Alexander not felt insulted, and had there not been an autocratic
-government in Russia, or a Revolution in France and a subsequent
-dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced the French
-Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing could have
-happened. So all these causes—myriads of causes—coincided to bring it
-about. And so there was no one cause for that occurrence, but it had
-to occur because it had to. Millions of men, renouncing their human
-feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows,
-just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east
-to the west, slaying their fellows.
-
-The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed
-to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was
-drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be
-otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom
-the event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence of
-innumerable circumstances was needed without anyone of which the event
-could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of men in
-whose hands lay the real power—the soldiers who fired, or transported
-provisions and guns—should consent to carry out the will of these weak
-individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an infinite number
-of diverse and complex causes.
-
-We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational
-events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do
-not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history
-reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to
-us.
-
-Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal
-aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from
-doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action
-performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to
-history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.
-
-There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which
-is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive
-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him.
-
-Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in
-the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done
-is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of
-millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man
-stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with
-and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the
-predestination and inevitability of his every action.
-
-“The king’s heart is in the hands of the Lord.”
-
-A king is history’s slave.
-
-History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind, uses
-every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.
-
-Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that
-it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples
-*—as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him—he had never
-been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while
-thinking that he was acting on his own volition, to perform for the hive
-life—that is to say, for history—whatever had to be performed.
-
- * “To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples.”
-
-
-The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and
-by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and
-co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the
-nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg’s
-wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia—undertaken (as it seemed to
-Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace, the
-French Emperor’s love and habit of war coinciding with his people’s
-inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations, and the
-expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining advantages
-to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors he received
-in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the opinion of
-contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to attain peace,
-but which only wounded the self-love of both sides, and millions of
-other causes that adapted themselves to the event that was happening or
-coincided with it.
-
-When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its
-attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried
-by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or
-because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
-
-Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in
-which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the botanist
-who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and so
-forth is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says
-the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it. Equally
-right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he
-wanted to, and perished because Alexander desired his destruction, and
-he who says that an undermined hill weighing a million tons fell because
-the last navvy struck it for the last time with his mattock. In historic
-events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and
-like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.
-
-Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is
-in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of
-history and predestined from eternity.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent
-three weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings,
-and even an emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the
-emperor, kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings
-and princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and diamonds
-of his own—that is, which he had taken from other kings—to the Empress
-of Austria, and having, as his historian tells us, tenderly embraced the
-Empress Marie Louise—who regarded him as her husband, though he had left
-another wife in Paris—left her grieved by the parting which she seemed
-hardly able to bear. Though the diplomatists still firmly believed in
-the possibility of peace and worked zealously to that end, and though
-the Emperor Napoleon himself wrote a letter to Alexander, calling him
-Monsieur mon frère, and sincerely assured him that he did not want war
-and would always love and honor him—yet he set off to join his army,
-and at every station gave fresh orders to accelerate the movement of his
-troops from west to east. He went in a traveling coach with six horses,
-surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp, and an escort, along the road to
-Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and Königsberg. At each of these towns thousands
-of people met him with excitement and enthusiasm.
-
-The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses carried
-him in the same direction. On the tenth of June, * coming up with the
-army, he spent the night in apartments prepared for him on the estate of
-a Polish count in the Vilkavisski forest.
-
- * Old style.
-
-Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the Niemen, and,
-changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank in order to
-select a place for the crossing.
-
-Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the
-wide-spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of Moscow
-(Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the Scythia
-into which Alexander the Great had marched—Napoleon unexpectedly, and
-contrary alike to strategic and diplomatic considerations, ordered an
-advance, and the next day his army began to cross the Niemen.
-
-Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out of his tent,
-which was pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and
-looked through a spyglass at the streams of his troops pouring out of
-the Vilkavisski forest and flowing over the three bridges thrown across
-the river. The troops, knowing of the Emperor’s presence, were on the
-lookout for him, and when they caught sight of a figure in an overcoat
-and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite in front of his tent on
-the hill, they threw up their caps and shouted: “Vive l’Empereur!” and
-one after another poured in a ceaseless stream out of the vast forest
-that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and on by the three
-bridges to the other side.
-
-“Now we’ll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand himself, things
-get hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive l’Empereur! So these
-are the steppes of Asia! It’s a nasty country all the same. Au revoir,
-Beauché; I’ll keep the best palace in Moscow for you! Au revoir. Good
-luck!... Did you see the Emperor? Vive l’Empereur!... preur!—If
-they make me Governor of India, Gérard, I’ll make you Minister of
-Kashmir—that’s settled. Vive l’Empereur! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! The
-Cossacks—those rascals—see how they run! Vive l’Empereur! There he
-is, do you see him? I’ve seen him twice, as I see you now. The little
-corporal... I saw him give the cross to one of the veterans.... Vive
-l’Empereur!” came the voices of men, old and young, of most diverse
-characters and social positions. On the faces of all was one common
-expression of joy at the commencement of the long-expected campaign and
-of rapture and devotion to the man in the gray coat who was standing on
-the hill.
-
-On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse was
-brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one of the
-bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant and rapturous
-acclamations which he evidently endured only because it was impossible
-to forbid the soldiers to express their love of him by such shouting,
-but the shouting which accompanied him everywhere disturbed him and
-distracted him from the military cares that had occupied him from the
-time he joined the army. He rode across one of the swaying pontoon
-bridges to the farther side, turned sharply to the left, and galloped in
-the direction of Kóvno, preceded by enraptured, mounted chasseurs of the
-Guard who, breathless with delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for
-him through the troops. On reaching the broad river Víliya, he stopped
-near a regiment of Polish Uhlans stationed by the river.
-
-“Vivat!” shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their ranks and
-pressing against one another to see him.
-
-Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a log
-that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, a telescope was handed
-him which he rested on the back of a happy page who had run up to him,
-and he gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became absorbed in a map laid
-out on the logs. Without lifting his head he said something, and two of
-his aides-de-camp galloped off to the Polish Uhlans.
-
-“What? What did he say?” was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans
-when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to them.
-
-The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The colonel of the
-Polish Uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed and, fumbling in his speech
-from excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be permitted
-to swim the river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford. In evident
-fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission to get on a horse, he
-begged to be allowed to swim across the river before the Emperor’s
-eyes. The aide-de-camp replied that probably the Emperor would not be
-displeased at this excess of zeal.
-
-As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached officer,
-with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted “Vivat!”
-and, commanding the Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse and galloped
-into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse, which had grown
-restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading for the deepest
-part where the current was swift. Hundreds of Uhlans galloped in after
-him. It was cold and uncanny in the rapid current in the middle of the
-stream, and the Uhlans caught hold of one another as they fell off their
-horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some of the men; the others
-tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some clinging to their horses’
-manes. They tried to make their way forward to the opposite bank and,
-though there was a ford one third of a mile away, were proud that they
-were swimming and drowning in this river under the eyes of the man who
-sat on the log and was not even looking at what they were doing. When
-the aide-de-camp, having returned and choosing an opportune moment,
-ventured to draw the Emperor’s attention to the devotion of the Poles
-to his person, the little man in the gray overcoat got up and, having
-summoned Berthier, began pacing up and down the bank with him, giving
-him instructions and occasionally glancing disapprovingly at the
-drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention.
-
-For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of
-the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough to
-dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called for
-his horse and rode to his quarters.
-
-Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were sent to
-their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from which
-they had started. The colonel and some of his men got across and with
-difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they had
-got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted “Vivat!”
-and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon had been but where he
-no longer was and at that moment considered themselves happy.
-
-That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian paper
-money prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as quickly as
-possible and another that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a letter
-containing information about the orders to the French army had been
-found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish colonel who
-had needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled in the Légion
-d’honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head.
-
-Quos vult perdere dementat. *
-
- * Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vílna for more than a
-month, reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for the
-war that everyone expected and to prepare for which the Emperor had come
-from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The vacillation
-between the various plans that were proposed had even increased after
-the Emperor had been at headquarters for a month. Each of the three
-armies had its own commander in chief, but there was no supreme
-commander of all the forces, and the Emperor did not assume that
-responsibility himself.
-
-The longer the Emperor remained in Vílna the less did everybody—tired of
-waiting—prepare for the war. All the efforts of those who surrounded the
-sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend his time pleasantly
-and forget that war was impending.
-
-In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish magnates, by the
-courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it occurred to one of the Polish
-aides-de-camp in attendance that a dinner and ball should be given for
-the Emperor by his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly received.
-The Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected money by
-subscription. The lady who was thought to be most pleasing to the
-Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count Bennigsen, being a
-landowner in the Vílna province, offered his country house for the fete,
-and the thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner, regatta, and
-fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen’s country seat.
-
-The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen, and
-his vanguard, driving off the Cossacks, crossed the Russian frontier,
-Alexander spent the evening at the entertainment given by his
-aides-de-camp at Bennigsen’s country house.
-
-It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters declared
-that rarely had so many beautiful women been assembled in one place.
-Countess Bezúkhova was present among other Russian ladies who had
-followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vílna and eclipsed the refined
-Polish ladies by her massive, so-called Russian type of beauty. The
-Emperor noticed her and honored her with a dance.
-
-Borís Drubetskóy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the
-present en garçon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not an
-aide-de-camp, had subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Borís
-was now a rich man who had risen to high honors and no longer sought
-patronage but stood on an equal footing with the highest of those of his
-own age. He was meeting Hélène in Vílna after not having seen her for
-a long time and did not recall the past, but as Hélène was enjoying
-the favors of a very important personage and Borís had only recently
-married, they met as good friends of long standing.
-
-At midnight dancing was still going on. Hélène, not having a suitable
-partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka with Borís. They were the
-third couple. Borís, coolly looking at Hélène’s dazzling bare shoulders
-which emerged from a dark, gold-embroidered, gauze gown, talked to her
-of old acquaintances and at the same time, unaware of it himself and
-unnoticed by others, never for an instant ceased to observe the Emperor
-who was in the same room. The Emperor was not dancing, he stood in the
-doorway, stopping now one pair and now another with gracious words which
-he alone knew how to utter.
-
-As the mazurka began, Borís saw that Adjutant General Balashëv, one of
-those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him and contrary
-to court etiquette stood near him while he was talking to a Polish
-lady. Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor looked inquiringly
-at Balashëv and, evidently understanding that he only acted thus because
-there were important reasons for so doing, nodded slightly to the lady
-and turned to him. Hardly had Balashëv begun to speak before a look of
-amazement appeared on the Emperor’s face. He took Balashëv by the arm
-and crossed the room with him, unconsciously clearing a path seven
-yards wide as the people on both sides made way for him. Borís noticed
-Arakchéev’s excited face when the sovereign went out with Balashëv.
-Arakchéev looked at the Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing with
-his red nose, stepped forward from the crowd as if expecting the Emperor
-to address him. (Borís understood that Arakchéev envied Balashëv and
-was displeased that evidently important news had reached the Emperor
-otherwise than through himself.)
-
-But the Emperor and Balashëv passed out into the illuminated garden
-without noticing Arakchéev who, holding his sword and glancing
-wrathfully around, followed some twenty paces behind them.
-
-All the time Borís was going through the figures of the mazurka, he was
-worried by the question of what news Balashëv had brought and how he
-could find it out before others. In the figure in which he had to choose
-two ladies, he whispered to Hélène that he meant to choose Countess
-Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the veranda, and glided over
-the parquet to the door opening into the garden, where, seeing Balashëv
-and the Emperor returning to the veranda, he stood still. They were
-moving toward the door. Borís, fluttering as if he had not had time to
-withdraw, respectfully pressed close to the doorpost with bowed head.
-
-The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been personally
-affronted, was finishing with these words:
-
-“To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make peace as long as
-a single armed enemy remains in my country!” It seemed to Borís that it
-gave the Emperor pleasure to utter these words. He was satisfied with
-the form in which he had expressed his thoughts, but displeased that
-Borís had overheard it.
-
-“Let no one know of it!” the Emperor added with a frown.
-
-Borís understood that this was meant for him and, closing his eyes,
-slightly bowed his head. The Emperor re-entered the ballroom and
-remained there about another half-hour.
-
-Borís was thus the first to learn the news that the French army had
-crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this, was able to show certain
-important personages that much that was concealed from others was
-usually known to him, and by this means he rose higher in their
-estimation.
-
-
-The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was
-particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations, and at
-a ball. On first receiving the news, under the influence of indignation
-and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased him, fully
-expressed his feelings, and has since become famous. On returning home
-at two o’clock that night he sent for his secretary, Shishkóv, and told
-him to write an order to the troops and a rescript to Field Marshal
-Prince Saltykóv, in which he insisted on the words being inserted that
-he would not make peace so long as a single armed Frenchman remained on
-Russian soil.
-
-Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:
-
-Monsieur mon frère,
-
-Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty with which I have kept
-my engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have crossed the Russian
-frontier, and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in
-which Count Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression, that
-Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of war with me
-from the time Prince Kurákin asked for his passports. The reasons on
-which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him would
-never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a pretext for
-aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has declared, was
-never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I was informed of
-it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and ordered him to remain
-at his post. If Your Majesty does not intend to shed the blood of our
-peoples for such a misunderstanding, and consents to withdraw your
-troops from Russian territory, I will regard what has passed as not
-having occurred and an understanding between us will be possible. In
-the contrary case, Your Majesty, I shall see myself forced to repel an
-attack that nothing on my part has provoked. It still depends on Your
-Majesty to preserve humanity from the calamity of another war.
-
-I am, etc.,
-
-(signed) Alexander
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having
-sent for Balashëv and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him to
-take it and hand it personally to the French Emperor. When dispatching
-Balashëv, the Emperor repeated to him the words that he would not make
-peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on Russian soil and told
-him to transmit those words to Napoleon. Alexander did not insert them
-in his letter to Napoleon, because with his characteristic tact he felt
-it would be injudicious to use them at a moment when a last attempt at
-reconciliation was being made, but he definitely instructed Balashëv to
-repeat them personally to Napoleon.
-
-Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied by a
-bugler and two Cossacks, Balashëv reached the French outposts at the
-village of Rykónty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn. There he
-was stopped by French cavalry sentinels.
-
-A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform and a
-shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching Balashëv to halt. Balashëv did
-not do so at once, but continued to advance along the road at a walking
-pace.
-
-The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering words of abuse,
-advanced his horse’s chest against Balashëv, put his hand to his saber,
-and shouted rudely at the Russian general, asking: was he deaf that
-he did not do as he was told? Balashëv mentioned who he was. The
-noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades about regimental
-matters without looking at the Russian general.
-
-After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after
-conversing with the Emperor less than three hours before, and in general
-being accustomed to the respect due to his rank in the service, Balashëv
-found it very strange here on Russian soil to encounter this hostile,
-and still more this disrespectful, application of brute force to
-himself.
-
-The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds, the air was
-fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road from
-the village, and over the fields the larks rose trilling, one after
-another, like bubbles rising in water.
-
-Balashëv looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an officer from the
-village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler and the French hussars looked
-silently at one another from time to time.
-
-A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left his bed, came
-riding from the village on a handsome sleek gray horse, accompanied
-by two hussars. The officer, the soldiers, and their horses all looked
-smart and well kept.
-
-It was that first period of a campaign when troops are still in full
-trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers, but with a shade of
-martial swagger in their clothes, and a touch of the gaiety and spirit
-of enterprise which always accompany the opening of a campaign.
-
-The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn, but was polite and
-evidently understood Balashëv’s importance. He led him past his soldiers
-and behind the outposts and told him that his wish to be presented to
-the Emperor would most likely be satisfied immediately, as the Emperor’s
-quarters were, he believed, not far off.
-
-They rode through the village of Rykónty, past tethered French hussar
-horses, past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and stared with
-curiosity at a Russian uniform, and came out at the other end of the
-village. The colonel said that the commander of the division was a mile
-and a quarter away and would receive Balashëv and conduct him to his
-destination.
-
-The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright verdure.
-
-They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before they saw a group
-of horsemen coming toward them. In front of the group, on a black horse
-with trappings that glittered in the sun, rode a tall man with plumes
-in his hat and black hair curling down to his shoulders. He wore a red
-mantle, and stretched his long legs forward in French fashion. This man
-rode toward Balashëv at a gallop, his plumes flowing and his gems and
-gold lace glittering in the bright June sunshine.
-
-Balashëv was only two horses’ length from the equestrian with the
-bracelets, plumes, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was galloping
-toward him with a theatrically solemn countenance, when Julner, the
-French colonel, whispered respectfully: “The King of Naples!” It was,
-in fact, Murat, now called “King of Naples.” Though it was quite
-incomprehensible why he should be King of Naples, he was called so,
-and was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore assumed a more
-solemn and important air than formerly. He was so sure that he really
-was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of his departure from that
-city, while walking through the streets with his wife, some Italians
-called out to him: “Viva il re!” * he turned to his wife with a pensive
-smile and said: “Poor fellows, they don’t know that I am leaving them
-tomorrow!”
-
- * “Long live the king.”
-
-
-But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and pitied
-the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly, after he had
-been ordered to return to military service—and especially since his last
-interview with Napoleon in Danzig, when his august brother-in-law had
-told him: “I made you King that you should reign in my way, but not in
-yours!”—he had cheerfully taken up his familiar business, and—like a
-well-fed but not overfat horse that feels himself in harness and grows
-skittish between the shafts—he dressed up in clothes as variegated and
-expensive as possible, and gaily and contentedly galloped along the
-roads of Poland, without himself knowing why or whither.
-
-On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head, with its long hair
-curling to his shoulders, in a majestically royal manner, and looked
-inquiringly at the French colonel. The colonel respectfully informed His
-Majesty of Balashëv’s mission, whose name he could not pronounce.
-
-“De Bal-machève!” said the King (overcoming by his assurance the
-difficulty that had presented itself to the colonel). “Charmed to
-make your acquaintance, General!” he added, with a gesture of kingly
-condescension.
-
-As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity
-instantly forsook him, and without noticing it he passed into his
-natural tone of good-natured familiarity. He laid his hand on the
-withers of Balashëv’s horse and said:
-
-“Well, General, it all looks like war,” as if regretting a circumstance
-of which he was unable to judge.
-
-“Your Majesty,” replied Balashëv, “my master, the Emperor, does not
-desire war and as Your Majesty sees...” said Balashëv, using the words
-Your Majesty at every opportunity, with the affectation unavoidable in
-frequently addressing one to whom the title was still a novelty.
-
-Murat’s face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to “Monsieur
-de Bal-machève.” But royauté oblige! * and he felt it incumbent on
-him, as a king and an ally, to confer on state affairs with Alexander’s
-envoy. He dismounted, took Balashëv’s arm, and moving a few steps away
-from his suite, which waited respectfully, began to pace up and down
-with him, trying to speak significantly. He referred to the fact that
-the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand that he should withdraw his
-troops from Prussia, especially when that demand became generally known
-and the dignity of France was thereby offended.
-
- * “Royalty has its obligations.”
-
-
-Balashëv replied that there was “nothing offensive in the demand,
-because...” but Murat interrupted him.
-
-“Then you don’t consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?” he asked
-unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish smile.
-
-Balashëv told him why he considered Napoleon to be the originator of the
-war.
-
-“Oh, my dear general!” Murat again interrupted him, “with all my heart I
-wish the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and that the war
-begun by no wish of mine may finish as quickly as possible!” said he,
-in the tone of a servant who wants to remain good friends with another
-despite a quarrel between their masters.
-
-And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and the state of his
-health, and to reminiscences of the gay and amusing times he had spent
-with him in Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal dignity,
-Murat solemnly drew himself up, assumed the pose in which he had stood
-at his coronation, and, waving his right arm, said:
-
-“I won’t detain you longer, General. I wish success to your mission,”
-and with his embroidered red mantle, his flowing feathers, and his
-glittering ornaments, he rejoined his suite who were respectfully
-awaiting him.
-
-Balashëv rode on, supposing from Murat’s words that he would very soon
-be brought before Napoleon himself. But instead of that, at the next
-village the sentinels of Davout’s infantry corps detained him as
-the pickets of the vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the corps
-commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the village to Marshal
-Davout.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-Davout was to Napoleon what Arakchéev was to Alexander—though not a
-coward like Arakchéev, he was as precise, as cruel, and as unable to
-express his devotion to his monarch except by cruelty.
-
-In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are
-necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always
-appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and their
-proximity to the head of the government may be. This inevitability alone
-can explain how the cruel Arakchéev, who tore out a grenadier’s mustache
-with his own hands, whose weak nerves rendered him unable to face
-danger, and who was neither an educated man nor a courtier, was able to
-maintain his powerful position with Alexander, whose own character was
-chivalrous, noble, and gentle.
-
-Balashëv found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed of a peasant’s hut,
-writing—he was auditing accounts. Better quarters could have been
-found him, but Marshal Davout was one of those men who purposely put
-themselves in most depressing conditions to have a justification for
-being gloomy. For the same reason they are always hard at work and in a
-hurry. “How can I think of the bright side of life when, as you see, I
-am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty shed?” the expression of
-his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure and necessity of such men,
-when they encounter anyone who shows animation, is to flaunt their own
-dreary, persistent activity. Davout allowed himself that pleasure when
-Balashëv was brought in. He became still more absorbed in his task when
-the Russian general entered, and after glancing over his spectacles at
-Balashëv’s face, which was animated by the beauty of the morning and
-by his talk with Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled still
-more and sneered malevolently.
-
-When he noticed in Balashëv’s face the disagreeable impression this
-reception produced, Davout raised his head and coldly asked what he
-wanted.
-
-Thinking he could have been received in such a manner only because
-Davout did not know that he was adjutant general to the Emperor
-Alexander and even his envoy to Napoleon, Balashëv hastened to inform
-him of his rank and mission. Contrary to his expectation, Davout, after
-hearing him, became still surlier and ruder.
-
-“Where is your dispatch?” he inquired. “Give it to me. I will send it to
-the Emperor.”
-
-Balashëv replied that he had been ordered to hand it personally to the
-Emperor.
-
-“Your Emperor’s orders are obeyed in your army, but here,” said Davout,
-“you must do as you’re told.”
-
-And, as if to make the Russian general still more conscious of his
-dependence on brute force, Davout sent an adjutant to call the officer
-on duty.
-
-Balashëv took out the packet containing the Emperor’s letter and laid it
-on the table (made of a door with its hinges still hanging on it, laid
-across two barrels). Davout took the packet and read the inscription.
-
-“You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or not,”
-protested Balashëv, “but permit me to observe that I have the honor to
-be adjutant general to His Majesty....”
-
-Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived pleasure from the
-signs of agitation and confusion which appeared on Balashëv’s face.
-
-“You will be treated as is fitting,” said he and, putting the packet in
-his pocket, left the shed.
-
-A minute later the marshal’s adjutant, de Castrès, came in and conducted
-Balashëv to the quarters assigned him.
-
-That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board on the barrels.
-
-Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking Balashëv to come to
-him, peremptorily requested him to remain there, to move on with the
-baggage train should orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one
-except Monsieur de Castrès.
-
-After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness of his impotence
-and insignificance—particularly acute by contrast with the sphere of
-power in which he had so lately moved—and after several marches with
-the marshal’s baggage and the French army, which occupied the
-whole district, Balashëv was brought to Vílna—now occupied by the
-French—through the very gate by which he had left it four days
-previously.
-
-Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte de Turenne, came
-to Balashëv and informed him of the Emperor Napoleon’s wish to honor him
-with an audience.
-
-Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhénsk regiment had stood in
-front of the house to which Balashëv was conducted, and now two French
-grenadiers stood there in blue uniforms unfastened in front and with
-shaggy caps on their heads, and an escort of hussars and Uhlans and a
-brilliant suite of aides-de-camp, pages, and generals, who were waiting
-for Napoleon to come out, were standing at the porch, round his saddle
-horse and his Mameluke, Rustan. Napoleon received Balashëv in the very
-house in Vílna from which Alexander had dispatched him on his mission.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-Though Balashëv was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at the luxury
-and magnificence of Napoleon’s court.
-
-The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room where many
-generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates—several of whom
-Balashëv had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia—were waiting.
-Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before going
-for his ride.
-
-After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty came into
-the great reception room and, bowing politely, asked Balashëv to follow
-him.
-
-Balashëv went into a small reception room, one door of which led into a
-study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor had dispatched him
-on his mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting. He heard hurried
-footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it were opened rapidly; all
-was silent and then from the study the sound was heard of other steps,
-firm and resolute—they were those of Napoleon. He had just finished
-dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform, opening in front over
-a white waistcoat so long that it covered his rotund stomach, white
-leather breeches tightly fitting the fat thighs of his short legs, and
-Hessian boots. His short hair had evidently just been brushed, but one
-lock hung down in the middle of his broad forehead. His plump white neck
-stood out sharply above the black collar of his uniform, and he smelled
-of Eau de Cologne. His full face, rather young-looking, with its
-prominent chin, wore a gracious and majestic expression of imperial
-welcome.
-
-He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head slightly
-thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with broad thick
-shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily protruding, had that
-imposing and stately appearance one sees in men of forty who live in
-comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the best of spirits that
-day.
-
-He nodded in answer to Balashëv’s low and respectful bow, and coming up
-to him at once began speaking like a man who values every moment of his
-time and does not condescend to prepare what he has to say but is sure
-he will always say the right thing and say it well.
-
-“Good day, General!” said he. “I have received the letter you brought
-from the Emperor Alexander and am very glad to see you.” He glanced with
-his large eyes into Balashëv’s face and immediately looked past him.
-
-It was plain that Balashëv’s personality did not interest him at all.
-Evidently only what took place within his own mind interested him.
-Nothing outside himself had any significance for him, because everything
-in the world, it seemed to him, depended entirely on his will.
-
-“I do not, and did not, desire war,” he continued, “but it has been
-forced on me. Even now” (he emphasized the word) “I am ready to receive
-any explanations you can give me.”
-
-And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons for
-dissatisfaction with the Russian government. Judging by the calmly
-moderate and amicable tone in which the French Emperor spoke, Balashëv
-was firmly persuaded that he wished for peace and intended to enter into
-negotiations.
-
-When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly at the
-Russian envoy, Balashëv began a speech he had prepared long before:
-“Sire! The Emperor, my master...” but the sight of the Emperor’s eyes
-bent on him confused him. “You are flurried—compose yourself!” Napoleon
-seemed to say, as with a scarcely perceptible smile he looked at
-Balashëv’s uniform and sword.
-
-Balashëv recovered himself and began to speak. He said that the
-Emperor Alexander did not consider Kurákin’s demand for his passports a
-sufficient cause for war; that Kurákin had acted on his own initiative
-and without his sovereign’s assent, that the Emperor Alexander did not
-desire war, and had no relations with England.
-
-“Not yet!” interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to give vent to his
-feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly as a sign that Balashëv might
-proceed.
-
-After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashëv added that
-the Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter into
-negotiations except on condition that... Here Balashëv hesitated:
-he remembered the words the Emperor Alexander had not written in his
-letter, but had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykóv and had
-told Balashëv to repeat to Napoleon. Balashëv remembered these words,
-“So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian soil,” but some
-complex feeling restrained him. He could not utter them, though he
-wished to do so. He grew confused and said: “On condition that the
-French army retires beyond the Niemen.”
-
-Napoleon noticed Balashëv’s embarrassment when uttering these last
-words; his face twitched and the calf of his left leg began to quiver
-rhythmically. Without moving from where he stood he began speaking in
-a louder tone and more hurriedly than before. During the speech that
-followed, Balashëv, who more than once lowered his eyes, involuntarily
-noticed the quivering of Napoleon’s left leg which increased the more
-Napoleon raised his voice.
-
-“I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander,” he began. “Have
-I not for eighteen months been doing everything to obtain it? I
-have waited eighteen months for explanations. But in order to begin
-negotiations, what is demanded of me?” he said, frowning and making an
-energetic gesture of inquiry with his small white plump hand.
-
-“The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire,” replied Balashëv.
-
-“The Niemen?” repeated Napoleon. “So now you want me to retire beyond
-the Niemen—only the Niemen?” repeated Napoleon, looking straight at
-Balashëv.
-
-The latter bowed his head respectfully.
-
-Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from Pomerania,
-only a withdrawal beyond the Niemen was now demanded. Napoleon turned
-quickly and began to pace the room.
-
-“You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond the Niemen
-before commencing negotiations, but in just the same way two months ago
-the demand was that I should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the Oder,
-and yet you are willing to negotiate.”
-
-He went in silence from one corner of the room to the other and again
-stopped in front of Balashëv. Balashëv noticed that his left leg was
-quivering faster than before and his face seemed petrified in its stern
-expression. This quivering of his left leg was a thing Napoleon was
-conscious of. “The vibration of my left calf is a great sign with me,”
-he remarked at a later date.
-
-“Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder may be made to a
-Prince of Baden, but not to me!” Napoleon almost screamed, quite to his
-own surprise. “If you gave me Petersburg and Moscow I could not accept
-such conditions. You say I have begun this war! But who first joined his
-army? The Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer me negotiations when I
-have expended millions, when you are in alliance with England, and when
-your position is a bad one. You offer me negotiations! But what is the
-aim of your alliance with England? What has she given you?” he continued
-hurriedly, evidently no longer trying to show the advantages of peace
-and discuss its possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and
-power and Alexander’s errors and duplicity.
-
-The commencement of his speech had obviously been made with the
-intention of demonstrating the advantages of his position and showing
-that he was nevertheless willing to negotiate. But he had begun talking,
-and the more he talked the less could he control his words.
-
-The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to exalt himself and
-insult Alexander—just what he had least desired at the commencement of
-the interview.
-
-“I hear you have made peace with Turkey?”
-
-Balashëv bowed his head affirmatively.
-
-“Peace has been concluded...” he began.
-
-But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to do all the
-talking himself, and continued to talk with the sort of eloquence and
-unrestrained irritability to which spoiled people are so prone.
-
-“Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without obtaining
-Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have given your sovereign those
-provinces as I gave him Finland. Yes,” he went on, “I promised and would
-have given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, and now he
-won’t have those splendid provinces. Yet he might have united them to
-his empire and in a single reign would have extended Russia from the
-Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths of the Danube. Catherine the Great could
-not have done more,” said Napoleon, growing more and more excited as he
-paced up and down the room, repeating to Balashëv almost the very words
-he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. “All that, he would have
-owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!” he repeated several
-times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold snuffbox, lifted it to
-his nose, and greedily sniffed at it.
-
-“What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander’s might have been!”
-
-He looked compassionately at Balashëv, and as soon as the latter tried
-to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted him.
-
-“What could he wish or look for that he would not have obtained
-through my friendship?” demanded Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders
-in perplexity. “But no, he has preferred to surround himself with
-my enemies, and with whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and
-Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own country;
-Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a fugitive French
-subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than the others, but all
-the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807 and who
-should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor Alexander’s mind....
-Granted that were they competent they might be made use of,” continued
-Napoleon—hardly able to keep pace in words with the rush of thoughts
-that incessantly sprang up, proving how right and strong he was (in his
-perception the two were one and the same)—“but they are not even that!
-They are neither fit for war nor peace! Barclay is said to be the
-most capable of them all, but I cannot say so, judging by his first
-movements. And what are they doing, all these courtiers? Pfuel proposes,
-Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and Barclay, called on to act,
-does not know what to decide on, and time passes bringing no result.
-Bagratión alone is a military man. He’s stupid, but he has experience,
-a quick eye, and resolution.... And what role is your young monarch
-playing in that monstrous crowd? They compromise him and throw on him
-the responsibility for all that happens. A sovereign should not be with
-the army unless he is a general!” said Napoleon, evidently uttering
-these words as a direct challenge to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander
-desired to be a military commander.
-
-“The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven’t even been able to
-defend Vílna. You are cut in two and have been driven out of the Polish
-provinces. Your army is grumbling.”
-
-“On the contrary, Your Majesty,” said Balashëv, hardly able to remember
-what had been said to him and following these verbal fireworks with
-difficulty, “the troops are burning with eagerness...”
-
-“I know everything!” Napoleon interrupted him. “I know everything. I
-know the number of your battalions as exactly as I know my own. You have
-not two hundred thousand men, and I have three times that number. I give
-you my word of honor,” said Napoleon, forgetting that his word of honor
-could carry no weight—“I give you my word of honor that I have five
-hundred and thirty thousand men this side of the Vistula. The Turks will
-be of no use to you; they are worth nothing and have shown it by making
-peace with you. As for the Swedes—it is their fate to be governed by
-mad kings. Their king was insane and they changed him for
-another—Bernadotte, who promptly went mad—for no Swede would ally
-himself with Russia unless he were mad.”
-
-Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his snuffbox to his nose.
-
-Balashëv knew how to reply to each of Napoleon’s remarks, and would
-have done so; he continually made the gesture of a man wishing to say
-something, but Napoleon always interrupted him. To the alleged insanity
-of the Swedes, Balashëv wished to reply that when Russia is on her side
-Sweden is practically an island: but Napoleon gave an angry exclamation
-to drown his voice. Napoleon was in that state of irritability in which
-a man has to talk, talk, and talk, merely to convince himself that he is
-in the right. Balashëv began to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared
-to demean his dignity and felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man,
-he shrank before the transport of groundless wrath that had evidently
-seized Napoleon. He knew that none of the words now uttered by Napoleon
-had any significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of them
-when he came to his senses. Balashëv stood with downcast eyes, looking
-at the movements of Napoleon’s stout legs and trying to avoid meeting
-his eyes.
-
-“But what do I care about your allies?” said Napoleon. “I have
-allies—the Poles. There are eighty thousand of them and they fight like
-lions. And there will be two hundred thousand of them.”
-
-And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he had uttered this
-obvious falsehood, and that Balashëv still stood silently before him in
-the same attitude of submission to fate, Napoleon abruptly turned
-round, drew close to Balashëv’s face, and, gesticulating rapidly and
-energetically with his white hands, almost shouted:
-
-“Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I’ll wipe it off the map
-of Europe!” he declared, his face pale and distorted by anger, and he
-struck one of his small hands energetically with the other. “Yes, I
-will throw you back beyond the Dvína and beyond the Dnieper, and will
-re-erect against you that barrier which it was criminal and blind of
-Europe to allow to be destroyed. Yes, that is what will happen to you.
-That is what you have gained by alienating me!” And he walked silently
-several times up and down the room, his fat shoulders twitching.
-
-He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out again, lifted
-it several times to his nose, and stopped in front of Balashëv. He
-paused, looked ironically straight into Balashëv’s eyes, and said in a
-quiet voice:
-
-“And yet what a splendid reign your master might have had!”
-
-Balashëv, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that from the
-Russian side things did not appear in so gloomy a light. Napoleon was
-silent, still looking derisively at him and evidently not listening to
-him. Balashëv said that in Russia the best results were expected from
-the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as if to say, “I know it’s
-your duty to say that, but you don’t believe it yourself. I have
-convinced you.”
-
-When Balashëv had ended, Napoleon again took out his snuffbox, sniffed
-at it, and stamped his foot twice on the floor as a signal. The door
-opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully, handed the Emperor
-his hat and gloves; another brought him a pocket handkerchief. Napoleon,
-without giving them a glance, turned to Balashëv:
-
-“Assure the Emperor Alexander from me,” said he, taking his hat, “that
-I am as devoted to him as before: I know him thoroughly and very highly
-esteem his lofty qualities. I will detain you no longer, General; you
-shall receive my letter to the Emperor.”
-
-And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in the reception room
-rushed forward and descended the staircase.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-After all that Napoleon had said to him—those bursts of anger and the
-last dryly spoken words: “I will detain you no longer, General; you
-shall receive my letter,” Balashëv felt convinced that Napoleon would
-not wish to see him, and would even avoid another meeting with him—an
-insulted envoy—especially as he had witnessed his unseemly anger. But,
-to his surprise, Balashëv received, through Duroc, an invitation to dine
-with the Emperor that day.
-
-Bessières, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at that dinner.
-
-Napoleon met Balashëv cheerfully and amiably. He not only showed no sign
-of constraint or self-reproach on account of his outburst that morning,
-but, on the contrary, tried to reassure Balashëv. It was evident that
-he had long been convinced that it was impossible for him to make a
-mistake, and that in his perception whatever he did was right, not
-because it harmonized with any idea of right and wrong, but because he
-did it.
-
-The Emperor was in very good spirits after his ride through Vílna, where
-crowds of people had rapturously greeted and followed him. From all
-the windows of the streets through which he rode, rugs, flags, and his
-monogram were displayed, and the Polish ladies, welcoming him, waved
-their handkerchiefs to him.
-
-At dinner, having placed Balashëv beside him, Napoleon not only treated
-him amiably but behaved as if Balashëv were one of his own courtiers,
-one of those who sympathized with his plans and ought to rejoice at
-his success. In the course of conversation he mentioned Moscow and
-questioned Balashëv about the Russian capital, not merely as an
-interested traveler asks about a new city he intends to visit, but as
-if convinced that Balashëv, as a Russian, must be flattered by his
-curiosity.
-
-“How many inhabitants are there in Moscow? How many houses? Is it true
-that Moscow is called ‘Holy Moscow’? How many churches are there in
-Moscow?” he asked.
-
-And receiving the reply that there were more than two hundred churches,
-he remarked:
-
-“Why such a quantity of churches?”
-
-“The Russians are very devout,” replied Balashëv.
-
-“But a large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign of the
-backwardness of a people,” said Napoleon, turning to Caulaincourt for
-appreciation of this remark.
-
-Balashëv respectfully ventured to disagree with the French Emperor.
-
-“Every country has its own character,” said he.
-
-“But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that,” said Napoleon.
-
-“I beg your Majesty’s pardon,” returned Balashëv, “besides Russia there
-is Spain, where there are also many churches and monasteries.”
-
-This reply of Balashëv’s, which hinted at the recent defeats of the
-French in Spain, was much appreciated when he related it at Alexander’s
-court, but it was not much appreciated at Napoleon’s dinner, where it
-passed unnoticed.
-
-The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals showed that they
-were puzzled as to what Balashëv’s tone suggested. “If there is a point
-we don’t see it, or it is not at all witty,” their expressions seemed
-to say. So little was his rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon did not
-notice it at all and naïvely asked Balashëv through what towns the
-direct road from there to Moscow passed. Balashëv, who was on the alert
-all through the dinner, replied that just as “all roads lead to Rome,”
-so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and “among them the
-road through Poltáva, which Charles XII chose.” Balashëv involuntarily
-flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this reply, but hardly had
-he uttered the word Poltáva before Caulaincourt began speaking of the
-badness of the road from Petersburg to Moscow and of his Petersburg
-reminiscences.
-
-After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon’s study, which four
-days previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander. Napoleon sat
-down, toying with his Sèvres coffee cup, and motioned Balashëv to a
-chair beside him.
-
-Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood which, more than
-any reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to
-consider everyone his friend. It seemed to him that he was surrounded
-by men who adored him: and he felt convinced that, after his dinner,
-Balashëv too was his friend and worshiper. Napoleon turned to him with a
-pleasant, though slightly ironic, smile.
-
-“They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander occupied? Strange,
-isn’t it, General?” he said, evidently not doubting that this remark
-would be agreeable to his hearer since it went to prove his, Napoleon’s,
-superiority to Alexander.
-
-Balashëv made no reply and bowed his head in silence.
-
-“Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and Stein were
-deliberating,” continued Napoleon with the same derisive and
-self-confident smile. “What I can’t understand,” he went on, “is that
-the Emperor Alexander has surrounded himself with my personal enemies.
-That I do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may do the same?”
-and he turned inquiringly to Balashëv, and evidently this thought turned
-him back on to the track of his morning’s anger, which was still fresh
-in him.
-
-“And let him know that I will do so!” said Napoleon, rising and pushing
-his cup away with his hand. “I’ll drive all his Württemberg, Baden, and
-Weimar relations out of Germany.... Yes. I’ll drive them out. Let him
-prepare an asylum for them in Russia!”
-
-Balashëv bowed his head with an air indicating that he would like to
-make his bow and leave, and only listened because he could not help
-hearing what was said to him. Napoleon did not notice this expression;
-he treated Balashëv not as an envoy from his enemy, but as a man
-now fully devoted to him and who must rejoice at his former master’s
-humiliation.
-
-“And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command of the armies? What is
-the good of that? War is my profession, but his business is to reign
-and not to command armies! Why has he taken on himself such a
-responsibility?”
-
-Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced several times up and down
-the room in silence, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, went up to
-Balashëv and with a slight smile, as confidently, quickly, and simply
-as if he were doing something not merely important but pleasing to
-Balashëv, he raised his hand to the forty-year-old Russian general’s
-face and, taking him by the ear, pulled it gently, smiling with his lips
-only.
-
-To have one’s ear pulled by the Emperor was considered the greatest
-honor and mark of favor at the French court.
-
-“Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander, why don’t you say
-anything?” said he, as if it was ridiculous, in his presence, to be the
-adorer and courtier of anyone but himself, Napoleon. “Are the horses
-ready for the general?” he added, with a slight inclination of his head
-in reply to Balashëv’s bow. “Let him have mine, he has a long way to
-go!”
-
-The letter taken by Balashëv was the last Napoleon sent to Alexander.
-Every detail of the interview was communicated to the Russian monarch,
-and the war began....
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to
-Petersburg, on business as he told his family, but really to meet
-Anatole Kurágin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching
-Petersburg he inquired for Kurágin but the latter had already left the
-city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on
-his track. Anatole Kurágin promptly obtained an appointment from
-the Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia. While in
-Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutúzov, his former commander who was
-always well disposed toward him, and Kutúzov suggested that he should
-accompany him to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general had
-been appointed commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having received an
-appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey.
-
-Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge Kurágin.
-He thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause it might
-compromise the young Countess Rostóva and so he wanted to meet Kurágin
-personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel. But he again
-failed to meet Kurágin in Turkey, for soon after Prince Andrew arrived,
-the latter returned to Russia. In a new country, amid new conditions,
-Prince Andrew found life easier to bear. After his betrothed had broken
-faith with him—which he felt the more acutely the more he tried to
-conceal its effects—the surroundings in which he had been happy became
-trying to him, and the freedom and independence he had once prized
-so highly were still more so. Not only could he no longer think the
-thoughts that had first come to him as he lay gazing at the sky on the
-field of Austerlitz and had later enlarged upon with Pierre, and which
-had filled his solitude at Boguchárovo and then in Switzerland and Rome,
-but he even dreaded to recall them and the bright and boundless horizons
-they had revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical
-matters unrelated to his past interests, and he seized on these the more
-eagerly the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if
-that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above him
-had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weighed him down, in
-which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.
-
-Of the activities that presented themselves to him, army service was the
-simplest and most familiar. As a general on duty on Kutúzov’s staff,
-he applied himself to business with zeal and perseverance and surprised
-Kutúzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not having found
-Kurágin in Turkey, Prince Andrew did not think it necessary to rush back
-to Russia after him, but all the same he knew that however long it might
-be before he met Kurágin, despite his contempt for him and despite all
-the proofs he deduced to convince himself that it was not worth stooping
-to a conflict with him—he knew that when he did meet him he would not
-be able to resist calling him out, any more than a ravenous man can help
-snatching at food. And the consciousness that the insult was not yet
-avenged, that his rancor was still unspent, weighed on his heart and
-poisoned the artificial tranquillity which he managed to obtain in
-Turkey by means of restless, plodding, and rather vainglorious and
-ambitious activity.
-
-In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon reached
-Bucharest—where Kutúzov had been living for two months, passing his
-days and nights with a Wallachian woman—Prince Andrew asked Kutúzov
-to transfer him to the Western Army. Kutúzov, who was already weary of
-Bolkónski’s activity which seemed to reproach his own idleness, very
-readily let him go and gave him a mission to Barclay de Tolly.
-
-Before joining the Western Army which was then, in May, encamped at
-Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald Hills which was directly on his way,
-being only two miles off the Smolénsk highroad. During the last three
-years there had been so many changes in his life, he had thought, felt,
-and seen so much (having traveled both in the east and the west), that
-on reaching Bald Hills it struck him as strange and unexpected to find
-the way of life there unchanged and still the same in every detail.
-He entered through the gates with their stone pillars and drove up
-the avenue leading to the house as if he were entering an enchanted,
-sleeping castle. The same old stateliness, the same cleanliness, the
-same stillness reigned there, and inside there was the same furniture,
-the same walls, sounds, and smell, and the same timid faces, only
-somewhat older. Princess Mary was still the same timid, plain maiden
-getting on in years, uselessly and joylessly passing the best years of
-her life in fear and constant suffering. Mademoiselle Bourienne was
-the same coquettish, self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of her
-existence and full of joyous hopes for the future. She had merely become
-more self-confident, Prince Andrew thought. Dessalles, the tutor he had
-brought from Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and
-talking broken Russian to the servants, but was still the same narrowly
-intelligent, conscientious, and pedantic preceptor. The old prince
-had changed in appearance only by the loss of a tooth, which left a
-noticeable gap on one side of his mouth; in character he was the same as
-ever, only showing still more irritability and skepticism as to what was
-happening in the world. Little Nicholas alone had changed. He had grown,
-become rosier, had curly dark hair, and, when merry and laughing, quite
-unconsciously lifted the upper lip of his pretty little mouth just
-as the little princess used to do. He alone did not obey the law of
-immutability in the enchanted, sleeping castle. But though externally
-all remained as of old, the inner relations of all these people had
-changed since Prince Andrew had seen them last. The household was
-divided into two alien and hostile camps, who changed their habits for
-his sake and only met because he was there. To the one camp belonged
-the old prince, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and the architect; to the other
-Princess Mary, Dessalles, little Nicholas, and all the old nurses and
-maids.
-
-During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but they
-were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt that he was a visitor for whose
-sake an exception was being made and that his presence made them all
-feel awkward. Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first day, he
-was taciturn, and the old prince noticing this also became morosely dumb
-and retired to his apartments directly after dinner. In the evening,
-when Prince Andrew went to him and, trying to rouse him, began to
-tell him of the young Count Kámensky’s campaign, the old prince
-began unexpectedly to talk about Princess Mary, blaming her for her
-superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, who, he said,
-was the only person really attached to him.
-
-The old prince said that if he was ill it was only because of Princess
-Mary: that she purposely worried and irritated him, and that by
-indulgence and silly talk she was spoiling little Prince Nicholas. The
-old prince knew very well that he tormented his daughter and that her
-life was very hard, but he also knew that he could not help tormenting
-her and that she deserved it. “Why does Prince Andrew, who sees this,
-say nothing to me about his sister? Does he think me a scoundrel, or an
-old fool who, without any reason, keeps his own daughter at a distance
-and attaches this Frenchwoman to himself? He doesn’t understand, so I
-must explain it, and he must hear me out,” thought the old prince.
-And he began explaining why he could not put up with his daughter’s
-unreasonable character.
-
-“If you ask me,” said Prince Andrew, without looking up (he was
-censuring his father for the first time in his life), “I did not wish to
-speak about it, but as you ask me I will give you my frank opinion. If
-there is any misunderstanding and discord between you and Mary, I can’t
-blame her for it at all. I know how she loves and respects you. Since
-you ask me,” continued Prince Andrew, becoming irritable—as he was
-always liable to do of late—“I can only say that if there are any
-misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless woman, who is not
-fit to be my sister’s companion.”
-
-The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural smile
-disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth to which Prince Andrew could
-not get accustomed.
-
-“What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You’ve already been talking it over!
-Eh?”
-
-“Father, I did not want to judge,” said Prince Andrew, in a hard and
-bitter tone, “but you challenged me, and I have said, and always shall
-say, that Mary is not to blame, but those to blame—the one to blame—is
-that Frenchwoman.”
-
-“Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!” said the old man in a
-low voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, with some embarrassment,
-but then he suddenly jumped up and cried: “Be off, be off! Let not a
-trace of you remain here!...”
-
-
-Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess Mary persuaded him
-to stay another day. That day he did not see his father, who did not
-leave his room and admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne and
-Tíkhon, but asked several times whether his son had gone. Next day,
-before leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son’s rooms. The boy,
-curly-headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat on his knee,
-and Prince Andrew began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell
-into a reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this
-pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He
-sought in himself either remorse for having angered his father or regret
-at leaving home for the first time in his life on bad terms with him,
-and was horrified to find neither. What meant still more to him was that
-he sought and did not find in himself the former tenderness for his son
-which he had hoped to reawaken by caressing the boy and taking him on
-his knee.
-
-“Well, go on!” said his son.
-
-Prince Andrew, without replying, put him down from his knee and went out
-of the room.
-
-As soon as Prince Andrew had given up his daily occupations, and
-especially on returning to the old conditions of life amid which he had
-been happy, weariness of life overcame him with its former intensity,
-and he hastened to escape from these memories and to find some work as
-soon as possible.
-
-“So you’ve decided to go, Andrew?” asked his sister.
-
-“Thank God that I can,” replied Prince Andrew. “I am very sorry you
-can’t.”
-
-“Why do you say that?” replied Princess Mary. “Why do you say that,
-when you are going to this terrible war, and he is so old? Mademoiselle
-Bourienne says he has been asking about you....”
-
-As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips trembled and her tears
-began to fall. Prince Andrew turned away and began pacing the room.
-
-“Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and what—what trash—can cause
-people misery!” he said with a malignity that alarmed Princess Mary.
-
-She understood that when speaking of “trash” he referred not only to
-Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also to the man who
-had ruined his own happiness.
-
-“Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!” she said, touching his
-elbow and looking at him with eyes that shone through her tears. “I
-understand you” (she looked down). “Don’t imagine that sorrow is the
-work of men. Men are His tools.” She looked a little above Prince
-Andrew’s head with the confident, accustomed look with which one looks
-at the place where a familiar portrait hangs. “Sorrow is sent by Him,
-not by men. Men are His instruments, they are not to blame. If you think
-someone has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We have no right to
-punish. And then you will know the happiness of forgiving.”
-
-“If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a woman’s virtue. But
-a man should not and cannot forgive and forget,” he replied, and though
-till that moment he had not been thinking of Kurágin, all his unexpended
-anger suddenly swelled up in his heart.
-
-“If Mary is already persuading me to forgive, it means that I ought long
-ago to have punished him,” he thought. And giving her no further reply,
-he began thinking of the glad vindictive moment when he would meet
-Kurágin who he knew was now in the army.
-
-Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more, saying that she knew how
-unhappy her father would be if Andrew left without being reconciled to
-him, but Prince Andrew replied that he would probably soon be back again
-from the army and would certainly write to his father, but that the
-longer he stayed now the more embittered their differences would become.
-
-“Good-by, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come from God, and men are
-never to blame,” were the last words he heard from his sister when he
-took leave of her.
-
-“Then it must be so!” thought Prince Andrew as he drove out of the
-avenue from the house at Bald Hills. “She, poor innocent creature, is
-left to be victimized by an old man who has outlived his wits. The old
-man feels he is guilty, but cannot change himself. My boy is growing up
-and rejoices in life, in which like everybody else he will deceive or be
-deceived. And I am off to the army. Why? I myself don’t know. I want
-to meet that man whom I despise, so as to give him a chance to kill and
-laugh at me!”
-
-These conditions of life had been the same before, but then they were
-all connected, while now they had all tumbled to pieces. Only senseless
-things, lacking coherence, presented themselves one after another to
-Prince Andrew’s mind.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-Prince Andrew reached the general headquarters of the army at the end of
-June. The first army, with which was the Emperor, occupied the fortified
-camp at Drissa; the second army was retreating, trying to effect a
-junction with the first one from which it was said to be cut off by
-large French forces. Everyone was dissatisfied with the general course
-of affairs in the Russian army, but no one anticipated any danger of
-invasion of the Russian provinces, and no one thought the war would
-extend farther than the western, the Polish, provinces.
-
-Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he had been assigned, on
-the bank of the Drissa. As there was not a single town or large
-village in the vicinity of the camp, the immense number of generals and
-courtiers accompanying the army were living in the best houses of the
-villages on both sides of the river, over a radius of six miles. Barclay
-de Tolly was quartered nearly three miles from the Emperor. He received
-Bolkónski stiffly and coldly and told him in his foreign accent that he
-would mention him to the Emperor for a decision as to his employment,
-but asked him meanwhile to remain on his staff. Anatole Kurágin, whom
-Prince Andrew had hoped to find with the army, was not there. He had
-gone to Petersburg, but Prince Andrew was glad to hear this. His mind
-was occupied by the interests of the center that was conducting
-a gigantic war, and he was glad to be free for a while from the
-distraction caused by the thought of Kurágin. During the first four
-days, while no duties were required of him, Prince Andrew rode round the
-whole fortified camp and, by the aid of his own knowledge and by
-talks with experts, tried to form a definite opinion about it. But the
-question whether the camp was advantageous or disadvantageous remained
-for him undecided. Already from his military experience and what he had
-seen in the Austrian campaign, he had come to the conclusion that in
-war the most deeply considered plans have no significance and that all
-depends on the way unexpected movements of the enemy—that cannot be
-foreseen—are met, and on how and by whom the whole matter is handled.
-To clear up this last point for himself, Prince Andrew, utilizing his
-position and acquaintances, tried to fathom the character of the control
-of the army and of the men and parties engaged in it, and he deduced for
-himself the following of the state of affairs.
-
-While the Emperor had still been at Vílna, the forces had been divided
-into three armies. First, the army under Barclay de Tolly, secondly, the
-army under Bagratión, and thirdly, the one commanded by Tormásov. The
-Emperor was with the first army, but not as commander in chief. In the
-orders issued it was stated, not that the Emperor would take command,
-but only that he would be with the army. The Emperor, moreover, had
-with him not a commander in chief’s staff but the imperial headquarters
-staff. In attendance on him was the head of the imperial staff,
-Quartermaster General Prince Volkónski, as well as generals, imperial
-aides-de-camp, diplomatic officials, and a large number of foreigners,
-but not the army staff. Besides these, there were in attendance on the
-Emperor without any definite appointments: Arakchéev, the ex-Minister
-of War; Count Bennigsen, the senior general in rank; the Grand Duke
-Tsarévich Constantine Pávlovich; Count Rumyántsev, the Chancellor;
-Stein, a former Prussian minister; Armfeldt, a Swedish general; Pfuel,
-the chief author of the plan of campaign; Paulucci, an adjutant general
-and Sardinian émigré; Wolzogen—and many others. Though these men had no
-military appointment in the army, their position gave them influence,
-and often a corps commander, or even the commander in chief, did not
-know in what capacity he was questioned by Bennigsen, the Grand Duke,
-Arakchéev, or Prince Volkónski, or was given this or that advice and did
-not know whether a certain order received in the form of advice emanated
-from the man who gave it or from the Emperor and whether it had to be
-executed or not. But this was only the external condition; the essential
-significance of the presence of the Emperor and of all these people,
-from a courtier’s point of view (and in an Emperor’s vicinity all became
-courtiers), was clear to everyone. It was this: the Emperor did not
-assume the title of commander in chief, but disposed of all the armies;
-the men around him were his assistants. Arakchéev was a faithful
-custodian to enforce order and acted as the sovereign’s bodyguard.
-Bennigsen was a landlord in the Vílna province who appeared to be doing
-the honors of the district, but was in reality a good general, useful
-as an adviser and ready at hand to replace Barclay. The Grand Duke
-was there because it suited him to be. The ex-Minister Stein was there
-because his advice was useful and the Emperor Alexander held him in high
-esteem personally. Armfeldt virulently hated Napoleon and was a general
-full of self-confidence, a quality that always influenced Alexander.
-Paulucci was there because he was bold and decided in speech. The
-adjutants general were there because they always accompanied the
-Emperor, and lastly and chiefly Pfuel was there because he had drawn up
-the plan of campaign against Napoleon and, having induced Alexander to
-believe in the efficacy of that plan, was directing the whole business
-of the war. With Pfuel was Wolzogen, who expressed Pfuel’s thoughts in
-a more comprehensible way than Pfuel himself (who was a harsh, bookish
-theorist, self-confident to the point of despising everyone else) was
-able to do.
-
-Besides these Russians and foreigners who propounded new and unexpected
-ideas every day—especially the foreigners, who did so with a boldness
-characteristic of people employed in a country not their own—there were
-many secondary personages accompanying the army because their principals
-were there.
-
-Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless, brilliant,
-and proud sphere, Prince Andrew noticed the following sharply defined
-subdivisions of tendencies and parties:
-
-The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherents—military theorists
-who believed in a science of war with immutable laws—laws of oblique
-movements, outflankings, and so forth. Pfuel and his adherents demanded
-a retirement into the depths of the country in accordance with precise
-laws defined by a pseudo-theory of war, and they saw only barbarism,
-ignorance, or evil intention in every deviation from that theory. To
-this party belonged the foreign nobles, Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, and
-others, chiefly Germans.
-
-The second party was directly opposed to the first; one extreme, as
-always happens, was met by representatives of the other. The members of
-this party were those who had demanded an advance from Vílna into Poland
-and freedom from all prearranged plans. Besides being advocates of bold
-action, this section also represented nationalism, which made them still
-more one-sided in the dispute. They were Russians: Bagratión, Ermólov
-(who was beginning to come to the front), and others. At that time a
-famous joke of Ermólov’s was being circulated, that as a great favor he
-had petitioned the Emperor to make him a German. The men of that party,
-remembering Suvórov, said that what one had to do was not to reason,
-or stick pins into maps, but to fight, beat the enemy, keep him out of
-Russia, and not let the army get discouraged.
-
-To the third party—in which the Emperor had most confidence—belonged the
-courtiers who tried to arrange compromises between the other two. The
-members of this party, chiefly civilians and to whom Arakchéev belonged,
-thought and said what men who have no convictions but wish to seem to
-have some generally say. They said that undoubtedly war, particularly
-against such a genius as Bonaparte (they called him Bonaparte now),
-needs most deeply devised plans and profound scientific knowledge and
-in that respect Pfuel was a genius, but at the same time it had to be
-acknowledged that the theorists are often one-sided, and therefore one
-should not trust them absolutely, but should also listen to what Pfuel’s
-opponents and practical men of experience in warfare had to say, and
-then choose a middle course. They insisted on the retention of the camp
-at Drissa, according to Pfuel’s plan, but on changing the movements of
-the other armies. Though, by this course, neither one aim nor the other
-could be attained, yet it seemed best to the adherents of this third
-party.
-
-Of a fourth opinion the most conspicuous representative was the
-Tsarévich, who could not forget his disillusionment at Austerlitz, where
-he had ridden out at the head of the Guards, in his casque and cavalry
-uniform as to a review, expecting to crush the French gallantly; but
-unexpectedly finding himself in the front line had narrowly escaped amid
-the general confusion. The men of this party had both the quality
-and the defect of frankness in their opinions. They feared Napoleon,
-recognized his strength and their own weakness, and frankly said so.
-They said: “Nothing but sorrow, shame, and ruin will come of all this!
-We have abandoned Vílna and Vítebsk and shall abandon Drissa. The only
-reasonable thing left to do is to conclude peace as soon as possible,
-before we are turned out of Petersburg.”
-
-This view was very general in the upper army circles and found support
-also in Petersburg and from the chancellor, Rumyántsev, who, for other
-reasons of state, was in favor of peace.
-
-The fifth party consisted of those who were adherents of Barclay de
-Tolly, not so much as a man but as minister of war and commander in
-chief. “Be he what he may” (they always began like that), “he is an
-honest, practical man and we have nobody better. Give him real power,
-for war cannot be conducted successfully without unity of command, and
-he will show what he can do, as he did in Finland. If our army is well
-organized and strong and has withdrawn to Drissa without suffering
-any defeats, we owe this entirely to Barclay. If Barclay is now to
-be superseded by Bennigsen all will be lost, for Bennigsen showed his
-incapacity already in 1807.”
-
-The sixth party, the Bennigsenites, said, on the contrary, that at any
-rate there was no one more active and experienced than Bennigsen: “and
-twist about as you may, you will have to come to Bennigsen eventually.
-Let the others make mistakes now!” said they, arguing that our
-retirement to Drissa was a most shameful reverse and an unbroken series
-of blunders. “The more mistakes that are made the better. It will at any
-rate be understood all the sooner that things cannot go on like this.
-What is wanted is not some Barclay or other, but a man like Bennigsen,
-who made his mark in 1807, and to whom Napoleon himself did justice—a
-man whose authority would be willingly recognized, and Bennigsen is the
-only such man.”
-
-The seventh party consisted of the sort of people who are always to
-be found, especially around young sovereigns, and of whom there were
-particularly many round Alexander—generals and imperial aides-de-camp
-passionately devoted to the Emperor, not merely as a monarch but as a
-man, adoring him sincerely and disinterestedly, as Rostóv had done
-in 1805, and who saw in him not only all the virtues but all human
-capabilities as well. These men, though enchanted with the sovereign
-for refusing the command of the army, yet blamed him for such excessive
-modesty, and only desired and insisted that their adored sovereign
-should abandon his diffidence and openly announce that he would place
-himself at the head of the army, gather round him a commander in chief’s
-staff, and, consulting experienced theoreticians and practical men where
-necessary, would himself lead the troops, whose spirits would thereby be
-raised to the highest pitch.
-
-The eighth and largest group, which in its enormous numbers was to the
-others as ninety-nine to one, consisted of men who desired neither
-peace nor war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa
-or anywhere else, neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor
-Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thing—as much advantage
-and pleasure for themselves as possible. In the troubled waters of
-conflicting and intersecting intrigues that eddied about the Emperor’s
-headquarters, it was possible to succeed in many ways unthinkable at
-other times. A man who simply wished to retain his lucrative post would
-today agree with Pfuel, tomorrow with his opponent, and the day after,
-merely to avoid responsibility or to please the Emperor, would declare
-that he had no opinion at all on the matter. Another who wished to
-gain some advantage would attract the Emperor’s attention by loudly
-advocating the very thing the Emperor had hinted at the day before,
-and would dispute and shout at the council, beating his breast and
-challenging those who did not agree with him to duels, thereby proving
-that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for the common good. A third,
-in the absence of opponents, between two councils would simply solicit
-a special gratuity for his faithful services, well knowing that at that
-moment people would be too busy to refuse him. A fourth while seemingly
-overwhelmed with work would often come accidentally under the Emperor’s
-eye. A fifth, to achieve his long-cherished aim of dining with the
-Emperor, would stubbornly insist on the correctness or falsity of some
-newly emerging opinion and for this object would produce arguments more
-or less forcible and correct.
-
-All the men of this party were fishing for rubles, decorations, and
-promotions, and in this pursuit watched only the weathercock of imperial
-favor, and directly they noticed it turning in any direction, this whole
-drone population of the army began blowing hard that way, so that it
-was all the harder for the Emperor to turn it elsewhere. Amid the
-uncertainties of the position, with the menace of serious danger giving
-a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid this vortex of
-intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings, and the diversity
-of race among these people—this eighth and largest party of those
-preoccupied with personal interests imparted great confusion and
-obscurity to the common task. Whatever question arose, a swarm of these
-drones, without having finished their buzzing on a previous theme, flew
-over to the new one and by their hum drowned and obscured the voices of
-those who were disputing honestly.
-
-From among all these parties, just at the time Prince Andrew reached
-the army, another, a ninth party, was being formed and was beginning
-to raise its voice. This was the party of the elders, reasonable men
-experienced and capable in state affairs, who, without sharing any of
-those conflicting opinions, were able to take a detached view of what
-was going on at the staff at headquarters and to consider means of
-escape from this muddle, indecision, intricacy, and weakness.
-
-The men of this party said and thought that what was wrong resulted
-chiefly from the Emperor’s presence in the army with his military court
-and from the consequent presence there of an indefinite, conditional,
-and unsteady fluctuation of relations, which is in place at court but
-harmful in an army; that a sovereign should reign but not command the
-army, and that the only way out of the position would be for the Emperor
-and his court to leave the army; that the mere presence of the Emperor
-paralyzed the action of fifty thousand men required to secure his
-personal safety, and that the worst commander in chief, if independent,
-would be better than the very best one trammeled by the presence and
-authority of the monarch.
-
-Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied at Drissa,
-Shishkóv, the Secretary of State and one of the chief representatives of
-this party, wrote a letter to the Emperor which Arakchéev and Balashëv
-agreed to sign. In this letter, availing himself of permission given him
-by the Emperor to discuss the general course of affairs, he respectfully
-suggested—on the plea that it was necessary for the sovereign to arouse
-a warlike spirit in the people of the capital—that the Emperor should
-leave the army.
-
-That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to them to
-defend their country—the very incitement which was the chief cause of
-Russia’s triumph in so far as it was produced by the Tsar’s personal
-presence in Moscow—was suggested to the Emperor, and accepted by him, as
-a pretext for quitting the army.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-This letter had not yet been presented to the Emperor when Barclay, one
-day at dinner, informed Bolkónski that the sovereign wished to see him
-personally, to question him about Turkey, and that Prince Andrew was to
-present himself at Bennigsen’s quarters at six that evening.
-
-News was received at the Emperor’s quarters that very day of a fresh
-movement by Napoleon which might endanger the army—news subsequently
-found to be false. And that morning Colonel Michaud had ridden round the
-Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had pointed out to him that
-this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel, and till then considered
-a chef-d’oeuvre of tactical science which would ensure Napoleon’s
-destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the destruction of the
-Russian army.
-
-Prince Andrew arrived at Bennigsen’s quarters—a country gentleman’s
-house of moderate size, situated on the very banks of the river. Neither
-Bennigsen nor the Emperor was there, but Chernýshev, the Emperor’s
-aide-de-camp, received Bolkónski and informed him that the Emperor,
-accompanied by General Bennigsen and Marquis Paulucci, had gone a second
-time that day to inspect the fortifications of the Drissa camp, of the
-suitability of which serious doubts were beginning to be felt.
-
-Chernýshev was sitting at a window in the first room with a French novel
-in his hand. This room had probably been a music room; there was still
-an organ in it on which some rugs were piled, and in one corner stood
-the folding bedstead of Bennigsen’s adjutant. This adjutant was also
-there and sat dozing on the rolled-up bedding, evidently exhausted by
-work or by feasting. Two doors led from the room, one straight on into
-what had been the drawing room, and another, on the right, to the study.
-Through the first door came the sound of voices conversing in German
-and occasionally in French. In that drawing room were gathered, by
-the Emperor’s wish, not a military council (the Emperor preferred
-indefiniteness), but certain persons whose opinions he wished to know in
-view of the impending difficulties. It was not a council of war, but,
-as it were, a council to elucidate certain questions for the Emperor
-personally. To this semicouncil had been invited the Swedish General
-Armfeldt, Adjutant General Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom Napoleon had
-referred to as a renegade French subject), Michaud, Toll, Count Stein
-who was not a military man at all, and Pfuel himself, who, as Prince
-Andrew had heard, was the mainspring of the whole affair. Prince Andrew
-had an opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel arrived soon
-after himself and, in passing through to the drawing room, stopped a
-minute to speak to Chernýshev.
-
-At first sight, Pfuel, in his ill-made uniform of a Russian general,
-which fitted him badly like a fancy costume, seemed familiar to Prince
-Andrew, though he saw him now for the first time. There was about
-him something of Weyrother, Mack, and Schmidt, and many other German
-theorist-generals whom Prince Andrew had seen in 1805, but he was more
-typical than any of them. Prince Andrew had never yet seen a German
-theorist in whom all the characteristics of those others were united to
-such an extent.
-
-Pfuel was short and very thin but broad-boned, of coarse, robust build,
-broad in the hips, and with prominent shoulder blades. His face was
-much wrinkled and his eyes deep set. His hair had evidently been hastily
-brushed smooth in front of the temples, but stuck up behind in quaint
-little tufts. He entered the room, looking restlessly and angrily
-around, as if afraid of everything in that large apartment. Awkwardly
-holding up his sword, he addressed Chernýshev and asked in German where
-the Emperor was. One could see that he wished to pass through the rooms
-as quickly as possible, finish with the bows and greetings, and sit down
-to business in front of a map, where he would feel at home. He nodded
-hurriedly in reply to Chernýshev, and smiled ironically on hearing that
-the sovereign was inspecting the fortifications that he, Pfuel, had
-planned in accord with his theory. He muttered something to himself
-abruptly and in a bass voice, as self-assured Germans do—it might
-have been “stupid fellow”... or “the whole affair will be ruined,” or
-“something absurd will come of it.”... Prince Andrew did not catch
-what he said and would have passed on, but Chernýshev introduced him to
-Pfuel, remarking that Prince Andrew was just back from Turkey where the
-war had terminated so fortunately. Pfuel barely glanced—not so much at
-Prince Andrew as past him—and said, with a laugh: “That must have been a
-fine tactical war”; and, laughing contemptuously, went on into the room
-from which the sound of voices was heard.
-
-Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was particularly
-disturbed that day, evidently by the fact that they had dared to inspect
-and criticize his camp in his absence. From this short interview with
-Pfuel, Prince Andrew, thanks to his Austerlitz experiences, was able to
-form a clear conception of the man. Pfuel was one of those hopelessly
-and immutably self-confident men, self-confident to the point of
-martyrdom as only Germans are, because only Germans are self-confident
-on the basis of an abstract notion—science, that is, the supposed
-knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he
-regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly
-attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a
-citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an
-Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as
-an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because
-he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian
-is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know
-anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The
-German’s self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more
-repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the
-truth—science—which he himself has invented but which is for him the
-absolute truth.
-
-Pfuel was evidently of that sort. He had a science—the theory of oblique
-movements deduced by him from the history of Frederick the Great’s wars,
-and all he came across in the history of more recent warfare seemed to
-him absurd and barbarous—monstrous collisions in which so many blunders
-were committed by both sides that these wars could not be called wars,
-they did not accord with the theory, and therefore could not serve as
-material for science.
-
-In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for the plan of
-campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstädt, but he did not see the least
-proof of the fallibility of his theory in the disasters of that war. On
-the contrary, the deviations made from his theory were, in his opinion,
-the sole cause of the whole disaster, and with characteristically
-gleeful sarcasm he would remark, “There, I said the whole affair would
-go to the devil!” Pfuel was one of those theoreticians who so love
-their theory that they lose sight of the theory’s object—its practical
-application. His love of theory made him hate everything practical, and
-he would not listen to it. He was even pleased by failures, for failures
-resulting from deviations in practice from the theory only proved to him
-the accuracy of his theory.
-
-He said a few words to Prince Andrew and Chernýshev about the present
-war, with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all will go wrong,
-and who is not displeased that it should be so. The unbrushed tufts
-of hair sticking up behind and the hastily brushed hair on his temples
-expressed this most eloquently.
-
-He passed into the next room, and the deep, querulous sounds of his
-voice were at once heard from there.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-Prince Andrew’s eyes were still following Pfuel out of the room when
-Count Bennigsen entered hurriedly, and nodding to Bolkónski, but not
-pausing, went into the study, giving instructions to his adjutant as he
-went. The Emperor was following him, and Bennigsen had hastened on
-to make some preparations and to be ready to receive the sovereign.
-Chernýshev and Prince Andrew went out into the porch, where the Emperor,
-who looked fatigued, was dismounting. Marquis Paulucci was talking to
-him with particular warmth and the Emperor, with his head bent to the
-left, was listening with a dissatisfied air. The Emperor moved forward
-evidently wishing to end the conversation, but the flushed and excited
-Italian, oblivious of decorum, followed him and continued to speak.
-
-“And as for the man who advised forming this camp—the Drissa camp,” said
-Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the steps and noticing Prince Andrew
-scanned his unfamiliar face, “as to that person, sire...” continued
-Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain himself, “the man
-who advised the Drissa camp—I see no alternative but the lunatic asylum
-or the gallows!”
-
-Without heeding the end of the Italian’s remarks, and as though
-not hearing them, the Emperor, recognizing Bolkónski, addressed him
-graciously.
-
-“I am very glad to see you! Go in there where they are meeting, and wait
-for me.”
-
-The Emperor went into the study. He was followed by Prince Peter
-Mikháylovich Volkónski and Baron Stein, and the door closed behind them.
-Prince Andrew, taking advantage of the Emperor’s permission, accompanied
-Paulucci, whom he had known in Turkey, into the drawing room where the
-council was assembled.
-
-Prince Peter Mikháylovich Volkónski occupied the position, as it were,
-of chief of the Emperor’s staff. He came out of the study into the
-drawing room with some maps which he spread on a table, and put
-questions on which he wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen
-present. What had happened was that news (which afterwards proved to be
-false) had been received during the night of a movement by the French to
-outflank the Drissa camp.
-
-The first to speak was General Armfeldt who, to meet the difficulty that
-presented itself, unexpectedly proposed a perfectly new position
-away from the Petersburg and Moscow roads. The reason for this was
-inexplicable (unless he wished to show that he, too, could have an
-opinion), but he urged that at this point the army should unite and
-there await the enemy. It was plain that Armfeldt had thought out that
-plan long ago and now expounded it not so much to answer the questions
-put—which, in fact, his plan did not answer—as to avail himself of the
-opportunity to air it. It was one of the millions of proposals, one as
-good as another, that could be made as long as it was quite unknown
-what character the war would take. Some disputed his arguments, others
-defended them. Young Count Toll objected to the Swedish general’s views
-more warmly than anyone else, and in the course of the dispute drew from
-his side pocket a well-filled notebook, which he asked permission to
-read to them. In these voluminous notes Toll suggested another scheme,
-totally different from Armfeldt’s or Pfuel’s plan of campaign. In answer
-to Toll, Paulucci suggested an advance and an attack, which, he urged,
-could alone extricate us from the present uncertainty and from the trap
-(as he called the Drissa camp) in which we were situated.
-
-During all these discussions Pfuel and his interpreter, Wolzogen
-(his “bridge” in court relations), were silent. Pfuel only snorted
-contemptuously and turned away, to show that he would never demean
-himself by replying to such nonsense as he was now hearing. So when
-Prince Volkónski, who was in the chair, called on him to give his
-opinion, he merely said:
-
-“Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed a splendid position with an
-exposed rear, or why not this Italian gentleman’s attack—very fine, or
-a retreat, also good! Why ask me?” said he. “Why, you yourselves know
-everything better than I do.”
-
-But when Volkónski said, with a frown, that it was in the Emperor’s name
-that he asked his opinion, Pfuel rose and, suddenly growing animated,
-began to speak:
-
-“Everything has been spoiled, everything muddled, everybody thought they
-knew better than I did, and now you come to me! How mend matters? There
-is nothing to mend! The principles laid down by me must be strictly
-adhered to,” said he, drumming on the table with his bony fingers. “What
-is the difficulty? Nonsense, childishness!”
-
-He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began proving that no
-eventuality could alter the efficiency of the Drissa camp, that
-everything had been foreseen, and that if the enemy were really going to
-outflank it, the enemy would inevitably be destroyed.
-
-Paulucci, who did not know German, began questioning him in French.
-Wolzogen came to the assistance of his chief, who spoke French badly,
-and began translating for him, hardly able to keep pace with Pfuel, who
-was rapidly demonstrating that not only all that had happened, but all
-that could happen, had been foreseen in his scheme, and that if there
-were now any difficulties the whole fault lay in the fact that his plan
-had not been precisely executed. He kept laughing sarcastically, he
-demonstrated, and at last contemptuously ceased to demonstrate, like
-a mathematician who ceases to prove in various ways the accuracy of
-a problem that has already been proved. Wolzogen took his place and
-continued to explain his views in French, every now and then turning to
-Pfuel and saying, “Is it not so, your excellency?” But Pfuel, like a man
-heated in a fight who strikes those on his own side, shouted angrily at
-his own supporter, Wolzogen:
-
-“Well, of course, what more is there to explain?”
-
-Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in French.
-Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German. Toll explained to Volkónski in
-Russian. Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence.
-
-Of all these men Prince Andrew sympathized most with Pfuel, angry,
-determined, and absurdly self-confident as he was. Of all those present,
-evidently he alone was not seeking anything for himself, nursed no
-hatred against anyone, and only desired that the plan, formed on a
-theory arrived at by years of toil, should be carried out. He was
-ridiculous, and unpleasantly sarcastic, but yet he inspired involuntary
-respect by his boundless devotion to an idea. Besides this, the remarks
-of all except Pfuel had one common trait that had not been noticeable
-at the council of war in 1805: there was now a panic fear of Napoleon’s
-genius, which, though concealed, was noticeable in every rejoinder.
-Everything was assumed to be possible for Napoleon, they expected him
-from every side, and invoked his terrible name to shatter each other’s
-proposals. Pfuel alone seemed to consider Napoleon a barbarian like
-everyone else who opposed his theory. But besides this feeling of
-respect, Pfuel evoked pity in Prince Andrew. From the tone in which
-the courtiers addressed him and the way Paulucci had allowed himself to
-speak of him to the Emperor, but above all from a certain desperation
-in Pfuel’s own expressions, it was clear that the others knew, and Pfuel
-himself felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-confidence
-and grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly
-brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he
-concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was
-evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of verifying his
-theory by a huge experiment and proving its soundness to the whole world
-was slipping away from him.
-
-The discussions continued a long time, and the longer they lasted
-the more heated became the disputes, culminating in shouts and
-personalities, and the less was it possible to arrive at any general
-conclusion from all that had been said. Prince Andrew, listening to this
-polyglot talk and to these surmises, plans, refutations, and shouts,
-felt nothing but amazement at what they were saying. A thought that had
-long since and often occurred to him during his military activities—the
-idea that there is not and cannot be any science of war, and that
-therefore there can be no such thing as a military genius—now appeared
-to him an obvious truth. “What theory and science is possible about a
-matter the conditions and circumstances of which are unknown and cannot
-be defined, especially when the strength of the acting forces cannot be
-ascertained? No one was or is able to foresee in what condition our or
-the enemy’s armies will be in a day’s time, and no one can gauge the
-force of this or that detachment. Sometimes—when there is not a coward
-at the front to shout, ‘We are cut off!’ and start running, but a brave
-and jolly lad who shouts, ‘Hurrah!’—a detachment of five thousand
-is worth thirty thousand, as at Schön Grabern, while at times fifty
-thousand run from eight thousand, as at Austerlitz. What science can
-there be in a matter in which, as in all practical matters, nothing
-can be defined and everything depends on innumerable conditions, the
-significance of which is determined at a particular moment which arrives
-no one knows when? Armfeldt says our army is cut in half, and Paulucci
-says we have got the French army between two fires; Michaud says that
-the worthlessness of the Drissa camp lies in having the river behind it,
-and Pfuel says that is what constitutes its strength; Toll proposes
-one plan, Armfeldt another, and they are all good and all bad, and the
-advantages of any suggestions can be seen only at the moment of trial.
-And why do they all speak of a ‘military genius’? Is a man a genius who
-can order bread to be brought up at the right time and say who is to go
-to the right and who to the left? It is only because military men are
-invested with pomp and power and crowds of sychophants flatter power,
-attributing to it qualities of genius it does not possess. The best
-generals I have known were, on the contrary, stupid or absent-minded
-men. Bagratión was the best, Napoleon himself admitted that. And of
-Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited, self-satisfied face on the
-field of Austerlitz. Not only does a good army commander not need any
-special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest
-and best human attributes—love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic
-inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he
-is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient
-patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he
-should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just
-and unjust. It is understandable that a theory of their ‘genius’ was
-invented for them long ago because they have power! The success of a
-military action depends not on them, but on the man in the ranks who
-shouts, ‘We are lost!’ or who shouts, ‘Hurrah!’ And only in the ranks
-can one serve with assurance of being useful.”
-
-So thought Prince Andrew as he listened to the talking, and he roused
-himself only when Paulucci called him and everyone was leaving.
-
-At the review next day the Emperor asked Prince Andrew where he would
-like to serve, and Prince Andrew lost his standing in court circles
-forever by not asking to remain attached to the sovereign’s person, but
-for permission to serve in the army.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-Before the beginning of the campaign, Rostóv had received a letter from
-his parents in which they told him briefly of Natásha’s illness and the
-breaking off of her engagement to Prince Andrew (which they explained by
-Natásha’s having rejected him) and again asked Nicholas to retire from
-the army and return home. On receiving this letter, Nicholas did not
-even make any attempt to get leave of absence or to retire from the
-army, but wrote to his parents that he was sorry Natásha was ill and her
-engagement broken off, and that he would do all he could to meet their
-wishes. To Sónya he wrote separately.
-
-“Adored friend of my soul!” he wrote. “Nothing but honor could keep
-me from returning to the country. But now, at the commencement of the
-campaign, I should feel dishonored, not only in my comrades’ eyes but
-in my own, if I preferred my own happiness to my love and duty to the
-Fatherland. But this shall be our last separation. Believe me, directly
-the war is over, if I am still alive and still loved by you, I will
-throw up everything and fly to you, to press you forever to my ardent
-breast.”
-
-It was, in fact, only the commencement of the campaign that prevented
-Rostóv from returning home as he had promised and marrying Sónya. The
-autumn in Otrádnoe with the hunting, and the winter with the Christmas
-holidays and Sónya’s love, had opened out to him a vista of tranquil
-rural joys and peace such as he had never known before, and which now
-allured him. “A splendid wife, children, a good pack of hounds, a
-dozen leashes of smart borzois, agriculture, neighbors, service by
-election...” thought he. But now the campaign was beginning, and he had
-to remain with his regiment. And since it had to be so, Nicholas Rostóv,
-as was natural to him, felt contented with the life he led in the
-regiment and was able to find pleasure in that life.
-
-On his return from his furlough Nicholas, having been joyfully welcomed
-by his comrades, was sent to obtain remounts and brought back from the
-Ukraine excellent horses which pleased him and earned him commendation
-from his commanders. During his absence he had been promoted captain,
-and when the regiment was put on war footing with an increase in
-numbers, he was again allotted his old squadron.
-
-The campaign began, the regiment was moved into Poland on double pay,
-new officers arrived, new men and horses, and above all everybody was
-infected with the merrily excited mood that goes with the commencement
-of a war, and Rostóv, conscious of his advantageous position in the
-regiment, devoted himself entirely to the pleasures and interests of
-military service, though he knew that sooner or later he would have to
-relinquish them.
-
-The troops retired from Vílna for various complicated reasons of state,
-political and strategic. Each step of the retreat was accompanied by
-a complicated interplay of interests, arguments, and passions at
-headquarters. For the Pávlograd hussars, however, the whole of this
-retreat during the finest period of summer and with sufficient supplies
-was a very simple and agreeable business.
-
-It was only at headquarters that there was depression, uneasiness, and
-intriguing; in the body of the army they did not ask themselves where
-they were going or why. If they regretted having to retreat, it was only
-because they had to leave billets they had grown accustomed to, or some
-pretty young Polish lady. If the thought that things looked bad chanced
-to enter anyone’s head, he tried to be as cheerful as befits a good
-soldier and not to think of the general trend of affairs, but only of
-the task nearest to hand. First they camped gaily before Vílna, making
-acquaintance with the Polish landowners, preparing for reviews and being
-reviewed by the Emperor and other high commanders. Then came an order
-to retreat to Sventsyáni and destroy any provisions they could not carry
-away with them. Sventsyáni was remembered by the hussars only as the
-drunken camp, a name the whole army gave to their encampment there,
-and because many complaints were made against the troops, who, taking
-advantage of the order to collect provisions, took also horses,
-carriages, and carpets from the Polish proprietors. Rostóv remembered
-Sventsyáni, because on the first day of their arrival at that small town
-he changed his sergeant major and was unable to manage all the drunken
-men of his squadron who, unknown to him, had appropriated five barrels
-of old beer. From Sventsyáni they retired farther and farther to Drissa,
-and thence again beyond Drissa, drawing near to the frontier of Russia
-proper.
-
-On the thirteenth of July the Pávlograds took part in a serious action
-for the first time.
-
-On the twelfth of July, on the eve of that action, there was a heavy
-storm of rain and hail. In general, the summer of 1812 was remarkable
-for its storms.
-
-The two Pávlograd squadrons were bivouacking on a field of rye, which
-was already in ear but had been completely trodden down by cattle and
-horses. The rain was descending in torrents, and Rostóv, with a young
-officer named Ilyín, his protégé, was sitting in a hastily constructed
-shelter. An officer of their regiment, with long mustaches extending
-onto his cheeks, who after riding to the staff had been overtaken by the
-rain, entered Rostóv’s shelter.
-
-“I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of Raévski’s
-exploit?”
-
-And the officer gave them details of the Saltánov battle, which he had
-heard at the staff.
-
-Rostóv, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as the water
-trickled down his neck, listened inattentively, with an occasional
-glance at Ilyín, who was pressing close to him. This officer, a lad
-of sixteen who had recently joined the regiment, was now in the same
-relation to Nicholas that Nicholas had been to Denísov seven years
-before. Ilyín tried to imitate Rostóv in everything and adored him as a
-girl might have done.
-
-Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke grandiloquently of
-the Saltánov dam being “a Russian Thermopylae,” and of how a deed worthy
-of antiquity had been performed by General Raévski. He recounted how
-Raévski had led his two sons onto the dam under terrific fire and had
-charged with them beside him. Rostóv heard the story and not only said
-nothing to encourage Zdrzhinski’s enthusiasm but, on the contrary,
-looked like a man ashamed of what he was hearing, though with no
-intention of contradicting it. Since the campaigns of Austerlitz and
-of 1807 Rostóv knew by experience that men always lie when describing
-military exploits, as he himself had done when recounting them; besides
-that, he had experience enough to know that nothing happens in war at
-all as we can imagine or relate it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinski’s
-tale, nor did he like Zdrzhinski himself who, with his mustaches
-extending over his cheeks, bent low over the face of his hearer, as was
-his habit, and crowded Rostóv in the narrow shanty. Rostóv looked at him
-in silence. “In the first place, there must have been such a confusion
-and crowding on the dam that was being attacked that if Raévski did lead
-his sons there, it could have had no effect except perhaps on some dozen
-men nearest to him,” thought he, “the rest could not have seen how or
-with whom Raévski came onto the dam. And even those who did see it
-would not have been much stimulated by it, for what had they to do with
-Raévski’s tender paternal feelings when their own skins were in danger?
-And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did not depend on whether
-they took the Saltánov dam or not, as we are told was the case at
-Thermopylae. So why should he have made such a sacrifice? And why expose
-his own children in the battle? I would not have taken my brother Pétya
-there, or even Ilyín, who’s a stranger to me but a nice lad, but would
-have tried to put them somewhere under cover,” Nicholas continued
-to think, as he listened to Zdrzhinski. But he did not express his
-thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had gained experience. He knew
-that this tale redounded to the glory of our arms and so one had to
-pretend not to doubt it. And he acted accordingly.
-
-“I can’t stand this any more,” said Ilyín, noticing that Rostóv did not
-relish Zdrzhinski’s conversation. “My stockings and shirt... and the
-water is running on my seat! I’ll go and look for shelter. The rain
-seems less heavy.”
-
-Ilyín went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.
-
-Five minutes later Ilyín, splashing through the mud, came running back
-to the shanty.
-
-“Hurrah! Rostóv, come quick! I’ve found it! About two hundred yards away
-there’s a tavern where ours have already gathered. We can at least get
-dry there, and Mary Hendríkhovna’s there.”
-
-Mary Hendríkhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty young
-German woman he had married in Poland. The doctor, whether from lack
-of means or because he did not like to part from his young wife in
-the early days of their marriage, took her about with him wherever the
-hussar regiment went and his jealousy had become a standing joke among
-the hussar officers.
-
-Rostóv threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrúshka to
-follow with the things, and—now slipping in the mud, now splashing right
-through it—set off with Ilyín in the lessening rain and the darkness
-that was occasionally rent by distant lightning.
-
-“Rostóv, where are you?”
-
-“Here. What lightning!” they called to one another.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-In the tavern, before which stood the doctor’s covered cart, there were
-already some five officers. Mary Hendríkhovna, a plump little blonde
-German, in a dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a broad bench
-in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep behind her.
-Rostóv and Ilyín, on entering the room, were welcomed with merry shouts
-and laughter.
-
-“Dear me, how jolly we are!” said Rostóv laughing.
-
-“And why do you stand there gaping?”
-
-“What swells they are! Why, the water streams from them! Don’t make our
-drawing room so wet.”
-
-“Don’t mess Mary Hendríkhovna’s dress!” cried other voices.
-
-Rostóv and Ilyín hastened to find a corner where they could change into
-dry clothes without offending Mary Hendríkhovna’s modesty. They were
-going into a tiny recess behind a partition to change, but found it
-completely filled by three officers who sat playing cards by the light
-of a solitary candle on an empty box, and these officers would on no
-account yield their position. Mary Hendríkhovna obliged them with the
-loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and behind that screen
-Rostóv and Ilyín, helped by Lavrúshka who had brought their kits,
-changed their wet things for dry ones.
-
-A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board was found,
-fixed on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small samovar was
-produced and a cellaret and half a bottle of rum, and having asked Mary
-Hendríkhovna to preside, they all crowded round her. One offered her a
-clean handkerchief to wipe her charming hands, another spread a jacket
-under her little feet to keep them from the damp, another hung his coat
-over the window to keep out the draft, and yet another waved the flies
-off her husband’s face, lest he should wake up.
-
-“Leave him alone,” said Mary Hendríkhovna, smiling timidly and happily.
-“He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night.”
-
-“Oh, no, Mary Hendríkhovna,” replied the officer, “one must look after
-the doctor. Perhaps he’ll take pity on me someday, when it comes to
-cutting off a leg or an arm for me.”
-
-There were only three tumblers, the water was so muddy that one could
-not make out whether the tea was strong or weak, and the samovar held
-only six tumblers of water, but this made it all the pleasanter to
-take turns in order of seniority to receive one’s tumbler from Mary
-Hendríkhovna’s plump little hands with their short and not overclean
-nails. All the officers appeared to be, and really were, in love with
-her that evening. Even those playing cards behind the partition soon
-left their game and came over to the samovar, yielding to the general
-mood of courting Mary Hendríkhovna. She, seeing herself surrounded by
-such brilliant and polite young men, beamed with satisfaction, try as
-she might to hide it, and perturbed as she evidently was each time her
-husband moved in his sleep behind her.
-
-There was only one spoon, sugar was more plentiful than anything
-else, but it took too long to dissolve, so it was decided that Mary
-Hendríkhovna should stir the sugar for everyone in turn. Rostóv received
-his tumbler, and adding some rum to it asked Mary Hendríkhovna to stir
-it.
-
-“But you take it without sugar?” she said, smiling all the time, as if
-everything she said and everything the others said was very amusing and
-had a double meaning.
-
-“It is not the sugar I want, but only that your little hand should stir
-my tea.”
-
-Mary Hendríkhovna assented and began looking for the spoon which someone
-meanwhile had pounced on.
-
-“Use your finger, Mary Hendríkhovna, it will be still nicer,” said
-Rostóv.
-
-“Too hot!” she replied, blushing with pleasure.
-
-Ilyín put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water and brought it to
-Mary Hendríkhovna, asking her to stir it with her finger.
-
-“This is my cup,” said he. “Only dip your finger in it and I’ll drink it
-all up.”
-
-When they had emptied the samovar, Rostóv took a pack of cards and
-proposed that they should play “Kings” with Mary Hendríkhovna. They drew
-lots to settle who should make up her set. At Rostóv’s suggestion it
-was agreed that whoever became “King” should have the right to kiss Mary
-Hendríkhovna’s hand, and that the “Booby” should go to refill and reheat
-the samovar for the doctor when the latter awoke.
-
-“Well, but supposing Mary Hendríkhovna is ‘King’?” asked Ilyín.
-
-“As it is, she is Queen, and her word is law!”
-
-They had hardly begun to play before the doctor’s disheveled head
-suddenly appeared from behind Mary Hendríkhovna. He had been awake for
-some time, listening to what was being said, and evidently found nothing
-entertaining or amusing in what was going on. His face was sad and
-depressed. Without greeting the officers, he scratched himself and asked
-to be allowed to pass as they were blocking the way. As soon as he
-had left the room all the officers burst into loud laughter and Mary
-Hendríkhovna blushed till her eyes filled with tears and thereby became
-still more attractive to them. Returning from the yard, the doctor
-told his wife (who had ceased to smile so happily, and looked at him in
-alarm, awaiting her sentence) that the rain had ceased and they must go
-to sleep in their covered cart, or everything in it would be stolen.
-
-“But I’ll send an orderly.... Two of them!” said Rostóv. “What an idea,
-doctor!”
-
-“I’ll stand guard on it myself!” said Ilyín.
-
-“No, gentlemen, you have had your sleep, but I have not slept for two
-nights,” replied the doctor, and he sat down morosely beside his wife,
-waiting for the game to end.
-
-Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers grew
-still merrier, and some of them could not refrain from laughter, for
-which they hurriedly sought plausible pretexts. When he had gone, taking
-his wife with him, and had settled down with her in their covered cart,
-the officers lay down in the tavern, covering themselves with their
-wet cloaks, but they did not sleep for a long time; now they exchanged
-remarks, recalling the doctor’s uneasiness and his wife’s delight, now
-they ran out into the porch and reported what was taking place in the
-covered trap. Several times Rostóv, covering his head, tried to go
-to sleep, but some remark would arouse him and conversation would be
-resumed, to the accompaniment of unreasoning, merry, childlike laughter.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-It was nearly three o’clock but no one was yet asleep, when the
-quartermaster appeared with an order to move on to the little town
-of Ostróvna. Still laughing and talking, the officers began hurriedly
-getting ready and again boiled some muddy water in the samovar. But
-Rostóv went off to his squadron without waiting for tea. Day was
-breaking, the rain had ceased, and the clouds were dispersing. It felt
-damp and cold, especially in clothes that were still moist. As they left
-the tavern in the twilight of the dawn, Rostóv and Ilyín both glanced
-under the wet and glistening leather hood of the doctor’s cart, from
-under the apron of which his feet were sticking out, and in the middle
-of which his wife’s nightcap was visible and her sleepy breathing
-audible.
-
-“She really is a dear little thing,” said Rostóv to Ilyín, who was
-following him.
-
-“A charming woman!” said Ilyín, with all the gravity of a boy of
-sixteen.
-
-Half an hour later the squadron was lined up on the road. The command
-was heard to “mount” and the soldiers crossed themselves and mounted.
-Rostóv riding in front gave the order “Forward!” and the hussars, with
-clanking sabers and subdued talk, their horses’ hoofs splashing in the
-mud, defiled in fours and moved along the broad road planted with birch
-trees on each side, following the infantry and a battery that had gone
-on in front.
-
-Tattered, blue-purple clouds, reddening in the east, were scudding
-before the wind. It was growing lighter and lighter. That curly grass
-which always grows by country roadsides became clearly visible, still
-wet with the night’s rain; the drooping branches of the birches, also
-wet, swayed in the wind and flung down bright drops of water to one
-side. The soldiers’ faces were more and more clearly visible. Rostóv,
-always closely followed by Ilyín, rode along the side of the road
-between two rows of birch trees.
-
-When campaigning, Rostóv allowed himself the indulgence of riding not
-a regimental but a Cossack horse. A judge of horses and a sportsman,
-he had lately procured himself a large, fine, mettlesome, Donéts horse,
-dun-colored, with light mane and tail, and when he rode it no one could
-outgallop him. To ride this horse was a pleasure to him, and he thought
-of the horse, of the morning, of the doctor’s wife, but not once of the
-impending danger.
-
-Formerly, when going into action, Rostóv had felt afraid; now he had
-not the least feeling of fear. He was fearless, not because he had grown
-used to being under fire (one cannot grow used to danger), but because
-he had learned how to manage his thoughts when in danger. He had grown
-accustomed when going into action to think about anything but what would
-seem most likely to interest him—the impending danger. During the
-first period of his service, hard as he tried and much as he reproached
-himself with cowardice, he had not been able to do this, but with time
-it had come of itself. Now he rode beside Ilyín under the birch trees,
-occasionally plucking leaves from a branch that met his hand, sometimes
-touching his horse’s side with his foot, or, without turning round,
-handing a pipe he had finished to an hussar riding behind him, with as
-calm and careless an air as though he were merely out for a ride. He
-glanced with pity at the excited face of Ilyín, who talked much and in
-great agitation. He knew from experience the tormenting expectation of
-terror and death the cornet was suffering and knew that only time could
-help him.
-
-As soon as the sun appeared in a clear strip of sky beneath the clouds,
-the wind fell, as if it dared not spoil the beauty of the summer morning
-after the storm; drops still continued to fall, but vertically now, and
-all was still. The whole sun appeared on the horizon and disappeared
-behind a long narrow cloud that hung above it. A few minutes later it
-reappeared brighter still from behind the top of the cloud, tearing its
-edge. Everything grew bright and glittered. And with that light, and as
-if in reply to it, came the sound of guns ahead of them.
-
-Before Rostóv had had time to consider and determine the distance of
-that firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstóy’s adjutant came galloping from
-Vítebsk with orders to advance at a trot along the road.
-
-The squadron overtook and passed the infantry and the battery—which had
-also quickened their pace—rode down a hill, and passing through an empty
-and deserted village again ascended. The horses began to lather and the
-men to flush.
-
-“Halt! Dress your ranks!” the order of the regimental commander was
-heard ahead. “Forward by the left. Walk, march!” came the order from in
-front.
-
-And the hussars, passing along the line of troops on the left flank of
-our position, halted behind our Uhlans who were in the front line. To
-the right stood our infantry in a dense column: they were the reserve.
-Higher up the hill, on the very horizon, our guns were visible through
-the wonderfully clear air, brightly illuminated by slanting morning
-sunbeams. In front, beyond a hollow dale, could be seen the enemy’s
-columns and guns. Our advanced line, already in action, could be heard
-briskly exchanging shots with the enemy in the dale.
-
-At these sounds, long unheard, Rostóv’s spirits rose, as at the strains
-of the merriest music. Trap-ta-ta-tap! cracked the shots, now together,
-now several quickly one after another. Again all was silent and then
-again it sounded as if someone were walking on detonators and exploding
-them.
-
-The hussars remained in the same place for about an hour. A cannonade
-began. Count Ostermann with his suite rode up behind the squadron,
-halted, spoke to the commander of the regiment, and rode up the hill to
-the guns.
-
-After Ostermann had gone, a command rang out to the Uhlans.
-
-“Form column! Prepare to charge!”
-
-The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to allow the cavalry
-to pass. The Uhlans started, the streamers on their spears fluttering,
-and trotted downhill toward the French cavalry which was seen below to
-the left.
-
-As soon as the Uhlans descended the hill, the hussars were ordered up
-the hill to support the battery. As they took the places vacated by the
-Uhlans, bullets came from the front, whining and whistling, but fell
-spent without taking effect.
-
-The sounds, which he had not heard for so long, had an even more
-pleasurable and exhilarating effect on Rostóv than the previous sounds
-of firing. Drawing himself up, he viewed the field of battle opening out
-before him from the hill, and with his whole soul followed the movement
-of the Uhlans. They swooped down close to the French dragoons, something
-confused happened there amid the smoke, and five minutes later our
-Uhlans were galloping back, not to the place they had occupied but more
-to the left, and among the orange-colored Uhlans on chestnut horses and
-behind them, in a large group, blue French dragoons on gray horses could
-be seen.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-Rostóv, with his keen sportsman’s eye, was one of the first to catch
-sight of these blue French dragoons pursuing our Uhlans. Nearer and
-nearer in disorderly crowds came the Uhlans and the French dragoons
-pursuing them. He could already see how these men, who looked so small
-at the foot of the hill, jostled and overtook one another, waving their
-arms and their sabers in the air.
-
-Rostóv gazed at what was happening before him as at a hunt. He felt
-instinctively that if the hussars struck at the French dragoons now, the
-latter could not withstand them, but if a charge was to be made it must
-be done now, at that very moment, or it would be too late. He looked
-around. A captain, standing beside him, was gazing like himself with
-eyes fixed on the cavalry below them.
-
-“Andrew Sevastyánych!” said Rostóv. “You know, we could crush them....”
-
-“A fine thing too!” replied the captain, “and really...”
-
-Rostóv, without waiting to hear him out, touched his horse, galloped to
-the front of his squadron, and before he had time to finish giving the
-word of command, the whole squadron, sharing his feeling, was following
-him. Rostóv himself did not know how or why he did it. He acted as he
-did when hunting, without reflecting or considering. He saw the dragoons
-near and that they were galloping in disorder; he knew they could not
-withstand an attack—knew there was only that moment and that if he let
-it slip it would not return. The bullets were whining and whistling so
-stimulatingly around him and his horse was so eager to go that he could
-not restrain himself. He touched his horse, gave the word of command,
-and immediately, hearing behind him the tramp of the horses of his
-deployed squadron, rode at full trot downhill toward the dragoons.
-Hardly had they reached the bottom of the hill before their pace
-instinctively changed to a gallop, which grew faster and faster as they
-drew nearer to our Uhlans and the French dragoons who galloped after
-them. The dragoons were now close at hand. On seeing the hussars, the
-foremost began to turn, while those behind began to halt. With the same
-feeling with which he had galloped across the path of a wolf, Rostóv
-gave rein to his Donéts horse and galloped to intersect the path of the
-dragoons’ disordered lines. One Uhlan stopped, another who was on foot
-flung himself to the ground to avoid being knocked over, and a riderless
-horse fell in among the hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were
-galloping back. Rostóv, picking out one on a gray horse, dashed after
-him. On the way he came upon a bush, his gallant horse cleared it, and
-almost before he had righted himself in his saddle he saw that he would
-immediately overtake the enemy he had selected. That Frenchman, by his
-uniform an officer, was going at a gallop, crouching on his gray horse
-and urging it on with his saber. In another moment Rostóv’s horse dashed
-its breast against the hindquarters of the officer’s horse, almost
-knocking it over, and at the same instant Rostóv, without knowing why,
-raised his saber and struck the Frenchman with it.
-
-The instant he had done this, all Rostóv’s animation vanished. The
-officer fell, not so much from the blow—which had but slightly cut his
-arm above the elbow—as from the shock to his horse and from fright.
-Rostóv reined in his horse, and his eyes sought his foe to see whom he
-had vanquished. The French dragoon officer was hopping with one foot on
-the ground, the other being caught in the stirrup. His eyes, screwed
-up with fear as if he every moment expected another blow, gazed up at
-Rostóv with shrinking terror. His pale and mud-stained face—fair and
-young, with a dimple in the chin and light-blue eyes—was not an enemy’s
-face at all suited to a battlefield, but a most ordinary, homelike face.
-Before Rostóv had decided what to do with him, the officer cried, “I
-surrender!” He hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out of the
-stirrup and did not remove his frightened blue eyes from Rostóv’s face.
-Some hussars who galloped up disengaged his foot and helped him into the
-saddle. On all sides, the hussars were busy with the dragoons; one was
-wounded, but though his face was bleeding, he would not give up his
-horse; another was perched up behind an hussar with his arms round him;
-a third was being helped by an hussar to mount his horse. In front, the
-French infantry were firing as they ran. The hussars galloped hastily
-back with their prisoners. Rostóv galloped back with the rest, aware of
-an unpleasant feeling of depression in his heart. Something vague and
-confused, which he could not at all account for, had come over him with
-the capture of that officer and the blow he had dealt him.
-
-Count Ostermann-Tolstóy met the returning hussars, sent for Rostóv,
-thanked him, and said he would report his gallant deed to the Emperor
-and would recommend him for a St. George’s Cross. When sent for by Count
-Ostermann, Rostóv, remembering that he had charged without orders,
-felt sure his commander was sending for him to punish him for breach of
-discipline. Ostermann’s flattering words and promise of a reward should
-therefore have struck him all the more pleasantly, but he still felt
-that same vaguely disagreeable feeling of moral nausea. “But what
-on earth is worrying me?” he asked himself as he rode back from the
-general. “Ilyín? No, he’s safe. Have I disgraced myself in any way? No,
-that’s not it.” Something else, resembling remorse, tormented him. “Yes,
-oh yes, that French officer with the dimple. And I remember how my arm
-paused when I raised it.”
-
-Rostóv saw the prisoners being led away and galloped after them to have
-a look at his Frenchman with the dimple on his chin. He was sitting in
-his foreign uniform on an hussar packhorse and looked anxiously about
-him. The sword cut on his arm could scarcely be called a wound. He
-glanced at Rostóv with a feigned smile and waved his hand in greeting.
-Rostóv still had the same indefinite feeling, as of shame.
-
-All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that Rostóv,
-without being dull or angry, was silent, thoughtful, and preoccupied.
-He drank reluctantly, tried to remain alone, and kept turning something
-over in his mind.
-
-Rostóv was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his, which to
-his amazement had gained him the St. George’s Cross and even given him
-a reputation for bravery, and there was something he could not at all
-understand. “So others are even more afraid than I am!” he thought. “So
-that’s all there is in what is called heroism! And did I do it for my
-country’s sake? And how was he to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes?
-And how frightened he was! He thought that I should kill him. Why should
-I kill him? My hand trembled. And they have given me a St. George’s
-Cross.... I can’t make it out at all.”
-
-But while Nicholas was considering these questions and still could reach
-no clear solution of what puzzled him so, the wheel of fortune in the
-service, as often happens, turned in his favor. After the affair at
-Ostróvna he was brought into notice, received command of an hussar
-battalion, and when a brave officer was needed he was chosen.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-On receiving news of Natásha’s illness, the countess, though not quite
-well yet and still weak, went to Moscow with Pétya and the rest of the
-household, and the whole family moved from Márya Dmítrievna’s house to
-their own and settled down in town.
-
-Natásha’s illness was so serious that, fortunately for her and for
-her parents, the consideration of all that had caused the illness,
-her conduct and the breaking off of her engagement, receded into the
-background. She was so ill that it was impossible for them to consider
-in how far she was to blame for what had happened. She could not eat
-or sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors made them
-feel, was in danger. They could not think of anything but how to help
-her. Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much in
-French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a great
-variety of medicines for all the diseases known to them, but the simple
-idea never occurred to any of them that they could not know the disease
-Natásha was suffering from, as no disease suffered by a live man can be
-known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always
-has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to
-medicine—not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so
-on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the
-innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs. This simple
-thought could not occur to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard
-that he is unable to work his charms) because the business of their
-lives was to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the best
-years of their lives on that business. But, above all, that thought
-was kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they were
-really useful, as in fact they were to the whole Rostóv family. Their
-usefulness did not depend on making the patient swallow substances for
-the most part harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible, as they
-were given in small doses), but they were useful, necessary, and
-indispensable because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and
-of those who loved her—and that is why there are, and always will be,
-pseudo-healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. They satisfied
-that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that
-something should be done, which is felt by those who are suffering. They
-satisfied the need seen in its most elementary form in a child, when it
-wants to have a place rubbed that has been hurt. A child knocks itself
-and runs at once to the arms of its mother or nurse to have the aching
-spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels better when this is done. The child
-cannot believe that the strongest and wisest of its people have no
-remedy for its pain, and the hope of relief and the expression of its
-mother’s sympathy while she rubs the bump comforts it. The doctors were
-of use to Natásha because they kissed and rubbed her bump, assuring her
-that it would soon pass if only the coachman went to the chemist’s in
-the Arbát and got a powder and some pills in a pretty box for a ruble
-and seventy kopeks, and if she took those powders in boiled water at
-intervals of precisely two hours, neither more nor less.
-
-What would Sónya and the count and countess have done, how would they
-have looked, if nothing had been done, if there had not been those pills
-to give by the clock, the warm drinks, the chicken cutlets, and all the
-other details of life ordered by the doctors, the carrying out of which
-supplied an occupation and consolation to the family circle? How would
-the count have borne his dearly loved daughter’s illness had he not
-known that it was costing him a thousand rubles, and that he would not
-grudge thousands more to benefit her, or had he not known that if her
-illness continued he would not grudge yet other thousands and would take
-her abroad for consultations there, and had he not been able to explain
-the details of how Métivier and Feller had not understood the symptoms,
-but Frise had, and Múdrov had diagnosed them even better? What would the
-countess have done had she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid
-for not strictly obeying the doctor’s orders?
-
-“You’ll never get well like that,” she would say, forgetting her grief
-in her vexation, “if you won’t obey the doctor and take your medicine at
-the right time! You mustn’t trifle with it, you know, or it may turn to
-pneumonia,” she would go on, deriving much comfort from the utterance of
-that foreign word, incomprehensible to others as well as to herself.
-
-What would Sónya have done without the glad consciousness that she had
-not undressed during the first three nights, in order to be ready to
-carry out all the doctor’s injunctions with precision, and that she
-still kept awake at night so as not to miss the proper time when the
-slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box had to be administered?
-Even to Natásha herself it was pleasant to see that so many sacrifices
-were being made for her sake, and to know that she had to take medicine
-at certain hours, though she declared that no medicine would cure her
-and that it was all nonsense. And it was even pleasant to be able to
-show, by disregarding the orders, that she did not believe in medical
-treatment and did not value her life.
-
-The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and
-regardless of her grief-stricken face joked with her. But when he had
-gone into another room, to which the countess hurriedly followed him, he
-assumed a grave air and thoughtfully shaking his head said that though
-there was danger, he had hopes of the effect of this last medicine and
-one must wait and see, that the malady was chiefly mental, but... And
-the countess, trying to conceal the action from herself and from him,
-slipped a gold coin into his hand and always returned to the patient
-with a more tranquil mind.
-
-The symptoms of Natásha’s illness were that she ate little, slept
-little, coughed, and was always low-spirited. The doctors said that
-she could not get on without medical treatment, so they kept her in the
-stifling atmosphere of the town, and the Rostóvs did not move to the
-country that summer of 1812.
-
-In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powders out
-of the little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss who was fond of
-such things made a large collection, and in spite of being deprived of
-the country life to which she was accustomed, youth prevailed. Natásha’s
-grief began to be overlaid by the impressions of daily life, it ceased
-to press so painfully on her heart, it gradually faded into the past,
-and she began to recover physically.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-Natásha was calmer but no happier. She not merely avoided all external
-forms of pleasure—balls, promenades, concerts, and theaters—but she
-never laughed without a sound of tears in her laughter. She could not
-sing. As soon as she began to laugh, or tried to sing by herself, tears
-choked her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection of those pure
-times which could never return, tears of vexation that she should so
-uselessly have ruined her young life which might have been so happy.
-Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a blasphemy,
-in face of her sorrow. Without any need of self-restraint, no wish to
-coquet ever entered her head. She said and felt at that time that no
-man was more to her than Nastásya Ivánovna, the buffoon. Something stood
-sentinel within her and forbade her every joy. Besides, she had lost all
-the old interests of her carefree girlish life that had been so full
-of hope. The previous autumn, the hunting, “Uncle,” and the Christmas
-holidays spent with Nicholas at Otrádnoe were what she recalled oftenest
-and most painfully. What would she not have given to bring back even a
-single day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her presentiment at
-the time had not deceived her—that that state of freedom and readiness
-for any enjoyment would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live
-on.
-
-It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had formerly
-imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the world. But
-this was not enough. She knew that, and asked herself, “What next?”
-But there was nothing to come. There was no joy in life, yet life was
-passing. Natásha apparently tried not to be a burden or a hindrance to
-anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She kept away from everyone in
-the house and felt at ease only with her brother Pétya. She liked to
-be with him better than with the others, and when alone with him she
-sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left the house and of those who came
-to see them was glad to see only one person, Pierre. It would have been
-impossible to treat her with more delicacy, greater care, and at the
-same time more seriously than did Count Bezúkhov. Natásha unconsciously
-felt this delicacy and so found great pleasure in his society. But
-she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre’s part
-seemed to her to be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind
-to everyone that there was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes Natásha
-noticed embarrassment and awkwardness on his part in her presence,
-especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or feared that
-something they spoke of would awaken memories distressing to her. She
-noticed this and attributed it to his general kindness and shyness,
-which she imagined must be the same toward everyone as it was to her.
-After those involuntary words—that if he were free he would have asked
-on his knees for her hand and her love—uttered at a moment when she was
-so strongly agitated, Pierre never spoke to Natásha of his feelings;
-and it seemed plain to her that those words, which had then so comforted
-her, were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words are spoken to comfort
-a crying child. It was not because Pierre was a married man, but because
-Natásha felt very strongly with him that moral barrier the absence of
-which she had experienced with Kurágin that it never entered her head
-that the relations between him and herself could lead to love on her
-part, still less on his, or even to the kind of tender, self-conscious,
-romantic friendship between a man and a woman of which she had known
-several instances.
-
-Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agraféna Ivánovna Belóva, a
-country neighbor of the Rostóvs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions at
-the shrines of the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natásha should fast
-and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natásha gladly welcomed the idea.
-Despite the doctor’s orders that she should not go out early in the
-morning, Natásha insisted on fasting and preparing for the sacrament,
-not as they generally prepared for it in the Rostóv family by attending
-three services in their own house, but as Agraféna Ivánovna did, by
-going to church every day for a week and not once missing Vespers,
-Matins, or Mass.
-
-The countess was pleased with Natásha’s zeal; after the poor results of
-the medical treatment, in the depths of her heart she hoped that prayer
-might help her daughter more than medicines and, though not without
-fear and concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to Natásha’s wish and
-entrusted her to Belóva. Agraféna Ivánovna used to come to wake Natásha
-at three in the morning, but generally found her already awake. She was
-afraid of being late for Matins. Hastily washing, and meekly putting on
-her shabbiest dress and an old mantilla, Natásha, shivering in the fresh
-air, went out into the deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn.
-By Agraféna Ivánovna’s advice Natásha prepared herself not in their
-own parish, but at a church where, according to the devout Agraféna
-Ivánovna, the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were
-never many people in the church; Natásha always stood beside Belóva in
-the customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let into the
-screen before the choir on the left side, and a feeling, new to her, of
-humility before something great and incomprehensible, seized her when
-at that unusual morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the Virgin
-illuminated by the candles burning before it and by the morning light
-falling from the window, she listened to the words of the service which
-she tried to follow with understanding. When she understood them her
-personal feeling became interwoven in the prayers with shades of its
-own. When she did not understand, it was sweeter still to think that
-the wish to understand everything is pride, that it is impossible to
-understand all, that it is only necessary to believe and to commit
-oneself to God, whom she felt guiding her soul at those moments. She
-crossed herself, bowed low, and when she did not understand, in horror
-at her own vileness, simply asked God to forgive her everything,
-everything, to have mercy upon her. The prayers to which she surrendered
-herself most of all were those of repentance. On her way home at an
-early hour when she met no one but bricklayers going to work or men
-sweeping the street, and everybody within the houses was still asleep,
-Natásha experienced a feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility
-of correcting her faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of
-happiness.
-
-During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling grew every
-day. And the happiness of taking communion, or “communing” as Agraféna
-Ivánovna, joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natásha
-so great that she felt she should never live till that blessed Sunday.
-
-But the happy day came, and on that memorable Sunday, when, dressed in
-white muslin, she returned home after communion, for the first time for
-many months she felt calm and not oppressed by the thought of the life
-that lay before her.
-
-The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to continue the
-powders he had prescribed a fortnight previously.
-
-“She must certainly go on taking them morning and evening,” said
-he, evidently sincerely satisfied with his success. “Only, please be
-particular about it.
-
-“Be quite easy,” he continued playfully, as he adroitly took the gold
-coin in his palm. “She will soon be singing and frolicking about. The
-last medicine has done her a very great deal of good. She has freshened
-up very much.”
-
-The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face, looked down at her
-nails and spat a little for luck as she returned to the drawing room.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-At the beginning of July more and more disquieting reports about the war
-began to spread in Moscow; people spoke of an appeal by the Emperor to
-the people, and of his coming himself from the army to Moscow. And as
-up to the eleventh of July no manifesto or appeal had been received,
-exaggerated reports became current about them and about the position of
-Russia. It was said that the Emperor was leaving the army because it was
-in danger, it was said that Smolénsk had surrendered, that Napoleon had
-an army of a million and only a miracle could save Russia.
-
-On the eleventh of July, which was Saturday, the manifesto was received
-but was not yet in print, and Pierre, who was at the Rostóvs’, promised
-to come to dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a copy of the manifesto
-and appeal, which he would obtain from Count Rostopchín.
-
-That Sunday, the Rostóvs went to Mass at the Razumóvskis’ private chapel
-as usual. It was a hot July day. Even at ten o’clock, when the Rostóvs
-got out of their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air, the shouts of
-hawkers, the light and gay summer clothes of the crowd, the dusty leaves
-of the trees on the boulevard, the sounds of the band and the white
-trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the rattling of wheels on
-the cobblestones, and the brilliant, hot sunshine were all full of that
-summer languor, that content and discontent with the present, which
-is most strongly felt on a bright, hot day in town. All the Moscow
-notabilities, all the Rostóvs’ acquaintances, were at the Razumóvskis’
-chapel, for, as if expecting something to happen, many wealthy families
-who usually left town for their country estates had not gone away that
-summer. As Natásha, at her mother’s side, passed through the crowd
-behind a liveried footman who cleared the way for them, she heard a
-young man speaking about her in too loud a whisper.
-
-“That’s Rostóva, the one who...”
-
-“She’s much thinner, but all the same she’s pretty!”
-
-She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kurágin and Bolkónski. But
-she was always imagining that. It always seemed to her that everyone
-who looked at her was thinking only of what had happened to her. With a
-sinking heart, wretched as she always was now when she found herself
-in a crowd, Natásha in her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace
-walked—as women can walk—with the more repose and stateliness the
-greater the pain and shame in her soul. She knew for certain that she
-was pretty, but this no longer gave her satisfaction as it used to.
-On the contrary it tormented her more than anything else of late, and
-particularly so on this bright, hot summer day in town. “It’s Sunday
-again—another week past,” she thought, recalling that she had been here
-the Sunday before, “and always the same life that is no life, and the
-same surroundings in which it used to be so easy to live. I’m pretty,
-I’m young, and I know that now I am good. I used to be bad, but now I
-know I am good,” she thought, “but yet my best years are slipping by
-and are no good to anyone.” She stood by her mother’s side and exchanged
-nods with acquaintances near her. From habit she scrutinized the ladies’
-dresses, condemned the bearing of a lady standing close by who was not
-crossing herself properly but in a cramped manner, and again she thought
-with vexation that she was herself being judged and was judging others,
-and suddenly, at the sound of the service, she felt horrified at her own
-vileness, horrified that the former purity of her soul was again lost to
-her.
-
-A comely, fresh-looking old man was conducting the service with that
-mild solemnity which has so elevating and soothing an effect on the
-souls of the worshipers. The gates of the sanctuary screen were closed,
-the curtain was slowly drawn, and from behind it a soft mysterious voice
-pronounced some words. Tears, the cause of which she herself did not
-understand, made Natásha’s breast heave, and a joyous but oppressive
-feeling agitated her.
-
-“Teach me what I should do, how to live my life, how I may grow good
-forever, forever!” she pleaded.
-
-The deacon came out onto the raised space before the altar screen and,
-holding his thumb extended, drew his long hair from under his dalmatic
-and, making the sign of the cross on his breast, began in a loud and
-solemn voice to recite the words of the prayer....
-
-“In peace let us pray unto the Lord.”
-
-“As one community, without distinction of class, without enmity, united
-by brotherly love—let us pray!” thought Natásha.
-
-“For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation of our souls.”
-
-“For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell above us,” prayed
-Natásha.
-
-When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her brother and
-Denísov. When they prayed for all traveling by land and sea, she
-remembered Prince Andrew, prayed for him, and asked God to forgive her
-all the wrongs she had done him. When they prayed for those who love us,
-she prayed for the members of her own family, her father and mother and
-Sónya, realizing for the first time how wrongly she had acted toward
-them, and feeling all the strength of her love for them. When they
-prayed for those who hate us, she tried to think of her enemies and
-people who hated her, in order to pray for them. She included among her
-enemies the creditors and all who had business dealings with her
-father, and always at the thought of enemies and those who hated her she
-remembered Anatole who had done her so much harm—and though he did not
-hate her she gladly prayed for him as for an enemy. Only at prayer did
-she feel able to think clearly and calmly of Prince Andrew and Anatole,
-as men for whom her feelings were as nothing compared with her awe and
-devotion to God. When they prayed for the Imperial family and the Synod,
-she bowed very low and made the sign of the cross, saying to herself
-that even if she did not understand, still she could not doubt, and at
-any rate loved the governing Synod and prayed for it.
-
-When he had finished the Litany the deacon crossed the stole over his
-breast and said, “Let us commit ourselves and our whole lives to Christ
-the Lord!”
-
-“Commit ourselves to God,” Natásha inwardly repeated. “Lord God, I
-submit myself to Thy will!” she thought. “I want nothing, wish for
-nothing; teach me what to do and how to use my will! Take me, take
-me!” prayed Natásha, with impatient emotion in her heart, not crossing
-herself but letting her slender arms hang down as if expecting some
-invisible power at any moment to take her and deliver her from herself,
-from her regrets, desires, remorse, hopes, and sins.
-
-The countess looked round several times at her daughter’s softened face
-and shining eyes and prayed God to help her.
-
-Unexpectedly, in the middle of the service, and not in the usual order
-Natásha knew so well, the deacon brought out a small stool, the one he
-knelt on when praying on Trinity Sunday, and placed it before the doors
-of the sanctuary screen. The priest came out with his purple velvet
-biretta on his head, adjusted his hair, and knelt down with an effort.
-Everybody followed his example and they looked at one another in
-surprise. Then came the prayer just received from the Synod—a prayer for
-the deliverance of Russia from hostile invasion.
-
-“Lord God of might, God of our salvation!” began the priest in that
-voice, clear, not grandiloquent but mild, in which only the Slav clergy
-read and which acts so irresistibly on a Russian heart.
-
-“Lord God of might, God of our salvation! Look this day in mercy and
-blessing on Thy humble people, and graciously hear us, spare us, and
-have mercy upon us! This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay
-waste the whole world, rises against us; these lawless men are gathered
-together to overthrow Thy kingdom, to destroy Thy dear Jerusalem, Thy
-beloved Russia; to defile Thy temples, to overthrow Thine altars, and to
-desecrate our holy shrines. How long, O Lord, how long shall the wicked
-triumph? How long shall they wield unlawful power?
-
-“Lord God! Hear us when we pray to Thee; strengthen with Thy might
-our most gracious sovereign lord, the Emperor Alexander Pávlovich; be
-mindful of his uprightness and meekness, reward him according to his
-righteousness, and let it preserve us, Thy chosen Israel! Bless his
-counsels, his undertakings, and his work; strengthen his kingdom by
-Thine almighty hand, and give him victory over his enemy, even as Thou
-gavest Moses the victory over Amalek, Gideon over Midian, and David over
-Goliath. Preserve his army, put a bow of brass in the hands of those who
-have armed themselves in Thy Name, and gird their loins with strength
-for the fight. Take up the spear and shield and arise to help us;
-confound and put to shame those who have devised evil against us, may
-they be before the faces of Thy faithful warriors as dust before the
-wind, and may Thy mighty Angel confound them and put them to flight; may
-they be ensnared when they know it not, and may the plots they have laid
-in secret be turned against them; let them fall before Thy servants’
-feet and be laid low by our hosts! Lord, Thou art able to save both
-great and small; Thou art God, and man cannot prevail against Thee!
-
-“God of our fathers! Remember Thy bounteous mercy and loving-kindness
-which are from of old; turn not Thy face from us, but be gracious to our
-unworthiness, and in Thy great goodness and Thy many mercies regard not
-our transgressions and iniquities! Create in us a clean heart and renew
-a right spirit within us, strengthen us all in Thy faith, fortify our
-hope, inspire us with true love one for another, arm us with unity of
-spirit in the righteous defense of the heritage Thou gavest to us and
-to our fathers, and let not the scepter of the wicked be exalted against
-the destiny of those Thou hast sanctified.
-
-“O Lord our God, in whom we believe and in whom we put our trust, let us
-not be confounded in our hope of Thy mercy, and give us a token of Thy
-blessing, that those who hate us and our Orthodox faith may see it and
-be put to shame and perish, and may all the nations know that Thou art
-the Lord and we are Thy people. Show Thy mercy upon us this day, O Lord,
-and grant us Thy salvation; make the hearts of Thy servants to rejoice
-in Thy mercy; smite down our enemies and destroy them swiftly beneath
-the feet of Thy faithful servants! For Thou art the defense, the succor,
-and the victory of them that put their trust in Thee, and to Thee be all
-glory, to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, now and forever, world without
-end. Amen.”
-
-In Natásha’s receptive condition of soul this prayer affected her
-strongly. She listened to every word about the victory of Moses over
-Amalek, of Gideon over Midian, and of David over Goliath, and about
-the destruction of “Thy Jerusalem,” and she prayed to God with the
-tenderness and emotion with which her heart was overflowing, but without
-fully understanding what she was asking of God in that prayer. She
-shared with all her heart in the prayer for the spirit of righteousness,
-for the strengthening of the heart by faith and hope, and its animation
-by love. But she could not pray that her enemies might be trampled under
-foot when but a few minutes before she had been wishing she had more
-of them that she might pray for them. But neither could she doubt the
-righteousness of the prayer that was being read on bended knees. She
-felt in her heart a devout and tremulous awe at the thought of the
-punishment that overtakes men for their sins, and especially of her own
-sins, and she prayed to God to forgive them all, and her too, and to
-give them all, and her too, peace and happiness. And it seemed to her
-that God heard her prayer.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostóvs’ with Natásha’s
-grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that seemed to
-be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was appearing on his own
-horizon—from that day the problem of the vanity and uselessness of all
-earthly things, that had incessantly tormented him, no longer presented
-itself. That terrible question “Why?” “Wherefore?” which had come to him
-amid every occupation, was now replaced, not by another question or by a
-reply to the former question, but by her image. When he listened to, or
-himself took part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of
-human baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly, and did
-not ask himself why men struggled so about these things when all is so
-transient and incomprehensible—but he remembered her as he had last
-seen her, and all his doubts vanished—not because she had answered
-the questions that had haunted him, but because his conception of her
-transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of spiritual
-activity in which no one could be justified or guilty—a realm of beauty
-and love which it was worth living for. Whatever worldly baseness
-presented itself to him, he said to himself:
-
-“Well, supposing N. N. has swindled the country and the Tsar, and the
-country and the Tsar confer honors upon him, what does that matter? She
-smiled at me yesterday and asked me to come again, and I love her, and
-no one will ever know it.” And his soul felt calm and peaceful.
-
-Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the same idle
-and dissipated life, because besides the hours he spent at the Rostóvs’
-there were other hours he had to spend somehow, and the habits and
-acquaintances he had made in Moscow formed a current that bore him along
-irresistibly. But latterly, when more and more disquieting reports came
-from the seat of war and Natásha’s health began to improve and she
-no longer aroused in him the former feeling of careful pity, an
-ever-increasing restlessness, which he could not explain, took
-possession of him. He felt that the condition he was in could not
-continue long, that a catastrophe was coming which would change his
-whole life, and he impatiently sought everywhere for signs of that
-approaching catastrophe. One of his brother Masons had revealed to
-Pierre the following prophecy concerning Napoleon, drawn from the
-Revelation of St. John.
-
-In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said:
-
-Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of
-the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred
-threescore and six.
-
-And in the fifth verse of the same chapter:
-
-And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and
-blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two
-months.
-
-
-The French alphabet, written out with the same numerical values as the
-Hebrew, in which the first nine letters denote units and the others
-tens, will have the following significance:
-
- a b c d e f g h i k
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
- l m n o p q r s
- 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
- t u v w x y
- 100 110 120 130 140 150
- z
- 160
-
-Writing the words L’Empereur Napoléon in numbers, it appears that the
-sum of them is 666, and that Napoleon was therefore the beast foretold
-in the Apocalypse. Moreover, by applying the same system to the words
-quarante-deux, * which was the term allowed to the beast that “spoke
-great things and blasphemies,” the same number 666 was obtained; from
-which it followed that the limit fixed for Napoleon’s power had come
-in the year 1812 when the French emperor was forty-two. This prophecy
-pleased Pierre very much and he often asked himself what would put an
-end to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon, and tried by the
-same system of using letters as numbers and adding them up, to find an
-answer to the question that engrossed him. He wrote the words L’Empereur
-Alexandre, La nation russe and added up their numbers, but the sums
-were either more or less than 666. Once when making such calculations he
-wrote down his own name in French, Comte Pierre Besouhoff, but the
-sum of the numbers did not come right. Then he changed the spelling,
-substituting a z for the s and adding de and the article le, still
-without obtaining the desired result. Then it occurred to him: if the
-answer to the question were contained in his name, his nationality would
-also be given in the answer. So he wrote Le russe Besuhof and adding
-up the numbers got 671. This was only five too much, and five was
-represented by e, the very letter elided from the article le before the
-word Empereur. By omitting the e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the
-answer he sought. L’russe Besuhof made 666. This discovery excited him.
-How, or by what means, he was connected with the great event foretold in
-the Apocalypse he did not know, but he did not doubt that connection for
-a moment. His love for Natásha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion, the
-comet, 666, L’Empereur Napoléon, and L’russe Besuhof—all this had to
-mature and culminate, to lift him out of that spellbound, petty sphere
-of Moscow habits in which he felt himself held captive and lead him to a
-great achievement and great happiness.
-
- * Forty-two.
-
-
-On the eve of the Sunday when the special prayer was read, Pierre had
-promised the Rostóvs to bring them, from Count Rostopchín whom he knew
-well, both the appeal to the people and the news from the army. In the
-morning, when he went to call at Rostopchín’s he met there a courier
-fresh from the army, an acquaintance of his own, who often danced at
-Moscow balls.
-
-“Do, please, for heaven’s sake, relieve me of something!” said the
-courier. “I have a sackful of letters to parents.”
-
-Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostóv to his father. Pierre
-took that letter, and Rostopchín also gave him the Emperor’s appeal to
-Moscow, which had just been printed, the last army orders, and his own
-most recent bulletin. Glancing through the army orders, Pierre found in
-one of them, in the lists of killed, wounded, and rewarded, the name of
-Nicholas Rostóv, awarded a St. George’s Cross of the Fourth Class for
-courage shown in the Ostróvna affair, and in the same order the name
-of Prince Andrew Bolkónski, appointed to the command of a regiment of
-Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind the Rostóvs of Bolkónski,
-Pierre could not refrain from making them happy by the news of their
-son’s having received a decoration, so he sent that printed army order
-and Nicholas’ letter to the Rostóvs, keeping the appeal, the bulletin,
-and the other orders to take with him when he went to dinner.
-
-His conversation with Count Rostopchín and the latter’s tone of anxious
-hurry, the meeting with the courier who talked casually of how badly
-things were going in the army, the rumors of the discovery of spies in
-Moscow and of a leaflet in circulation stating that Napoleon promised
-to be in both the Russian capitals by the autumn, and the talk of the
-Emperor’s being expected to arrive next day—all aroused with fresh force
-that feeling of agitation and expectation in Pierre which he had been
-conscious of ever since the appearance of the comet, and especially
-since the beginning of the war.
-
-He had long been thinking of entering the army and would have done so
-had he not been hindered, first, by his membership of the Society of
-Freemasons to which he was bound by oath and which preached perpetual
-peace and the abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact that when he
-saw the great mass of Muscovites who had donned uniform and were talking
-patriotism, he somehow felt ashamed to take the step. But the chief
-reason for not carrying out his intention to enter the army lay in the
-vague idea that he was L’russe Besuhof who had the number of the beast,
-666; that his part in the great affair of setting a limit to the
-power of the beast that spoke great and blasphemous things had been
-predestined from eternity, and that therefore he ought not to undertake
-anything, but wait for what was bound to come to pass.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostóvs that day, as usual
-on Sundays.
-
-Pierre came early so as to find them alone.
-
-He had grown so stout this year that he would have been abnormal had he
-not been so tall, so broad of limb, and so strong that he carried his
-bulk with evident ease.
-
-He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering something. His coachman did
-not even ask whether he was to wait. He knew that when his master was
-at the Rostóvs’ he stayed till midnight. The Rostóvs’ footman rushed
-eagerly forward to help him off with his cloak and take his hat and
-stick. Pierre, from club habit, always left both hat and stick in the
-anteroom.
-
-The first person he saw in the house was Natásha. Even before he saw
-her, while taking off his cloak, he heard her. She was practicing solfa
-exercises in the music room. He knew that she had not sung since her
-illness, and so the sound of her voice surprised and delighted him. He
-opened the door softly and saw her, in the lilac dress she had worn at
-church, walking about the room singing. She had her back to him when he
-opened the door, but when, turning quickly, she saw his broad, surprised
-face, she blushed and came rapidly up to him.
-
-“I want to try to sing again,” she said, adding as if by way of excuse,
-“it is, at least, something to do.”
-
-“That’s capital!”
-
-“How glad I am you’ve come! I am so happy today,” she said, with the old
-animation Pierre had not seen in her for a long time. “You know Nicholas
-has received a St. George’s Cross? I am so proud of him.”
-
-“Oh yes, I sent that announcement. But I don’t want to interrupt you,”
-he added, and was about to go to the drawing room.
-
-Natásha stopped him.
-
-“Count, is it wrong of me to sing?” she said blushing, and fixing her
-eyes inquiringly on him.
-
-“No... Why should it be? On the contrary... But why do you ask me?”
-
-“I don’t know myself,” Natásha answered quickly, “but I should not like
-to do anything you disapproved of. I believe in you completely. You
-don’t know how important you are to me, how much you’ve done for me....”
-She spoke rapidly and did not notice how Pierre flushed at her words. “I
-saw in that same army order that he, Bolkónski” (she whispered the name
-hastily), “is in Russia, and in the army again. What do you think?”—she
-was speaking hurriedly, evidently afraid her strength might fail
-her—“Will he ever forgive me? Will he not always have a bitter feeling
-toward me? What do you think? What do you think?”
-
-“I think...” Pierre replied, “that he has nothing to forgive.... If I
-were in his place...”
-
-By association of ideas, Pierre was at once carried back to the day
-when, trying to comfort her, he had said that if he were not himself but
-the best man in the world and free, he would ask on his knees for her
-hand; and the same feeling of pity, tenderness, and love took possession
-of him and the same words rose to his lips. But she did not give him
-time to say them.
-
-“Yes, you... you...” she said, uttering the word you rapturously—“that’s
-a different thing. I know no one kinder, more generous, or better than
-you; nobody could be! Had you not been there then, and now too, I don’t
-know what would have become of me, because...”
-
-Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted her music
-before her eyes, began singing again, and again began walking up and
-down the room.
-
-Just then Pétya came running in from the drawing room.
-
-Pétya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full red lips and
-resembled Natásha. He was preparing to enter the university, but he and
-his friend Obolénski had lately, in secret, agreed to join the hussars.
-
-Pétya had come rushing out to talk to his namesake about this affair.
-He had asked Pierre to find out whether he would be accepted in the
-hussars.
-
-Pierre walked up and down the drawing room, not listening to what Pétya
-was saying.
-
-Pétya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.
-
-“Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirílych, for heaven’s sake! You are my
-only hope,” said Pétya.
-
-“Oh yes, your plan. To join the hussars? I’ll mention it, I’ll bring it
-all up today.”
-
-“Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?” asked the old count. “The
-countess has been to Mass at the Razumóvskis’ and heard the new prayer.
-She says it’s very fine.”
-
-“Yes, I’ve got it,” said Pierre. “The Emperor is to be here tomorrow...
-there’s to be an Extraordinary Meeting of the nobility, and they are
-talking of a levy of ten men per thousand. Oh yes, let me congratulate
-you!”
-
-“Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the army?”
-
-“We are again retreating. They say we’re already near Smolénsk,” replied
-Pierre.
-
-“O Lord, O Lord!” exclaimed the count. “Where is the manifesto?”
-
-“The Emperor’s appeal? Oh yes!”
-
-Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but could not find
-them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the hand of the countess
-who entered the room and glanced uneasily around, evidently expecting
-Natásha, who had left off singing but had not yet come into the drawing
-room.
-
-“On my word, I don’t know what I’ve done with it,” he said.
-
-“There he is, always losing everything!” remarked the countess.
-
-Natásha entered with a softened and agitated expression of face and
-sat down looking silently at Pierre. As soon as she entered, Pierre’s
-features, which had been gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and while still
-searching for the papers he glanced at her several times.
-
-“No, really! I’ll drive home, I must have left them there. I’ll
-certainly...”
-
-“But you’ll be late for dinner.”
-
-“Oh! And my coachman has gone.”
-
-But Sónya, who had gone to look for the papers in the anteroom, had
-found them in Pierre’s hat, where he had carefully tucked them under the
-lining. Pierre was about to begin reading.
-
-“No, after dinner,” said the old count, evidently expecting much
-enjoyment from that reading.
-
-At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health of the new
-chevalier of St. George, Shinshín told them the town news, of the
-illness of the old Georgian princess, of Métivier’s disappearance from
-Moscow, and of how some German fellow had been brought to Rostopchín
-and accused of being a French “spyer” (so Count Rostopchín had told the
-story), and how Rostopchín let him go and assured the people that he was
-“not a spire at all, but only an old German ruin.”
-
-“People are being arrested...” said the count. “I’ve told the countess
-she should not speak French so much. It’s not the time for it now.”
-
-“And have you heard?” Shinshín asked. “Prince Golítsyn has engaged a
-master to teach him Russian. It is becoming dangerous to speak French in
-the streets.”
-
-“And how about you, Count Peter Kirílych? If they call up the militia,
-you too will have to mount a horse,” remarked the old count, addressing
-Pierre.
-
-Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through dinner, seeming not
-to grasp what was said. He looked at the count.
-
-“Oh yes, the war,” he said. “No! What sort of warrior should I make? And
-yet everything is so strange, so strange! I can’t make it out. I don’t
-know, I am very far from having military tastes, but in these times no
-one can answer for himself.”
-
-After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in an easy chair and
-with a serious face asked Sónya, who was considered an excellent reader,
-to read the appeal.
-
-“To Moscow, our ancient Capital!
-
-“The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with immense forces. He
-comes to despoil our beloved country.”
-
-Sónya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count listened
-with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.
-
-Natásha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father and
-now at Pierre.
-
-Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The countess
-shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn expression
-in the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that the danger
-threatening her son would not soon be over. Shinshín, with a sarcastic
-smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make fun of anything that
-gave him the opportunity: Sónya’s reading, any remark of the count’s, or
-even the manifesto itself should no better pretext present itself.
-
-After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes the
-Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious nobility,
-Sónya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the attention that was
-being paid to her, read the last words:
-
-“We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that Capital
-and in other parts of our realm for consultation, and for the direction
-of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy’s path and those
-freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the ruin he
-hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may Europe delivered
-from bondage glorify the name of Russia!”
-
-
-“Yes, that’s it!” cried the count, opening his moist eyes and sniffing
-repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his nose; and he
-added, “Let the Emperor but say the word and we’ll sacrifice everything
-and begrudge nothing.”
-
-Before Shinshín had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on the
-count’s patriotism, Natásha jumped up from her place and ran to her
-father.
-
-“What a darling our Papa is!” she cried, kissing him, and she again
-looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned to her
-with her better spirits.
-
-“There! Here’s a patriot for you!” said Shinshín.
-
-“Not a patriot at all, but simply...” Natásha replied in an injured
-tone. “Everything seems funny to you, but this isn’t at all a joke....”
-
-“A joke indeed!” put in the count. “Let him but say the word and we’ll
-all go.... We’re not Germans!”
-
-“But did you notice, it says, ‘for consultation’?” said Pierre.
-
-“Never mind what it’s for....”
-
-At this moment, Pétya, to whom nobody was paying any attention, came up
-to his father with a very flushed face and said in his breaking voice
-that was now deep and now shrill:
-
-“Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it’s as you please,
-but I say definitely that you must let me enter the army, because I
-can’t... that’s all....”
-
-The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped her hands, and
-turned angrily to her husband.
-
-“That comes of your talking!” said she.
-
-But the count had already recovered from his excitement.
-
-“Come, come!” said he. “Here’s a fine warrior! No! Nonsense! You must
-study.”
-
-“It’s not nonsense, Papa. Fédya Obolénski is younger than I, and he’s
-going too. Besides, all the same I can’t study now when...” Pétya
-stopped short, flushed till he perspired, but still got out the words,
-“when our Fatherland is in danger.”
-
-“That’ll do, that’ll do—nonsense....”
-
-“But you said yourself that we would sacrifice everything.”
-
-“Pétya! Be quiet, I tell you!” cried the count, with a glance at his
-wife, who had turned pale and was staring fixedly at her son.
-
-“And I tell you—Peter Kirílych here will also tell you...”
-
-“Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother’s milk has hardly dried on your lips
-and you want to go into the army! There, there, I tell you,” and the
-count moved to go out of the room, taking the papers, probably to reread
-them in his study before having a nap.
-
-“Well, Peter Kirílych, let’s go and have a smoke,” he said.
-
-Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natásha’s unwontedly brilliant eyes,
-continually glancing at him with a more than cordial look, had reduced
-him to this condition.
-
-“No, I think I’ll go home.”
-
-“Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with us.... You don’t
-often come nowadays as it is, and this girl of mine,” said the count
-good-naturedly, pointing to Natásha, “only brightens up when you’re
-here.”
-
-“Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home... business...” said
-Pierre hurriedly.
-
-“Well, then, au revoir!” said the count, and went out of the room.
-
-“Why are you going? Why are you upset?” asked Natásha, and she looked
-challengingly into Pierre’s eyes.
-
-“Because I love you!” was what he wanted to say, but he did not say it,
-and only blushed till the tears came, and lowered his eyes.
-
-“Because it is better for me to come less often... because... No, simply
-I have business....”
-
-“Why? No, tell me!” Natásha began resolutely and suddenly stopped.
-
-They looked at each other with dismayed and embarrassed faces. He tried
-to smile but could not: his smile expressed suffering, and he silently
-kissed her hand and went out.
-
-Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostóvs’ any more.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-After the definite refusal he had received, Pétya went to his room
-and there locked himself in and wept bitterly. When he came in to tea,
-silent, morose, and with tear-stained face, everybody pretended not to
-notice anything.
-
-Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several of the Rostóvs’
-domestic serfs begged permission to go to have a look at him. That
-morning Pétya was a long time dressing and arranging his hair and
-collar to look like a grown-up man. He frowned before his looking glass,
-gesticulated, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without saying a word
-to anyone, took his cap and left the house by the back door, trying to
-avoid notice. Pétya decided to go straight to where the Emperor was and
-to explain frankly to some gentleman-in-waiting (he imagined the Emperor
-to be always surrounded by gentlemen-in-waiting) that he, Count Rostóv,
-in spite of his youth wished to serve his country; that youth could be
-no hindrance to loyalty, and that he was ready to... While
-dressing, Pétya had prepared many fine things he meant to say to the
-gentleman-in-waiting.
-
-It was on the very fact of being so young that Pétya counted for success
-in reaching the Emperor—he even thought how surprised everyone would be
-at his youthfulness—and yet in the arrangement of his collar and hair
-and by his sedate deliberate walk he wished to appear a grown-up man.
-But the farther he went and the more his attention was diverted by the
-ever-increasing crowds moving toward the Krémlin, the less he remembered
-to walk with the sedateness and deliberation of a man. As he approached
-the Krémlin he even began to avoid being crushed and resolutely stuck
-out his elbows in a menacing way. But within the Trinity Gateway he
-was so pressed to the wall by people who probably were unaware of the
-patriotic intentions with which he had come that in spite of all his
-determination he had to give in, and stop while carriages passed in,
-rumbling beneath the archway. Beside Pétya stood a peasant woman, a
-footman, two tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing some
-time in the gateway, Pétya tried to move forward in front of the others
-without waiting for all the carriages to pass, and he began resolutely
-working his way with his elbows, but the woman just in front of him, who
-was the first against whom he directed his efforts, angrily shouted at
-him:
-
-“What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don’t you see we’re all
-standing still? Then why push?”
-
-“Anybody can shove,” said the footman, and also began working his elbows
-to such effect that he pushed Pétya into a very filthy corner of the
-gateway.
-
-Pétya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and pulled up the damp
-collar which he had arranged so well at home to seem like a man’s.
-
-He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and feared that if he were
-now to approach the gentlemen-in-waiting in that plight he would not be
-admitted to the Emperor. But it was impossible to smarten oneself up
-or move to another place, because of the crowd. One of the generals who
-drove past was an acquaintance of the Rostóvs’, and Pétya thought of
-asking his help, but came to the conclusion that that would not be a
-manly thing to do. When the carriages had all passed in, the crowd,
-carrying Pétya with it, streamed forward into the Krémlin Square which
-was already full of people. There were people not only in the square,
-but everywhere—on the slopes and on the roofs. As soon as Pétya found
-himself in the square he clearly heard the sound of bells and the joyous
-voices of the crowd that filled the whole Krémlin.
-
-For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all heads were bared,
-and everyone rushed forward in one direction. Pétya was being pressed so
-that he could scarcely breathe, and everybody shouted, “Hurrah! hurrah!
-hurrah!” Pétya stood on tiptoe and pushed and pinched, but could see
-nothing except the people about him.
-
-All the faces bore the same expression of excitement and enthusiasm. A
-tradesman’s wife standing beside Pétya sobbed, and the tears ran down
-her cheeks.
-
-“Father! Angel! Dear one!” she kept repeating, wiping away her tears
-with her fingers.
-
-“Hurrah!” was heard on all sides.
-
-For a moment the crowd stood still, but then it made another rush
-forward.
-
-Quite beside himself, Pétya, clinching his teeth and rolling his eyes
-ferociously, pushed forward, elbowing his way and shouting “hurrah!” as
-if he were prepared that instant to kill himself and everyone else, but
-on both sides of him other people with similarly ferocious faces pushed
-forward and everybody shouted “hurrah!”
-
-“So this is what the Emperor is!” thought Pétya. “No, I can’t petition
-him myself—that would be too bold.” But in spite of this he continued
-to struggle desperately forward, and from between the backs of those
-in front he caught glimpses of an open space with a strip of red cloth
-spread out on it; but just then the crowd swayed back—the police
-in front were pushing back those who had pressed too close to the
-procession: the Emperor was passing from the palace to the Cathedral of
-the Assumption—and Pétya unexpectedly received such a blow on his side
-and ribs and was squeezed so hard that suddenly everything grew dim
-before his eyes and he lost consciousness. When he came to himself, a
-man of clerical appearance with a tuft of gray hair at the back of
-his head and wearing a shabby blue cassock—probably a church clerk and
-chanter—was holding him under the arm with one hand while warding off
-the pressure of the crowd with the other.
-
-“You’ve crushed the young gentleman!” said the clerk. “What are you up
-to? Gently!... They’ve crushed him, crushed him!”
-
-The Emperor entered the Cathedral of the Assumption. The crowd spread
-out again more evenly, and the clerk led Pétya—pale and breathless—to
-the Tsar-cannon. Several people were sorry for Pétya, and suddenly a
-crowd turned toward him and pressed round him. Those who stood nearest
-him attended to him, unbuttoned his coat, seated him on the raised
-platform of the cannon, and reproached those others (whoever they might
-be) who had crushed him.
-
-“One might easily get killed that way! What do they mean by it? Killing
-people! Poor dear, he’s as white as a sheet!”—various voices were heard
-saying.
-
-Pétya soon came to himself, the color returned to his face, the pain had
-passed, and at the cost of that temporary unpleasantness he had obtained
-a place by the cannon from where he hoped to see the Emperor who
-would be returning that way. Pétya no longer thought of presenting his
-petition. If he could only see the Emperor he would be happy!
-
-While the service was proceeding in the Cathedral of the Assumption—it
-was a combined service of prayer on the occasion of the Emperor’s
-arrival and of thanksgiving for the conclusion of peace with the
-Turks—the crowd outside spread out and hawkers appeared, selling kvas,
-gingerbread, and poppyseed sweets (of which Pétya was particularly
-fond), and ordinary conversation could again be heard. A tradesman’s
-wife was showing a rent in her shawl and telling how much the shawl had
-cost; another was saying that all silk goods had now got dear. The clerk
-who had rescued Pétya was talking to a functionary about the priests who
-were officiating that day with the bishop. The clerk several times used
-the word “plenary” (of the service), a word Pétya did not understand.
-Two young citizens were joking with some serf girls who were cracking
-nuts. All these conversations, especially the joking with the girls,
-were such as might have had a particular charm for Pétya at his age, but
-they did not interest him now. He sat on his elevation—the pedestal of
-the cannon—still agitated as before by the thought of the Emperor and by
-his love for him. The feeling of pain and fear he had experienced when
-he was being crushed, together with that of rapture, still further
-intensified his sense of the importance of the occasion.
-
-Suddenly the sound of a firing of cannon was heard from the embankment,
-to celebrate the signing of peace with the Turks, and the crowd rushed
-impetuously toward the embankment to watch the firing. Pétya too would
-have run there, but the clerk who had taken the young gentleman under
-his protection stopped him. The firing was still proceeding when
-officers, generals, and gentlemen-in-waiting came running out of the
-cathedral, and after them others in a more leisurely manner: caps were
-again raised, and those who had run to look at the cannon ran back
-again. At last four men in uniforms and sashes emerged from the
-cathedral doors. “Hurrah! hurrah!” shouted the crowd again.
-
-“Which is he? Which?” asked Pétya in a tearful voice, of those around
-him, but no one answered him, everybody was too excited; and Pétya,
-fixing on one of those four men, whom he could not clearly see for the
-tears of joy that filled his eyes, concentrated all his enthusiasm
-on him—though it happened not to be the Emperor—frantically shouted
-“Hurrah!” and resolved that tomorrow, come what might, he would join the
-army.
-
-The crowd ran after the Emperor, followed him to the palace, and began
-to disperse. It was already late, and Pétya had not eaten anything and
-was drenched with perspiration, yet he did not go home but stood with
-that diminishing, but still considerable, crowd before the palace while
-the Emperor dined—looking in at the palace windows, expecting he knew
-not what, and envying alike the notables he saw arriving at the entrance
-to dine with the Emperor and the court footmen who served at table,
-glimpses of whom could be seen through the windows.
-
-While the Emperor was dining, Valúev, looking out of the window, said:
-
-“The people are still hoping to see Your Majesty again.”
-
-The dinner was nearly over, and the Emperor, munching a biscuit, rose
-and went out onto the balcony. The people, with Pétya among them, rushed
-toward the balcony.
-
-“Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!...” cried the crowd, and Pétya with
-it, and again the women and men of weaker mold, Pétya among them, wept
-with joy.
-
-A largish piece of the biscuit the Emperor was holding in his hand broke
-off, fell on the balcony parapet, and then to the ground. A coachman in
-a jerkin, who stood nearest, sprang forward and snatched it up. Several
-people in the crowd rushed at the coachman. Seeing this the Emperor had
-a plateful of biscuits brought him and began throwing them down from
-the balcony. Pétya’s eyes grew bloodshot, and still more excited by the
-danger of being crushed, he rushed at the biscuits. He did not know why,
-but he had to have a biscuit from the Tsar’s hand and he felt that he
-must not give way. He sprang forward and upset an old woman who was
-catching at a biscuit; the old woman did not consider herself defeated
-though she was lying on the ground—she grabbed at some biscuits but
-her hand did not reach them. Pétya pushed her hand away with his knee,
-seized a biscuit, and as if fearing to be too late, again shouted
-“Hurrah!” with a voice already hoarse.
-
-The Emperor went in, and after that the greater part of the crowd began
-to disperse.
-
-“There! I said if only we waited—and so it was!” was being joyfully said
-by various people.
-
-Happy as Pétya was, he felt sad at having to go home knowing that all
-the enjoyment of that day was over. He did not go straight home from
-the Krémlin, but called on his friend Obolénski, who was fifteen and was
-also entering the regiment. On returning home Pétya announced resolutely
-and firmly that if he was not allowed to enter the service he would
-run away. And next day, Count Ilyá Rostóv—though he had not yet quite
-yielded—went to inquire how he could arrange for Pétya to serve where
-there would be least danger.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII
-
-Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, an immense number of carriages
-were standing outside the Slobóda Palace.
-
-The great halls were full. In the first were the nobility and gentry in
-their uniforms, in the second bearded merchants in full-skirted coats
-of blue cloth and wearing medals. In the noblemen’s hall there was
-an incessant movement and buzz of voices. The chief magnates sat on
-high-backed chairs at a large table under the portrait of the Emperor,
-but most of the gentry were strolling about the room.
-
-All these nobles, whom Pierre met every day at the Club or in their own
-houses, were in uniform—some in that of Catherine’s day, others in that
-of Emperor Paul, others again in the new uniforms of Alexander’s time or
-the ordinary uniform of the nobility, and the general characteristic
-of being in uniform imparted something strange and fantastic to these
-diverse and familiar personalities, both old and young. The old men,
-dim-eyed, toothless, bald, sallow, and bloated, or gaunt and wrinkled,
-were especially striking. For the most part they sat quietly in their
-places and were silent, or, if they walked about and talked, attached
-themselves to someone younger. On all these faces, as on the faces
-of the crowd Pétya had seen in the Square, there was a striking
-contradiction: the general expectation of a solemn event, and at the
-same time the everyday interests in a boston card party, Peter the cook,
-Zinaída Dmítrievna’s health, and so on.
-
-Pierre was there too, buttoned up since early morning in a nobleman’s
-uniform that had become too tight for him. He was agitated;
-this extraordinary gathering not only of nobles but also of the
-merchant-class—les états généraux (States-General)—evoked in him a whole
-series of ideas he had long laid aside but which were deeply graven in
-his soul: thoughts of the Contrat Social and the French Revolution. The
-words that had struck him in the Emperor’s appeal—that the sovereign was
-coming to the capital for consultation with his people—strengthened this
-idea. And imagining that in this direction something important which
-he had long awaited was drawing near, he strolled about watching and
-listening to conversations, but nowhere finding any confirmation of the
-ideas that occupied him.
-
-The Emperor’s manifesto was read, evoking enthusiasm, and then all moved
-about discussing it. Besides the ordinary topics of conversation, Pierre
-heard questions of where the marshals of the nobility were to stand when
-the Emperor entered, when a ball should be given in the Emperor’s
-honor, whether they should group themselves by districts or by whole
-provinces... and so on; but as soon as the war was touched on, or
-what the nobility had been convened for, the talk became undecided and
-indefinite. Then all preferred listening to speaking.
-
-A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the uniform of a retired
-naval officer, was speaking in one of the rooms, and a small crowd was
-pressing round him. Pierre went up to the circle that had formed round
-the speaker and listened. Count Ilyá Rostóv, in a military uniform of
-Catherine’s time, was sauntering with a pleasant smile among the crowd,
-with all of whom he was acquainted. He too approached that group and
-listened with a kindly smile and nods of approval, as he always did,
-to what the speaker was saying. The retired naval man was speaking very
-boldly, as was evident from the expression on the faces of the listeners
-and from the fact that some people Pierre knew as the meekest and
-quietest of men walked away disapprovingly or expressed disagreement
-with him. Pierre pushed his way into the middle of the group, listened,
-and convinced himself that the man was indeed a liberal, but of views
-quite different from his own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly
-sonorous, musical, and aristocratic baritone voice, pleasantly
-swallowing his r’s and generally slurring his consonants: the voice of
-a man calling out to his servant, “Heah! Bwing me my pipe!” It was
-indicative of dissipation and the exercise of authority.
-
-“What if the Smolénsk people have offahd to waise militia for the
-Empewah? Ah we to take Smolénsk as our patte’n? If the noble awistocwacy
-of the pwovince of Moscow thinks fit, it can show its loyalty to our
-sov’weign the Empewah in other ways. Have we fo’gotten the waising of
-the militia in the yeah ‘seven? All that did was to enwich the pwiests’
-sons and thieves and wobbahs....”
-
-Count Ilyá Rostóv smiled blandly and nodded approval.
-
-“And was our militia of any use to the Empia? Not at all! It only wuined
-our farming! Bettah have another conscwiption... o’ ou’ men will wetu’n
-neithah soldiers no’ peasants, and we’ll get only depwavity fwom them.
-The nobility don’t gwudge theah lives—evewy one of us will go and bwing
-in more wecwuits, and the sov’weign” (that was the way he referred to
-the Emperor) “need only say the word and we’ll all die fo’ him!” added
-the orator with animation.
-
-Count Rostóv’s mouth watered with pleasure and he nudged Pierre, but
-Pierre wanted to speak himself. He pushed forward, feeling stirred,
-but not yet sure what stirred him or what he would say. Scarcely had he
-opened his mouth when one of the senators, a man without a tooth in his
-head, with a shrewd though angry expression, standing near the first
-speaker, interrupted him. Evidently accustomed to managing debates and
-to maintaining an argument, he began in low but distinct tones:
-
-“I imagine, sir,” said he, mumbling with his toothless mouth, “that we
-have been summoned here not to discuss whether it’s best for the empire
-at the present moment to adopt conscription or to call out the militia.
-We have been summoned to reply to the appeal with which our sovereign
-the Emperor has honored us. But to judge what is best—conscription or
-the militia—we can leave to the supreme authority....”
-
-Pierre suddenly saw an outlet for his excitement. He hardened his heart
-against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow attitude
-into the deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped forward and
-interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he would say, but he
-began to speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French or expressing
-himself in bookish Russian.
-
-“Excuse me, your excellency,” he began. (He was well acquainted with
-the senator, but thought it necessary on this occasion to address him
-formally.) “Though I don’t agree with the gentleman...” (he hesitated:
-he wished to say, “Mon très honorable préopinant”—“My very honorable
-opponent”) “with the gentleman... whom I have not the honor of knowing,
-I suppose that the nobility have been summoned not merely to express
-their sympathy and enthusiasm but also to consider the means by which
-we can assist our Fatherland! I imagine,” he went on, warming to his
-subject, “that the Emperor himself would not be satisfied to find in us
-merely owners of serfs whom we are willing to devote to his service, and
-chair à canon * we are ready to make of ourselves—and not to obtain from
-us any co-co-counsel.”
-
- * “Food for cannon.”
-
-
-Many persons withdrew from the circle, noticing the senator’s sarcastic
-smile and the freedom of Pierre’s remarks. Only Count Rostóv was pleased
-with them as he had been pleased with those of the naval officer, the
-senator, and in general with whatever speech he had last heard.
-
-“I think that before discussing these questions,” Pierre continued, “we
-should ask the Emperor—most respectfully ask His Majesty—to let us know
-the number of our troops and the position in which our army and our
-forces now are, and then...”
-
-But scarcely had Pierre uttered these words before he was attacked from
-three sides. The most vigorous attack came from an old acquaintance,
-a boston player who had always been well disposed toward him, Stepán
-Stepánovich Adráksin. Adráksin was in uniform, and whether as a result
-of the uniform or from some other cause Pierre saw before him quite a
-different man. With a sudden expression of malevolence on his aged face,
-Adráksin shouted at Pierre:
-
-“In the first place, I tell you we have no right to question the Emperor
-about that, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had that right, the
-Emperor could not answer such a question. The troops are moved
-according to the enemy’s movements and the number of men increases and
-decreases....”
-
-Another voice, that of a nobleman of medium height and about forty years
-of age, whom Pierre had formerly met at the gypsies’ and knew as a bad
-cardplayer, and who, also transformed by his uniform, came up to Pierre,
-interrupted Adráksin.
-
-“Yes, and this is not a time for discussing,” he continued, “but for
-acting: there is war in Russia! The enemy is advancing to destroy
-Russia, to desecrate the tombs of our fathers, to carry off our wives
-and children.” The nobleman smote his breast. “We will all arise,
-everyone of us will go, for our father the Tsar!” he shouted, rolling
-his bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were heard in the crowd.
-“We are Russians and will not grudge our blood in defense of our faith,
-the throne, and the Fatherland! We must cease raving if we are sons of
-our Fatherland! We will show Europe how Russia rises to the defense of
-Russia!”
-
-Pierre wished to reply, but could not get in a word. He felt that his
-words, apart from what meaning they conveyed, were less audible than the
-sound of his opponent’s voice.
-
-Count Rostóv at the back of the crowd was expressing approval; several
-persons, briskly turning a shoulder to the orator at the end of a
-phrase, said:
-
-“That’s right, quite right! Just so!”
-
-Pierre wished to say that he was ready to sacrifice his money, his
-serfs, or himself, only one ought to know the state of affairs in
-order to be able to improve it, but he was unable to speak. Many voices
-shouted and talked at the same time, so that Count Rostóv had not time
-to signify his approval of them all, and the group increased, dispersed,
-re-formed, and then moved with a hum of talk into the largest hall and
-to the big table. Not only was Pierre’s attempt to speak unsuccessful,
-but he was rudely interrupted, pushed aside, and people turned away
-from him as from a common enemy. This happened not because they were
-displeased by the substance of his speech, which had even been forgotten
-after the many subsequent speeches, but to animate it the crowd needed a
-tangible object to love and a tangible object to hate. Pierre became the
-latter. Many other orators spoke after the excited nobleman, and all in
-the same tone. Many spoke eloquently and with originality.
-
-Glínka, the editor of the Russian Messenger, who was recognized (cries
-of “author! author!” were heard in the crowd), said that “hell must be
-repulsed by hell,” and that he had seen a child smiling at lightning
-flashes and thunderclaps, but “we will not be that child.”
-
-“Yes, yes, at thunderclaps!” was repeated approvingly in the back rows
-of the crowd.
-
-The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat gray-haired or bald
-seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed and besashed almost all of whom
-Pierre had seen in their own homes with their buffoons, or playing
-boston at the clubs. With an incessant hum of voices the crowd advanced
-to the table. Pressed by the throng against the high backs of the
-chairs, the orators spoke one after another and sometimes two together.
-Those standing behind noticed what a speaker omitted to say and hastened
-to supply it. Others in that heat and crush racked their brains to find
-some thought and hastened to utter it. The old magnates, whom Pierre
-knew, sat and turned to look first at one and then at another, and their
-faces for the most part only expressed the fact that they found it very
-hot. Pierre, however, felt excited, and the general desire to show that
-they were ready to go to all lengths—which found expression in the tones
-and looks more than in the substance of the speeches—infected him too.
-He did not renounce his opinions, but felt himself in some way to blame
-and wished to justify himself.
-
-“I only said that it would be more to the purpose to make sacrifices
-when we know what is needed!” said he, trying to be heard above the
-other voices.
-
-One of the old men nearest to him looked round, but his attention was
-immediately diverted by an exclamation at the other side of the table.
-
-“Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be our expiation!” shouted
-one man.
-
-“He is the enemy of mankind!” cried another. “Allow me to speak....”
-“Gentlemen, you are crushing me!...”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII
-
-At that moment Count Rostopchín with his protruding chin and alert eyes,
-wearing the uniform of a general with sash over his shoulder, entered
-the room, stepping briskly to the front of the crowd of gentry.
-
-“Our sovereign the Emperor will be here in a moment,” said Rostopchín.
-“I am straight from the palace. Seeing the position we are in, I think
-there is little need for discussion. The Emperor has deigned to summon
-us and the merchants. Millions will pour forth from there”—he pointed
-to the merchants’ hall—“but our business is to supply men and not spare
-ourselves.... That is the least we can do!”
-
-A conference took place confined to the magnates sitting at the table.
-The whole consultation passed more than quietly. After all the preceding
-noise the sound of their old voices saying one after another, “I
-agree,” or for variety, “I too am of that opinion,” and so on had even a
-mournful effect.
-
-The secretary was told to write down the resolution of the Moscow
-nobility and gentry, that they would furnish ten men, fully equipped,
-out of every thousand serfs, as the Smolénsk gentry had done. Their
-chairs made a scraping noise as the gentlemen who had conferred rose
-with apparent relief, and began walking up and down, arm in arm, to
-stretch their legs and converse in couples.
-
-“The Emperor! The Emperor!” a sudden cry resounded through the halls and
-the whole throng hurried to the entrance.
-
-The Emperor entered the hall through a broad path between two lines of
-nobles. Every face expressed respectful, awe-struck curiosity. Pierre
-stood rather far off and could not hear all that the Emperor said. From
-what he did hear he understood that the Emperor spoke of the danger
-threatening the empire and of the hopes he placed on the Moscow
-nobility. He was answered by a voice which informed him of the
-resolution just arrived at.
-
-“Gentlemen!” said the Emperor with a quivering voice.
-
-There was a rustling among the crowd and it again subsided, so that
-Pierre distinctly heard the pleasantly human voice of the Emperor saying
-with emotion:
-
-“I never doubted the devotion of the Russian nobles, but today it has
-surpassed my expectations. I thank you in the name of the Fatherland!
-Gentlemen, let us act! Time is most precious....”
-
-The Emperor ceased speaking, the crowd began pressing round him, and
-rapturous exclamations were heard from all sides.
-
-“Yes, most precious... a royal word,” said Count Rostóv, with a sob. He
-stood at the back, and, though he had heard hardly anything, understood
-everything in his own way.
-
-From the hall of the nobility the Emperor went to that of the merchants.
-There he remained about ten minutes. Pierre was among those who saw him
-come out from the merchants’ hall with tears of emotion in his eyes.
-As became known later, he had scarcely begun to address the merchants
-before tears gushed from his eyes and he concluded in a trembling
-voice. When Pierre saw the Emperor he was coming out accompanied by two
-merchants, one of whom Pierre knew, a fat otkupshchík. The other was
-the mayor, a man with a thin sallow face and narrow beard. Both were
-weeping. Tears filled the thin man’s eyes, and the fat otkupshchík
-sobbed outright like a child and kept repeating:
-
-“Our lives and property—take them, Your Majesty!”
-
-Pierre’s one feeling at the moment was a desire to show that he was
-ready to go all lengths and was prepared to sacrifice everything. He now
-felt ashamed of his speech with its constitutional tendency and sought
-an opportunity of effacing it. Having heard that Count Mamónov was
-furnishing a regiment, Bezúkhov at once informed Rostopchín that he
-would give a thousand men and their maintenance.
-
-Old Rostóv could not tell his wife of what had passed without tears, and
-at once consented to Pétya’s request and went himself to enter his name.
-
-Next day the Emperor left Moscow. The assembled nobles all took off
-their uniforms and settled down again in their homes and clubs, and not
-without some groans gave orders to their stewards about the enrollment,
-feeling amazed themselves at what they had done.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK TEN: 1812
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-Napoleon began the war with Russia because he could not resist going
-to Dresden, could not help having his head turned by the homage he
-received, could not help donning a Polish uniform and yielding to the
-stimulating influence of a June morning, and could not refrain from
-bursts of anger in the presence of Kurákin and then of Balashëv.
-
-Alexander refused negotiations because he felt himself to be personally
-insulted. Barclay de Tolly tried to command the army in the best
-way, because he wished to fulfill his duty and earn fame as a great
-commander. Rostóv charged the French because he could not restrain
-his wish for a gallop across a level field; and in the same way the
-innumerable people who took part in the war acted in accord with their
-personal characteristics, habits, circumstances, and aims. They were
-moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining
-that they knew what they were doing and did it of their own free will,
-but they all were involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work
-concealed from them but comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable
-fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy
-the less are they free.
-
-The actors of 1812 have long since left the stage, their personal
-interests have vanished leaving no trace, and nothing remains of that
-time but its historic results.
-
-Providence compelled all these men, striving to attain personal aims, to
-further the accomplishment of a stupendous result no one of them at all
-expected—neither Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor still less any of those
-who did the actual fighting.
-
-The cause of the destruction of the French army in 1812 is clear to us
-now. No one will deny that that cause was, on the one hand, its advance
-into the heart of Russia late in the season without any preparation for
-a winter campaign and, on the other, the character given to the war
-by the burning of Russian towns and the hatred of the foe this aroused
-among the Russian people. But no one at the time foresaw (what now seems
-so evident) that this was the only way an army of eight hundred thousand
-men—the best in the world and led by the best general—could be destroyed
-in conflict with a raw army of half its numerical strength, and led by
-inexperienced commanders as the Russian army was. Not only did no one
-see this, but on the Russian side every effort was made to hinder the
-only thing that could save Russia, while on the French side, despite
-Napoleon’s experience and so-called military genius, every effort was
-directed to pushing on to Moscow at the end of the summer, that is, to
-doing the very thing that was bound to lead to destruction.
-
-In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are very fond of
-saying that Napoleon felt the danger of extending his line, that he
-sought a battle and that his marshals advised him to stop at Smolénsk,
-and of making similar statements to show that the danger of the campaign
-was even then understood. Russian authors are still fonder of telling
-us that from the commencement of the campaign a Scythian war plan was
-adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and this plan some
-of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain Frenchman, others to
-Toll, and others again to Alexander himself—pointing to notes, projects,
-and letters which contain hints of such a line of action. But all these
-hints at what happened, both from the French side and the Russian, are
-advanced only because they fit in with the event. Had that event not
-occurred these hints would have been forgotten, as we have forgotten the
-thousands and millions of hints and expectations to the contrary
-which were current then but have now been forgotten because the event
-falsified them. There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of
-any event that however it may end there will always be people to say:
-“I said then that it would be so,” quite forgetting that amid their
-innumerable conjectures many were to quite the contrary effect.
-
-Conjectures as to Napoleon’s awareness of the danger of extending his
-line, and (on the Russian side) as to luring the enemy into the depths
-of Russia, are evidently of that kind, and only by much straining can
-historians attribute such conceptions to Napoleon and his marshals,
-or such plans to the Russian commanders. All the facts are in flat
-contradiction to such conjectures. During the whole period of the war
-not only was there no wish on the Russian side to draw the French
-into the heart of the country, but from their first entry into Russia
-everything was done to stop them. And not only was Napoleon not afraid
-to extend his line, but he welcomed every step forward as a triumph and
-did not seek battle as eagerly as in former campaigns, but very lazily.
-
-At the very beginning of the war our armies were divided, and our sole
-aim was to unite them, though uniting the armies was no advantage if we
-meant to retire and lure the enemy into the depths of the country. Our
-Emperor joined the army to encourage it to defend every inch of Russian
-soil and not to retreat. The enormous Drissa camp was formed on Pfuel’s
-plan, and there was no intention of retiring farther. The Emperor
-reproached the commanders in chief for every step they retired. He could
-not bear the idea of letting the enemy even reach Smolénsk, still less
-could he contemplate the burning of Moscow, and when our armies did
-unite he was displeased that Smolénsk was abandoned and burned without a
-general engagement having been fought under its walls.
-
-So thought the Emperor, and the Russian commanders and people were still
-more provoked at the thought that our forces were retreating into the
-depths of the country.
-
-Napoleon having cut our armies apart advanced far into the country and
-missed several chances of forcing an engagement. In August he was at
-Smolénsk and thought only of how to advance farther, though as we now
-see that advance was evidently ruinous to him.
-
-The facts clearly show that Napoleon did not foresee the danger of the
-advance on Moscow, nor did Alexander and the Russian commanders then
-think of luring Napoleon on, but quite the contrary. The luring of
-Napoleon into the depths of the country was not the result of any plan,
-for no one believed it to be possible; it resulted from a most complex
-interplay of intrigues, aims, and wishes among those who took part in
-the war and had no perception whatever of the inevitable, or of the one
-way of saving Russia. Everything came about fortuitously. The armies
-were divided at the commencement of the campaign. We tried to unite
-them, with the evident intention of giving battle and checking the
-enemy’s advance, and by this effort to unite them while avoiding battle
-with a much stronger enemy, and necessarily withdrawing the armies at
-an acute angle—we led the French on to Smolénsk. But we withdrew at an
-acute angle not only because the French advanced between our two armies;
-the angle became still more acute and we withdrew still farther, because
-Barclay de Tolly was an unpopular foreigner disliked by Bagratión (who
-would come under his command), and Bagratión—being in command of the
-second army—tried to postpone joining up and coming under Barclay’s
-command as long as he could. Bagratión was slow in effecting the
-junction—though that was the chief aim of all at headquarters—because,
-as he alleged, he exposed his army to danger on this march, and it was
-best for him to retire more to the left and more to the south, worrying
-the enemy from flank and rear and securing from the Ukraine recruits for
-his army; and it looks as if he planned this in order not to come under
-the command of the detested foreigner Barclay, whose rank was inferior
-to his own.
-
-The Emperor was with the army to encourage it, but his presence and
-ignorance of what steps to take, and the enormous number of advisers and
-plans, destroyed the first army’s energy and it retired.
-
-The intention was to make a stand at the Drissa camp, but Paulucci,
-aiming at becoming commander in chief, unexpectedly employed his energy
-to influence Alexander, and Pfuel’s whole plan was abandoned and the
-command entrusted to Barclay. But as Barclay did not inspire confidence
-his power was limited. The armies were divided, there was no unity of
-command, and Barclay was unpopular; but from this confusion, division,
-and the unpopularity of the foreign commander in chief, there resulted
-on the one hand indecision and the avoidance of a battle (which we could
-not have refrained from had the armies been united and had someone else,
-instead of Barclay, been in command) and on the other an ever-increasing
-indignation against the foreigners and an increase in patriotic zeal.
-
-At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most convenient and indeed
-the only pretext for his departure it was decided that it was necessary
-for him to inspire the people in the capitals and arouse the nation in
-general to a patriotic war. And by this visit of the Emperor to Moscow
-the strength of the Russian army was trebled.
-
-He left in order not to obstruct the commander in chief’s undivided
-control of the army, and hoping that more decisive action would then
-be taken, but the command of the armies became still more confused and
-enfeebled. Bennigsen, the Tsarévich, and a swarm of adjutants general
-remained with the army to keep the commander in chief under observation
-and arouse his energy, and Barclay, feeling less free than ever under
-the observation of all these “eyes of the Emperor,” became still more
-cautious of undertaking any decisive action and avoided giving battle.
-
-Barclay stood for caution. The Tsarévich hinted at treachery and
-demanded a general engagement. Lubomírski, Bronnítski, Wlocki, and the
-others of that group stirred up so much trouble that Barclay, under
-pretext of sending papers to the Emperor, dispatched these Polish
-adjutants general to Petersburg and plunged into an open struggle with
-Bennigsen and the Tsarévich.
-
-At Smolénsk the armies at last reunited, much as Bagratión disliked it.
-
-Bagratión drove up in a carriage to the house occupied by Barclay.
-Barclay donned his sash and came out to meet and report to his senior
-officer Bagratión.
-
-Despite his seniority in rank Bagratión, in this contest of magnanimity,
-took his orders from Barclay, but, having submitted, agreed with him
-less than ever. By the Emperor’s orders Bagratión reported direct to
-him. He wrote to Arakchéev, the Emperor’s confidant: “It must be as
-my sovereign pleases, but I cannot work with the Minister (meaning
-Barclay). For God’s sake send me somewhere else if only in command of
-a regiment. I cannot stand it here. Headquarters are so full of Germans
-that a Russian cannot exist and there is no sense in anything. I thought
-I was really serving my sovereign and the Fatherland, but it turns out
-that I am serving Barclay. I confess I do not want to.”
-
-The swarm of Bronnítskis and Wintzingerodes and their like still further
-embittered the relations between the commanders in chief, and even
-less unity resulted. Preparations were made to fight the French before
-Smolénsk. A general was sent to survey the position. This general,
-hating Barclay, rode to visit a friend of his own, a corps commander,
-and, having spent the day with him, returned to Barclay and condemned,
-as unsuitable from every point of view, the battleground he had not
-seen.
-
-While disputes and intrigues were going on about the future field of
-battle, and while we were looking for the French—having lost touch with
-them—the French stumbled upon Nevérovski’s division and reached the
-walls of Smolénsk.
-
-It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at Smolénsk to save our
-lines of communication. The battle was fought and thousands were killed
-on both sides.
-
-Smolénsk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the Emperor and of the
-whole people. But Smolénsk was burned by its own inhabitants who had
-been misled by their governor. And these ruined inhabitants, setting
-an example to other Russians, went to Moscow thinking only of their own
-losses but kindling hatred of the foe. Napoleon advanced farther and we
-retired, thus arriving at the very result which caused his destruction.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for Princess Mary
-to come to his study.
-
-“Well? Are you satisfied now?” said he. “You’ve made me quarrel with my
-son! Satisfied, are you? That’s all you wanted! Satisfied?... It hurts
-me, it hurts. I’m old and weak and this is what you wanted. Well then,
-gloat over it! Gloat over it!”
-
-After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a whole week. He was
-ill and did not leave his study.
-
-Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this illness the
-old prince not only excluded her from his room, but did not admit
-Mademoiselle Bourienne either. Tíkhon alone attended him.
-
-At the end of the week the prince reappeared and resumed his former way
-of life, devoting himself with special activity to building operations
-and the arrangement of the gardens and completely breaking off his
-relations with Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks and cold tone to his
-daughter seemed to say: “There, you see? You plotted against me, you
-lied to Prince Andrew about my relations with that Frenchwoman and made
-me quarrel with him, but you see I need neither her nor you!”
-
-Princess Mary spent half of every day with little Nicholas, watching
-his lessons, teaching him Russian and music herself, and talking to
-Dessalles; the rest of the day she spent over her books, with her old
-nurse, or with “God’s folk” who sometimes came by the back door to see
-her.
-
-Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think about wars. She
-feared for her brother who was in it, was horrified by and amazed at
-the strange cruelty that impels men to kill one another, but she did not
-understand the significance of this war, which seemed to her like all
-previous wars. She did not realize the significance of this war, though
-Dessalles with whom she constantly conversed was passionately interested
-in its progress and tried to explain his own conception of it to her,
-and though the “God’s folk” who came to see her reported, in their own
-way, the rumors current among the people of an invasion by Antichrist,
-and though Julie (now Princess Drubetskáya), who had resumed
-correspondence with her, wrote patriotic letters from Moscow.
-
-“I write you in Russian, my good friend,” wrote Julie in her Frenchified
-Russian, “because I have a detestation for all the French, and the
-same for their language which I cannot support to hear spoken.... We in
-Moscow are elated by enthusiasm for our adored Emperor.
-
-“My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish taverns, but the
-news which I have inspires me yet more.
-
-“You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raévski, embracing his two
-sons and saying: ‘I will perish with them but we will not be shaken!’
-And truly though the enemy was twice stronger than we, we were
-unshakable. We pass the time as we can, but in war as in war! The
-princesses Aline and Sophie sit whole days with me, and we, unhappy
-widows of live men, make beautiful conversations over our charpie, only
-you, my friend, are missing...” and so on.
-
-The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full significance of
-this war was that the old prince never spoke of it, did not recognize
-it, and laughed at Dessalles when he mentioned it at dinner.
-The prince’s tone was so calm and confident that Princess Mary
-unhesitatingly believed him.
-
-All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and even animated.
-He planned another garden and began a new building for the domestic
-serfs. The only thing that made Princess Mary anxious about him was that
-he slept very little and, instead of sleeping in his study as usual,
-changed his sleeping place every day. One day he would order his camp
-bed to be set up in the glass gallery, another day he remained on the
-couch or on the lounge chair in the drawing room and dozed there without
-undressing, while—instead of Mademoiselle Bourienne—a serf boy read to
-him. Then again he would spend a night in the dining room.
-
-On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrew. In his
-first letter which came soon after he had left home, Prince Andrew had
-dutifully asked his father’s forgiveness for what he had allowed himself
-to say and begged to be restored to his favor. To this letter the old
-prince had replied affectionately, and from that time had kept the
-Frenchwoman at a distance. Prince Andrew’s second letter, written near
-Vítebsk after the French had occupied that town, gave a brief account of
-the whole campaign, enclosed for them a plan he had drawn and forecasts
-as to the further progress of the war. In this letter Prince Andrew
-pointed out to his father the danger of staying at Bald Hills, so near
-the theater of war and on the army’s direct line of march, and advised
-him to move to Moscow.
-
-At dinner that day, on Dessalles’ mentioning that the French were said
-to have already entered Vítebsk, the old prince remembered his son’s
-letter.
-
-“There was a letter from Prince Andrew today,” he said to Princess
-Mary—“Haven’t you read it?”
-
-“No, Father,” she replied in a frightened voice.
-
-She could not have read the letter as she did not even know it had
-arrived.
-
-“He writes about this war,” said the prince, with the ironic smile that
-had become habitual to him in speaking of the present war.
-
-“That must be very interesting,” said Dessalles. “Prince Andrew is in a
-position to know...”
-
-“Oh, very interesting!” said Mademoiselle Bourienne.
-
-“Go and get it for me,” said the old prince to Mademoiselle Bourienne.
-“You know—under the paperweight on the little table.”
-
-Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly.
-
-“No, don’t!” he exclaimed with a frown. “You go, Michael Ivánovich.”
-
-Michael Ivánovich rose and went to the study. But as soon as he had left
-the room the old prince, looking uneasily round, threw down his napkin
-and went himself.
-
-“They can’t do anything... always make some muddle,” he muttered.
-
-While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and
-even little Nicholas exchanged looks in silence. The old prince returned
-with quick steps, accompanied by Michael Ivánovich, bringing the letter
-and a plan. These he put down beside him—not letting anyone read them at
-dinner.
-
-On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to Princess Mary and,
-spreading out before him the plan of the new building and fixing his
-eyes upon it, told her to read the letter aloud. When she had done so
-Princess Mary looked inquiringly at her father. He was examining the
-plan, evidently engrossed in his own ideas.
-
-“What do you think of it, Prince?” Dessalles ventured to ask.
-
-“I? I?...” said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened, and not taking
-his eyes from the plan of the building.
-
-“Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to us that...”
-
-“Ha ha ha! The theater of war!” said the prince. “I have said and still
-say that the theater of war is Poland and the enemy will never get
-beyond the Niemen.”
-
-Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was talking of the
-Niemen when the enemy was already at the Dnieper, but Princess Mary,
-forgetting the geographical position of the Niemen, thought that what
-her father was saying was correct.
-
-“When the snow melts they’ll sink in the Polish swamps. Only they
-could fail to see it,” the prince continued, evidently thinking of the
-campaign of 1807 which seemed to him so recent. “Bennigsen should have
-advanced into Prussia sooner, then things would have taken a different
-turn...”
-
-“But, Prince,” Dessalles began timidly, “the letter mentions
-Vítebsk....”
-
-“Ah, the letter? Yes...” replied the prince peevishly. “Yes... yes...”
-His face suddenly took on a morose expression. He paused. “Yes, he
-writes that the French were beaten at... at... what river is it?”
-
-Dessalles dropped his eyes.
-
-“The prince says nothing about that,” he remarked gently.
-
-“Doesn’t he? But I didn’t invent it myself.”
-
-No one spoke for a long time.
-
-“Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivánovich,” he suddenly went on, raising
-his head and pointing to the plan of the building, “tell me how you mean
-to alter it....”
-
-Michael Ivánovich went up to the plan, and the prince after speaking to
-him about the building looked angrily at Princess Mary and Dessalles and
-went to his own room.
-
-Princess Mary saw Dessalles’ embarrassed and astonished look fixed on
-her father, noticed his silence, and was struck by the fact that her
-father had forgotten his son’s letter on the drawing room table; but she
-was not only afraid to speak of it and ask Dessalles the reason of his
-confusion and silence, but was afraid even to think about it.
-
-In the evening Michael Ivánovich, sent by the prince, came to Princess
-Mary for Prince Andrew’s letter which had been forgotten in the drawing
-room. She gave it to him and, unpleasant as it was to her to do so,
-ventured to ask him what her father was doing.
-
-“Always busy,” replied Michael Ivánovich with a respectfully ironic
-smile which caused Princess Mary to turn pale. “He’s worrying very much
-about the new building. He has been reading a little, but now”—Michael
-Ivánovich went on, lowering his voice—“now he’s at his desk, busy with
-his will, I expect.” (One of the prince’s favorite occupations of late
-had been the preparation of some papers he meant to leave at his death
-and which he called his “will.”)
-
-“And Alpátych is being sent to Smolénsk?” asked Princess Mary.
-
-“Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-When Michael Ivánovich returned to the study with the letter, the old
-prince, with spectacles on and a shade over his eyes, was sitting at his
-open bureau with screened candles, holding a paper in his outstretched
-hand, and in a somewhat dramatic attitude was reading his manuscript—his
-“Remarks” as he termed it—which was to be transmitted to the Emperor
-after his death.
-
-When Michael Ivánovich went in there were tears in the prince’s eyes
-evoked by the memory of the time when the paper he was now reading had
-been written. He took the letter from Michael Ivánovich’s hand, put it
-in his pocket, folded up his papers, and called in Alpátych who had long
-been waiting.
-
-The prince had a list of things to be bought in Smolénsk and, walking
-up and down the room past Alpátych who stood by the door, he gave his
-instructions.
-
-“First, notepaper—do you hear? Eight quires, like this sample,
-gilt-edged... it must be exactly like the sample. Varnish, sealing wax,
-as in Michael Ivánovich’s list.”
-
-He paced up and down for a while and glanced at his notes.
-
-“Then hand to the governor in person a letter about the deed.”
-
-Next, bolts for the doors of the new building were wanted and had to be
-of a special shape the prince had himself designed, and a leather case
-had to be ordered to keep the “will” in.
-
-The instructions to Alpátych took over two hours and still the prince
-did not let him go. He sat down, sank into thought, closed his eyes, and
-dozed off. Alpátych made a slight movement.
-
-“Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I’ll send after you.”
-
-Alpátych went out. The prince again went to his bureau, glanced into it,
-fingered his papers, closed the bureau again, and sat down at the table
-to write to the governor.
-
-It was already late when he rose after sealing the letter. He wished
-to sleep, but he knew he would not be able to and that most depressing
-thoughts came to him in bed. So he called Tíkhon and went through the
-rooms with him to show him where to set up the bed for that night.
-
-He went about looking at every corner. Every place seemed
-unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study.
-That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive
-thoughts he had had when lying there. It was unsatisfactory everywhere,
-but the corner behind the piano in the sitting room was better than
-other places: he had never slept there yet.
-
-With the help of a footman Tíkhon brought in the bedstead and began
-putting it up.
-
-“That’s not right! That’s not right!” cried the prince, and himself
-pushed it a few inches from the corner and then closer in again.
-
-“Well, at last I’ve finished, now I’ll rest,” thought the prince, and
-let Tíkhon undress him.
-
-Frowning with vexation at the effort necessary to divest himself of his
-coat and trousers, the prince undressed, sat down heavily on the
-bed, and appeared to be meditating as he looked contemptuously at his
-withered yellow legs. He was not meditating, but only deferring the
-moment of making the effort to lift those legs up and turn over on the
-bed. “Ugh, how hard it is! Oh, that this toil might end and you would
-release me!” thought he. Pressing his lips together he made that effort
-for the twenty-thousandth time and lay down. But hardly had he done so
-before he felt the bed rocking backwards and forwards beneath him as if
-it were breathing heavily and jolting. This happened to him almost every
-night. He opened his eyes as they were closing.
-
-“No peace, damn them!” he muttered, angry he knew not with whom. “Ah
-yes, there was something else important, very important, that I was
-keeping till I should be in bed. The bolts? No, I told him about them.
-No, it was something, something in the drawing room. Princess Mary
-talked some nonsense. Dessalles, that fool, said something. Something in
-my pocket—can’t remember....”
-
-“Tíkhon, what did we talk about at dinner?”
-
-“About Prince Michael...”
-
-“Be quiet, quiet!” The prince slapped his hand on the table. “Yes, I
-know, Prince Andrew’s letter! Princess Mary read it. Dessalles said
-something about Vítebsk. Now I’ll read it.”
-
-He had the letter taken from his pocket and the table—on which stood a
-glass of lemonade and a spiral wax candle—moved close to the bed, and
-putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only now in the stillness of
-the night, reading it by the faint light under the green shade, did he
-grasp its meaning for a moment.
-
-“The French at Vítebsk, in four days’ march they may be at Smolénsk;
-perhaps are already there! Tíkhon!” Tíkhon jumped up. “No, no, I don’t
-want anything!” he shouted.
-
-He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And there
-rose before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian
-camp, and himself a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face,
-vigorous and alert, entering Potëmkin’s gaily colored tent, and a
-burning sense of jealousy of “the favorite” agitated him now as strongly
-as it had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that
-first meeting with Potëmkin. And he saw before him a plump, rather
-sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile
-and her words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that same
-face on the catafalque, and the encounter he had with Zúbov over her
-coffin about his right to kiss her hand.
-
-“Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have done with all
-the present! Quicker, quicker—and that they should leave me in peace!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkónski’s estate, lay forty miles east
-from Smolénsk and two miles from the main road to Moscow.
-
-The same evening that the prince gave his instructions to Alpátych,
-Dessalles, having asked to see Princess Mary, told her that, as the
-prince was not very well and was taking no steps to secure his safety,
-though from Prince Andrew’s letter it was evident that to remain at Bald
-Hills might be dangerous, he respectfully advised her to send a letter
-by Alpátych to the Provincial Governor at Smolénsk, asking him to let
-her know the state of affairs and the extent of the danger to which
-Bald Hills was exposed. Dessalles wrote this letter to the Governor
-for Princess Mary, she signed it, and it was given to Alpátych with
-instructions to hand it to the Governor and to come back as quickly as
-possible if there was danger.
-
-Having received all his orders Alpátych, wearing a white beaver hat—a
-present from the prince—and carrying a stick as the prince did, went out
-accompanied by his family. Three well-fed roans stood ready harnessed to
-a small conveyance with a leather hood.
-
-The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the harness stuffed
-with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bald Hills to drive with
-ringing bells; but on a long journey Alpátych liked to have them. His
-satellites—the senior clerk, a countinghouse clerk, a scullery maid,
-a cook, two old women, a little pageboy, the coachman, and various
-domestic serfs—were seeing him off.
-
-His daughter placed chintz-covered down cushions for him to sit on and
-behind his back. His old sister-in-law popped in a small bundle, and one
-of the coachmen helped him into the vehicle.
-
-“There! There! Women’s fuss! Women, women!” said Alpátych, puffing and
-speaking rapidly just as the prince did, and he climbed into the trap.
-
-After giving the clerk orders about the work to be done, Alpátych, not
-trying to imitate the prince now, lifted the hat from his bald head and
-crossed himself three times.
-
-“If there is anything... come back, Yákov Alpátych! For Christ’s sake
-think of us!” cried his wife, referring to the rumors of war and the
-enemy.
-
-“Women, women! Women’s fuss!” muttered Alpátych to himself and started
-on his journey, looking round at the fields of yellow rye and the
-still-green, thickly growing oats, and at other quite black fields just
-being plowed a second time.
-
-As he went along he looked with pleasure at the year’s splendid crop
-of corn, scrutinized the strips of ryefield which here and there were
-already being reaped, made his calculations as to the sowing and the
-harvest, and asked himself whether he had not forgotten any of the
-prince’s orders.
-
-Having baited the horses twice on the way, he arrived at the town toward
-evening on the fourth of August.
-
-Alpátych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains and troops on the
-road. As he approached Smolénsk he heard the sounds of distant firing,
-but these did not impress him. What struck him most was the sight of a
-splendid field of oats in which a camp had been pitched and which
-was being mown down by the soldiers, evidently for fodder. This fact
-impressed Alpátych, but in thinking about his own business he soon
-forgot it.
-
-All the interests of his life for more than thirty years had been
-bounded by the will of the prince, and he never went beyond that limit.
-Everything not connected with the execution of the prince’s orders did
-not interest and did not even exist for Alpátych.
-
-On reaching Smolénsk on the evening of the fourth of August he put up
-in the Gáchina suburb across the Dnieper, at the inn kept by Ferapóntov,
-where he had been in the habit of putting up for the last thirty years.
-Some thirty years ago Ferapóntov, by Alpátych’s advice, had bought a
-wood from the prince, had begun to trade, and now had a house, an
-inn, and a corn dealer’s shop in that province. He was a stout, dark,
-red-faced peasant in the forties, with thick lips, a broad knob of a
-nose, similar knobs over his black frowning brows, and a round belly.
-
-Wearing a waistcoat over his cotton shirt, Ferapóntov was standing
-before his shop which opened onto the street. On seeing Alpátych he went
-up to him.
-
-“You’re welcome, Yákov Alpátych. Folks are leaving the town, but you
-have come to it,” said he.
-
-“Why are they leaving the town?” asked Alpátych.
-
-“That’s what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of the French.”
-
-“Women’s fuss, women’s fuss!” said Alpátych.
-
-“Just what I think, Yákov Alpátych. What I say is: orders have been
-given not to let them in, so that must be right. And the peasants are
-asking three rubles for carting—it isn’t Christian!”
-
-Yákov Alpátych heard without heeding. He asked for a samovar and for hay
-for his horses, and when he had had his tea he went to bed.
-
-All night long troops were moving past the inn. Next morning Alpátych
-donned a jacket he wore only in town and went out on business. It was a
-sunny morning and by eight o’clock it was already hot. “A good day for
-harvesting,” thought Alpátych.
-
-From beyond the town firing had been heard since early morning. At eight
-o’clock the booming of cannon was added to the sound of musketry. Many
-people were hurrying through the streets and there were many soldiers,
-but cabs were still driving about, tradesmen stood at their shops, and
-service was being held in the churches as usual. Alpátych went to the
-shops, to government offices, to the post office, and to the Governor’s.
-In the offices and shops and at the post office everyone was talking
-about the army and about the enemy who was already attacking the town,
-everybody was asking what should be done, and all were trying to calm
-one another.
-
-In front of the Governor’s house Alpátych found a large number of
-people, Cossacks, and a traveling carriage of the Governor’s. At the
-porch he met two of the landed gentry, one of whom he knew. This man, an
-ex-captain of police, was saying angrily:
-
-“It’s no joke, you know! It’s all very well if you’re single. ‘One man
-though undone is but one,’ as the proverb says, but with thirteen in
-your family and all the property... They’ve brought us to utter ruin!
-What sort of governors are they to do that? They ought to be hanged—the
-brigands!...”
-
-“Oh come, that’s enough!” said the other.
-
-“What do I care? Let him hear! We’re not dogs,” said the ex-captain of
-police, and looking round he noticed Alpátych.
-
-“Oh, Yákov Alpátych! What have you come for?”
-
-“To see the Governor by his excellency’s order,” answered Alpátych,
-lifting his head and proudly thrusting his hand into the bosom of his
-coat as he always did when he mentioned the prince.... “He has ordered
-me to inquire into the position of affairs,” he added.
-
-“Yes, go and find out!” shouted the angry gentleman. “They’ve brought
-things to such a pass that there are no carts or anything!... There it
-is again, do you hear?” said he, pointing in the direction whence came
-the sounds of firing.
-
-“They’ve brought us all to ruin... the brigands!” he repeated, and
-descended the porch steps.
-
-Alpátych swayed his head and went upstairs. In the waiting room were
-tradesmen, women, and officials, looking silently at one another. The
-door of the Governor’s room opened and they all rose and moved forward.
-An official ran out, said some words to a merchant, called a stout
-official with a cross hanging on his neck to follow him, and vanished
-again, evidently wishing to avoid the inquiring looks and questions
-addressed to him. Alpátych moved forward and next time the official came
-out addressed him, one hand placed in the breast of his buttoned coat,
-and handed him two letters.
-
-“To his Honor Baron Asch, from General-in-Chief Prince Bolkónski,” he
-announced with such solemnity and significance that the official turned
-to him and took the letters.
-
-A few minutes later the Governor received Alpátych and hurriedly said to
-him:
-
-“Inform the prince and princess that I knew nothing: I acted on the
-highest instructions—here...” and he handed a paper to Alpátych. “Still,
-as the prince is unwell my advice is that they should go to Moscow. I am
-just starting myself. Inform them...”
-
-But the Governor did not finish: a dusty perspiring officer ran into the
-room and began to say something in French. The Governor’s face expressed
-terror.
-
-“Go,” he said, nodding his head to Alpátych, and began questioning the
-officer.
-
-Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on Alpátych when he came
-out of the Governor’s room. Involuntarily listening now to the firing,
-which had drawn nearer and was increasing in strength, Alpátych hurried
-to his inn. The paper handed to him by the Governor said this:
-
-“I assure you that the town of Smolénsk is not in the slightest danger
-as yet and it is unlikely that it will be threatened with any. I from
-the one side and Prince Bagratión from the other are marching to unite
-our forces before Smolénsk, which junction will be effected on the
-22nd instant, and both armies with their united forces will defend our
-compatriots of the province entrusted to your care till our efforts
-shall have beaten back the enemies of our Fatherland, or till the last
-warrior in our valiant ranks has perished. From this you will see that
-you have a perfect right to reassure the inhabitants of Smolénsk, for
-those defended by two such brave armies may feel assured of victory.”
-(Instructions from Barclay de Tolly to Baron Asch, the civil governor of
-Smolénsk, 1812.)
-
-People were anxiously roaming about the streets.
-
-Carts piled high with household utensils, chairs, and cupboards kept
-emerging from the gates of the yards and moving along the streets.
-Loaded carts stood at the house next to Ferapóntov’s and women were
-wailing and lamenting as they said good-by. A small watchdog ran round
-barking in front of the harnessed horses.
-
-Alpátych entered the innyard at a quicker pace than usual and went
-straight to the shed where his horses and trap were. The coachman was
-asleep. He woke him up, told him to harness, and went into the passage.
-From the host’s room came the sounds of a child crying, the despairing
-sobs of a woman, and the hoarse angry shouting of Ferapóntov. The cook
-began running hither and thither in the passage like a frightened hen,
-just as Alpátych entered.
-
-“He’s done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat her... dragged her
-about so!...”
-
-“What for?” asked Alpátych.
-
-“She kept begging to go away. She’s a woman! ‘Take me away,’ says she,
-‘don’t let me perish with my little children! Folks,’ she says, ‘are all
-gone, so why,’ she says, ‘don’t we go?’ And he began beating and pulling
-her about so!”
-
-At these words Alpátych nodded as if in approval, and not wishing to
-hear more went to the door of the room opposite the innkeeper’s, where
-he had left his purchases.
-
-“You brute, you murderer!” screamed a thin, pale woman who, with a baby
-in her arms and her kerchief torn from her head, burst through the door
-at that moment and down the steps into the yard.
-
-Ferapóntov came out after her, but on seeing Alpátych adjusted his
-waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpátych into the
-opposite room.
-
-“Going already?” said he.
-
-Alpátych, without answering or looking at his host, sorted his packages
-and asked how much he owed.
-
-“We’ll reckon up! Well, have you been to the Governor’s?” asked
-Ferapóntov. “What has been decided?”
-
-Alpátych replied that the Governor had not told him anything definite.
-
-“With our business, how can we get away?” said Ferapóntov. “We’d have
-to pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobúzh and I tell them they’re
-not Christians to ask it! Selivánov, now, did a good stroke last
-Thursday—sold flour to the army at nine rubles a sack. Will you have
-some tea?” he added.
-
-While the horses were being harnessed Alpátych and Ferapóntov over their
-tea talked of the price of corn, the crops, and the good weather for
-harvesting.
-
-“Well, it seems to be getting quieter,” remarked Ferapóntov, finishing
-his third cup of tea and getting up. “Ours must have got the best of it.
-The orders were not to let them in. So we’re in force, it seems....
-They say the other day Matthew Iványch Plátov drove them into the river
-Márina and drowned some eighteen thousand in one day.”
-
-Alpátych collected his parcels, handed them to the coachman who had come
-in, and settled up with the innkeeper. The noise of wheels, hoofs, and
-bells was heard from the gateway as a little trap passed out.
-
-It was by now late in the afternoon. Half the street was in shadow, the
-other half brightly lit by the sun. Alpátych looked out of the window
-and went to the door. Suddenly the strange sound of a far-off whistling
-and thud was heard, followed by a boom of cannon blending into a dull
-roar that set the windows rattling.
-
-He went out into the street: two men were running past toward the
-bridge. From different sides came whistling sounds and the thud of
-cannon balls and bursting shells falling on the town. But these sounds
-were hardly heard in comparison with the noise of the firing outside the
-town and attracted little attention from the inhabitants. The town was
-being bombarded by a hundred and thirty guns which Napoleon had ordered
-up after four o’clock. The people did not at once realize the meaning of
-this bombardment.
-
-At first the noise of the falling bombs and shells only aroused
-curiosity. Ferapóntov’s wife, who till then had not ceased wailing under
-the shed, became quiet and with the baby in her arms went to the gate,
-listening to the sounds and looking in silence at the people.
-
-The cook and a shop assistant came to the gate. With lively curiosity
-everyone tried to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they flew over
-their heads. Several people came round the corner talking eagerly.
-
-“What force!” remarked one. “Knocked the roof and ceiling all to
-splinters!”
-
-“Routed up the earth like a pig,” said another.
-
-“That’s grand, it bucks one up!” laughed the first. “Lucky you jumped
-aside, or it would have wiped you out!”
-
-Others joined those men and stopped and told how cannon balls had fallen
-on a house close to them. Meanwhile still more projectiles, now with
-the swift sinister whistle of a cannon ball, now with the agreeable
-intermittent whistle of a shell, flew over people’s heads incessantly,
-but not one fell close by, they all flew over. Alpátych was getting into
-his trap. The innkeeper stood at the gate.
-
-“What are you staring at?” he shouted to the cook, who in her red skirt,
-with sleeves rolled up, swinging her bare elbows, had stepped to the
-corner to listen to what was being said.
-
-“What marvels!” she exclaimed, but hearing her master’s voice she turned
-back, pulling down her tucked-up skirt.
-
-Once more something whistled, but this time quite close, swooping
-downwards like a little bird; a flame flashed in the middle of the
-street, something exploded, and the street was shrouded in smoke.
-
-“Scoundrel, what are you doing?” shouted the innkeeper, rushing to the
-cook.
-
-At that moment the pitiful wailing of women was heard from different
-sides, the frightened baby began to cry, and people crowded silently
-with pale faces round the cook. The loudest sound in that crowd was her
-wailing.
-
-“Oh-h-h! Dear souls, dear kind souls! Don’t let me die! My good
-souls!...”
-
-Five minutes later no one remained in the street. The cook, with her
-thigh broken by a shell splinter, had been carried into the kitchen.
-Alpátych, his coachman, Ferapóntov’s wife and children and the house
-porter were all sitting in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns, the
-whistling of projectiles, and the piteous moaning of the cook, which
-rose above the other sounds, did not cease for a moment. The mistress
-rocked and hushed her baby and when anyone came into the cellar asked
-in a pathetic whisper what had become of her husband who had remained
-in the street. A shopman who entered told her that her husband had
-gone with others to the cathedral, whence they were fetching the
-wonder-working icon of Smolénsk.
-
-Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpátych left the cellar
-and stopped in the doorway. The evening sky that had been so clear was
-clouded with smoke, through which, high up, the sickle of the new moon
-shone strangely. Now that the terrible din of the guns had ceased a hush
-seemed to reign over the town, broken only by the rustle of footsteps,
-the moaning, the distant cries, and the crackle of fires which seemed
-widespread everywhere. The cook’s moans had now subsided. On two sides
-black curling clouds of smoke rose and spread from the fires. Through
-the streets soldiers in various uniforms walked or ran confusedly in
-different directions like ants from a ruined ant-hill. Several of them
-ran into Ferapóntov’s yard before Alpátych’s eyes. Alpátych went out
-to the gate. A retreating regiment, thronging and hurrying, blocked the
-street.
-
-Noticing him, an officer said: “The town is being abandoned. Get away,
-get away!” and then, turning to the soldiers, shouted:
-
-“I’ll teach you to run into the yards!”
-
-Alpátych went back to the house, called the coachman, and told him to
-set off. Ferapóntov’s whole household came out too, following Alpátych
-and the coachman. The women, who had been silent till then, suddenly
-began to wail as they looked at the fires—the smoke and even the flames
-of which could be seen in the failing twilight—and as if in reply the
-same kind of lamentation was heard from other parts of the street.
-Inside the shed Alpátych and the coachman arranged the tangled reins and
-traces of their horses with trembling hands.
-
-As Alpátych was driving out of the gate he saw some ten soldiers in
-Ferapóntov’s open shop, talking loudly and filling their bags and
-knapsacks with flour and sunflower seeds. Just then Ferapóntov returned
-and entered his shop. On seeing the soldiers he was about to shout at
-them, but suddenly stopped and, clutching at his hair, burst into sobs
-and laughter:
-
-“Loot everything, lads! Don’t let those devils get it!” he cried, taking
-some bags of flour himself and throwing them into the street.
-
-Some of the soldiers were frightened and ran away, others went on
-filling their bags. On seeing Alpátych, Ferapóntov turned to him:
-
-“Russia is done for!” he cried. “Alpátych, I’ll set the place on fire
-myself. We’re done for!...” and Ferapóntov ran into the yard.
-
-Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the street blocking
-it completely, so that Alpátych could not pass out and had to wait.
-Ferapóntov’s wife and children were also sitting in a cart waiting till
-it was possible to drive out.
-
-Night had come. There were stars in the sky and the new moon shone out
-amid the smoke that screened it. On the sloping descent to the Dnieper
-Alpátych’s cart and that of the innkeeper’s wife, which were slowly
-moving amid the rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had to stop.
-In a side street near the crossroads where the vehicles had stopped, a
-house and some shops were on fire. This fire was already burning itself
-out. The flames now died down and were lost in the black smoke, now
-suddenly flared up again brightly, lighting up with strange distinctness
-the faces of the people crowding at the crossroads. Black figures
-flitted about before the fire, and through the incessant crackling of
-the flames talking and shouting could be heard. Seeing that his trap
-would not be able to move on for some time, Alpátych got down and turned
-into the side street to look at the fire. Soldiers were continually
-rushing backwards and forwards near it, and he saw two of them and a
-man in a frieze coat dragging burning beams into another yard across the
-street, while others carried bundles of hay.
-
-Alpátych went up to a large crowd standing before a high barn which was
-blazing briskly. The walls were all on fire and the back wall had fallen
-in, the wooden roof was collapsing, and the rafters were alight. The
-crowd was evidently watching for the roof to fall in, and Alpátych
-watched for it too.
-
-“Alpátych!” a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old man.
-
-“Mercy on us! Your excellency!” answered Alpátych, immediately
-recognizing the voice of his young prince.
-
-Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black horse, was looking
-at Alpátych from the back of the crowd.
-
-“Why are you here?” he asked.
-
-“Your... your excellency,” stammered Alpátych and broke into sobs. “Are
-we really lost? Master!...”
-
-“Why are you here?” Prince Andrew repeated.
-
-At that moment the flames flared up and showed his young master’s pale
-worn face. Alpátych told how he had been sent there and how difficult it
-was to get away.
-
-“Are we really quite lost, your excellency?” he asked again.
-
-Prince Andrew without replying took out a notebook and raising his knee
-began writing in pencil on a page he tore out. He wrote to his sister:
-
-“Smolénsk is being abandoned. Bald Hills will be occupied by the enemy
-within a week. Set off immediately for Moscow. Let me know at once when
-you will start. Send by special messenger to Usvyázh.”
-
-Having written this and given the paper to Alpátych, he told him how
-to arrange for departure of the prince, the princess, his son, and the
-boy’s tutor, and how and where to let him know immediately. Before
-he had had time to finish giving these instructions, a chief of staff
-followed by a suite galloped up to him.
-
-“You are a colonel?” shouted the chief of staff with a German accent,
-in a voice familiar to Prince Andrew. “Houses are set on fire in your
-presence and you stand by! What does this mean? You will answer for
-it!” shouted Berg, who was now assistant to the chief of staff of the
-commander of the left flank of the infantry of the first army, a place,
-as Berg said, “very agreeable and well en évidence.”
-
-Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying went on speaking to
-Alpátych.
-
-“So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and if by the
-tenth I don’t receive news that they have all got away I shall have to
-throw up everything and come myself to Bald Hills.”
-
-“Prince,” said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrew, “I only spoke because
-I have to obey orders, because I always do obey exactly.... You must
-please excuse me,” he went on apologetically.
-
-Something cracked in the flames. The fire died down for a moment and
-wreaths of black smoke rolled from under the roof. There was another
-terrible crash and something huge collapsed.
-
-“Ou-rou-rou!” yelled the crowd, echoing the crash of the collapsing roof
-of the barn, the burning grain in which diffused a cakelike aroma all
-around. The flames flared up again, lighting the animated, delighted,
-exhausted faces of the spectators.
-
-The man in the frieze coat raised his arms and shouted:
-
-“It’s fine, lads! Now it’s raging... It’s fine!”
-
-“That’s the owner himself,” cried several voices.
-
-“Well then,” continued Prince Andrew to Alpátych, “report to them as I
-have told you”; and not replying a word to Berg who was now mute beside
-him, he touched his horse and rode down the side street.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-From Smolénsk the troops continued to retreat, followed by the enemy.
-On the tenth of August the regiment Prince Andrew commanded was marching
-along the highroad past the avenue leading to Bald Hills. Heat and
-drought had continued for more than three weeks. Each day fleecy clouds
-floated across the sky and occasionally veiled the sun, but toward
-evening the sky cleared again and the sun set in reddish-brown mist.
-Heavy night dews alone refreshed the earth. The unreaped corn was
-scorched and shed its grain. The marshes dried up. The cattle lowed from
-hunger, finding no food on the sun-parched meadows. Only at night and
-in the forests while the dew lasted was there any freshness. But on the
-road, the highroad along which the troops marched, there was no such
-freshness even at night or when the road passed through the forest; the
-dew was imperceptible on the sandy dust churned up more than six inches
-deep. As soon as day dawned the march began. The artillery and baggage
-wagons moved noiselessly through the deep dust that rose to the very
-hubs of the wheels, and the infantry sank ankle-deep in that soft,
-choking, hot dust that never cooled even at night. Some of this dust
-was kneaded by the feet and wheels, while the rest rose and hung like a
-cloud over the troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and nostrils, and
-worst of all in the lungs of the men and beasts as they moved along that
-road. The higher the sun rose the higher rose that cloud of dust, and
-through the screen of its hot fine particles one could look with naked
-eye at the sun, which showed like a huge crimson ball in the unclouded
-sky. There was no wind, and the men choked in that motionless
-atmosphere. They marched with handkerchiefs tied over their noses and
-mouths. When they passed through a village they all rushed to the wells
-and fought for the water and drank it down to the mud.
-
-Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the management of that
-regiment, the welfare of the men and the necessity of receiving
-and giving orders, engrossed him. The burning of Smolénsk and its
-abandonment made an epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger against
-the foe made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely devoted to the
-affairs of his regiment and was considerate and kind to his men and
-officers. In the regiment they called him “our prince,” were proud
-of him and loved him. But he was kind and gentle only to those of his
-regiment, to Timókhin and the like—people quite new to him, belonging
-to a different world and who could not know and understand his past. As
-soon as he came across a former acquaintance or anyone from the
-staff, he bristled up immediately and grew spiteful, ironical, and
-contemptuous. Everything that reminded him of his past was repugnant to
-him, and so in his relations with that former circle he confined himself
-to trying to do his duty and not to be unfair.
-
-In truth everything presented itself in a dark and gloomy light to
-Prince Andrew, especially after the abandonment of Smolénsk on the sixth
-of August (he considered that it could and should have been defended)
-and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow, abandoning to
-pillage his dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built and peopled.
-But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew had something to
-think about entirely apart from general questions. Two days previously
-he had received news that his father, son, and sister had left for
-Moscow; and though there was nothing for him to do at Bald Hills, Prince
-Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment his own grief decided that
-he must ride there.
-
-He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on the
-march, rode to his father’s estate where he had been born and spent his
-childhood. Riding past the pond where there used always to be dozens
-of women chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it with wooden
-beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul about and that
-the little washing wharf, torn from its place and half submerged, was
-floating on its side in the middle of the pond. He rode to the keeper’s
-lodge. No one at the stone entrance gates of the drive and the door
-stood open. Grass had already begun to grow on the garden paths, and
-horses and calves were straying in the English park. Prince Andrew rode
-up to the hothouse; some of the glass panes were broken, and of the
-trees in tubs some were overturned and others dried up. He called for
-Tarás the gardener, but no one replied. Having gone round the corner
-of the hothouse to the ornamental garden, he saw that the carved garden
-fence was broken and branches of the plum trees had been torn off with
-the fruit. An old peasant whom Prince Andrew in his childhood had often
-seen at the gate was sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a bast
-shoe.
-
-He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He was sitting on
-the seat the old prince used to like to sit on, and beside him strips of
-bast were hanging on the broken and withered branch of a magnolia.
-
-Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the old garden had
-been cut down and a piebald mare and her foal were wandering in front of
-the house among the rosebushes. The shutters were all closed, except at
-one window which was open. A little serf boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran
-into the house. Alpátych, having sent his family away, was alone at
-Bald Hills and was sitting indoors reading the Lives of the Saints. On
-hearing that Prince Andrew had come, he went out with his spectacles on
-his nose, buttoning his coat, and, hastily stepping up, without a word
-began weeping and kissing Prince Andrew’s knee.
-
-Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and began to report
-on the position of affairs. Everything precious and valuable had been
-removed to Boguchárovo. Seventy quarters of grain had also been carted
-away. The hay and the spring corn, of which Alpátych said there had been
-a remarkable crop that year, had been commandeered by the troops and
-mown down while still green. The peasants were ruined; some of them too
-had gone to Boguchárovo, only a few remained.
-
-Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked:
-
-“When did my father and sister leave?” meaning when did they leave for
-Moscow.
-
-Alpátych, understanding the question to refer to their departure for
-Boguchárovo, replied that they had left on the seventh and again went
-into details concerning the estate management, asking for instructions.
-
-“Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a receipt for them?
-We have still six hundred quarters left,” he inquired.
-
-“What am I to say to him?” thought Prince Andrew, looking down on the
-old man’s bald head shining in the sun and seeing by the expression on
-his face that the old man himself understood how untimely such questions
-were and only asked them to allay his grief.
-
-“Yes, let them have it,” replied Prince Andrew.
-
-“If you noticed some disorder in the garden,” said Alpátych, “it was
-impossible to prevent it. Three regiments have been here and spent
-the night, dragoons mostly. I took down the name and rank of their
-commanding officer, to hand in a complaint about it.”
-
-“Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay here if the enemy
-occupies the place?” asked Prince Andrew.
-
-Alpátych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at him, and suddenly
-with a solemn gesture raised his arm.
-
-“He is my refuge! His will be done!” he exclaimed.
-
-A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching across the meadow toward
-the prince.
-
-“Well, good-by!” said Prince Andrew, bending over to Alpátych. “You
-must go away too, take away what you can and tell the serfs to go to the
-Ryazán estate or to the one near Moscow.”
-
-Alpátych clung to Prince Andrew’s leg and burst into sobs. Gently
-disengaging himself, the prince spurred his horse and rode down the
-avenue at a gallop.
-
-The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden, like a fly
-impassive on the face of a loved one who is dead, tapping the last on
-which he was making the bast shoe, and two little girls, running out
-from the hot house carrying in their skirts plums they had plucked from
-the trees there, came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the young master,
-the elder one with frightened look clutched her younger companion by the
-hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not stopping to pick up some
-green plums they had dropped.
-
-Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste, unwilling to let them
-see that they had been observed. He was sorry for the pretty frightened
-little girl, was afraid of looking at her, and yet felt an irresistible
-desire to do so. A new sensation of comfort and relief came over him
-when, seeing these girls, he realized the existence of other human
-interests entirely aloof from his own and just as legitimate as those
-that occupied him. Evidently these girls passionately desired one
-thing—to carry away and eat those green plums without being caught—and
-Prince Andrew shared their wish for the success of their enterprise. He
-could not resist looking at them once more. Believing their danger past,
-they sprang from their ambush and, chirruping something in their shrill
-little voices and holding up their skirts, their bare little sunburned
-feet scampered merrily and quickly across the meadow grass.
-
-Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having ridden off the dusty
-highroad along which the troops were moving. But not far from Bald Hills
-he again came out on the road and overtook his regiment at its halting
-place by the dam of a small pond. It was past one o’clock. The sun,
-a red ball through the dust, burned and scorched his back intolerably
-through his black coat. The dust always hung motionless above the buzz
-of talk that came from the resting troops. There was no wind. As he
-crossed the dam Prince Andrew smelled the ooze and freshness of the
-pond. He longed to get into that water, however dirty it might be, and
-he glanced round at the pool from whence came sounds of shrieks and
-laughter. The small, muddy, green pond had risen visibly more than a
-foot, flooding the dam, because it was full of the naked white bodies
-of soldiers with brick-red hands, necks, and faces, who were splashing
-about in it. All this naked white human flesh, laughing and shrieking,
-floundered about in that dirty pool like carp stuffed into a watering
-can, and the suggestion of merriment in that floundering mass rendered
-it specially pathetic.
-
-One fair-haired young soldier of the third company, whom Prince Andrew
-knew and who had a strap round the calf of one leg, crossed himself,
-stepped back to get a good run, and plunged into the water; another,
-a dark noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood up to his
-waist in the water joyfully wriggling his muscular figure and snorted
-with satisfaction as he poured the water over his head with hands
-blackened to the wrists. There were sounds of men slapping one another,
-yelling, and puffing.
-
-Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond, there was healthy,
-white, muscular flesh. The officer, Timókhin, with his red little nose,
-standing on the dam wiping himself with a towel, felt confused at seeing
-the prince, but made up his mind to address him nevertheless.
-
-“It’s very nice, your excellency! Wouldn’t you like to?” said he.
-
-“It’s dirty,” replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace.
-
-“We’ll clear it out for you in a minute,” said Timókhin, and, still
-undressed, ran off to clear the men out of the pond.
-
-“The prince wants to bathe.”
-
-“What prince? Ours?” said many voices, and the men were in such haste
-to clear out that the prince could hardly stop them. He decided that he
-would rather wash himself with water in the barn.
-
-“Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!” he thought, and he looked at his own
-naked body and shuddered, not from cold but from a sense of disgust
-and horror he did not himself understand, aroused by the sight of that
-immense number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.
-
-
-On the seventh of August Prince Bagratión wrote as follows from his
-quarters at Mikháylovna on the Smolénsk road:
-
-Dear Count Aléxis Andréevich—(He was writing to Arakchéev but knew that
-his letter would be read by the Emperor, and therefore weighed every
-word in it to the best of his ability.)
-
-I expect the Minister (Barclay de Tolly) has already reported the
-abandonment of Smolénsk to the enemy. It is pitiable and sad, and
-the whole army is in despair that this most important place has been
-wantonly abandoned. I, for my part, begged him personally most urgently
-and finally wrote him, but nothing would induce him to consent. I swear
-to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a fix as never before and
-might have lost half his army but could not have taken Smolénsk. Our
-troops fought, and are fighting, as never before. With fifteen thousand
-men I held the enemy at bay for thirty-five hours and beat him; but he
-would not hold out even for fourteen hours. It is disgraceful, a stain
-on our army, and as for him, he ought, it seems to me, not to live. If
-he reports that our losses were great, it is not true; perhaps about
-four thousand, not more, and not even that; but even were they ten
-thousand, that’s war! But the enemy has lost masses....
-
-What would it have cost him to hold out for another two days? They would
-have had to retire of their own accord, for they had no water for men
-or horses. He gave me his word he would not retreat, but suddenly sent
-instructions that he was retiring that night. We cannot fight in this
-way, or we may soon bring the enemy to Moscow....
-
-There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God forbid that you
-should make peace after all our sacrifices and such insane retreats! You
-would set all Russia against you and everyone of us would feel ashamed
-to wear the uniform. If it has come to this—we must fight as long as
-Russia can and as long as there are men able to stand....
-
-One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your Minister may perhaps
-be good as a Minister, but as a general he is not merely bad but
-execrable, yet to him is entrusted the fate of our whole country.... I
-am really frantic with vexation; forgive my writing boldly. It is clear
-that the man who advocates the conclusion of a peace, and that the
-Minister should command the army, does not love our sovereign and
-desires the ruin of us all. So I write you frankly: call out the
-militia. For the Minister is leading these visitors after him to Moscow
-in a most masterly way. The whole army feels great suspicion of the
-Imperial aide-de-camp Wolzogen. He is said to be more Napoleon’s man
-than ours, and he is always advising the Minister. I am not merely civil
-to him but obey him like a corporal, though I am his senior. This is
-painful, but, loving my benefactor and sovereign, I submit. Only I am
-sorry for the Emperor that he entrusts our fine army to such as he.
-Consider that on our retreat we have lost by fatigue and left in the
-hospital more than fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would
-not have happened. Tell me, for God’s sake, what will Russia, our mother
-Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why are we abandoning our
-good and gallant Fatherland to such rabble and implanting feelings of
-hatred and shame in all our subjects? What are we scared at and of whom
-are we afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister is vacillating,
-a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities. The whole army
-bewails it and calls down curses upon him....
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-Among the innumerable categories applicable to the phenomena of human
-life one may discriminate between those in which substance prevails
-and those in which form prevails. To the latter—as distinguished
-from village, country, provincial, or even Moscow life—we may allot
-Petersburg life, and especially the life of its salons. That life of
-the salons is unchanging. Since the year 1805 we had made peace and had
-again quarreled with Bonaparte and had made constitutions and unmade
-them again, but the salons of Anna Pávlovna and Hélène remained just
-as they had been—the one seven and the other five years before. At Anna
-Pávlovna’s they talked with perplexity of Bonaparte’s successes just
-as before and saw in them and in the subservience shown to him by the
-European sovereigns a malicious conspiracy, the sole object of which was
-to cause unpleasantness and anxiety to the court circle of which Anna
-Pávlovna was the representative. And in Hélène’s salon, which Rumyántsev
-himself honored with his visits, regarding Hélène as a remarkably
-intelligent woman, they talked with the same ecstasy in 1812 as in 1808
-of the “great nation” and the “great man,” and regretted our rupture
-with France, a rupture which, according to them, ought to be promptly
-terminated by peace.
-
-Of late, since the Emperor’s return from the army, there had been some
-excitement in these conflicting salon circles and some demonstrations
-of hostility to one another, but each camp retained its own tendency.
-In Anna Pávlovna’s circle only those Frenchmen were admitted who were
-deep-rooted legitimists, and patriotic views were expressed to the
-effect that one ought not to go to the French theater and that to
-maintain the French troupe was costing the government as much as a whole
-army corps. The progress of the war was eagerly followed, and only
-the reports most flattering to our army were circulated. In the French
-circle of Hélène and Rumyántsev the reports of the cruelty of the
-enemy and of the war were contradicted and all Napoleon’s attempts at
-conciliation were discussed. In that circle they discountenanced those
-who advised hurried preparations for a removal to Kazán of the court and
-the girls’ educational establishments under the patronage of the Dowager
-Empress. In Hélène’s circle the war in general was regarded as a series
-of formal demonstrations which would very soon end in peace, and the
-view prevailed expressed by Bilíbin—who now in Petersburg was quite at
-home in Hélène’s house, which every clever man was obliged to visit—that
-not by gunpowder but by those who invented it would matters be
-settled. In that circle the Moscow enthusiasm—news of which had reached
-Petersburg simultaneously with the Emperor’s return—was ridiculed
-sarcastically and very cleverly, though with much caution.
-
-Anna Pávlovna’s circle on the contrary was enraptured by this enthusiasm
-and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the ancients.
-Prince Vasíli, who still occupied his former important posts, formed a
-connecting link between these two circles. He visited his “good friend
-Anna Pávlovna” as well as his daughter’s “diplomatic salon,” and often
-in his constant comings and goings between the two camps became confused
-and said at Hélène’s what he should have said at Anna Pávlovna’s and
-vice versa.
-
-Soon after the Emperor’s return Prince Vasíli in a conversation about
-the war at Anna Pávlovna’s severely condemned Barclay de Tolly, but was
-undecided as to who ought to be appointed commander in chief. One of the
-visitors, usually spoken of as “a man of great merit,” having described
-how he had that day seen Kutúzov, the newly chosen chief of the
-Petersburg militia, presiding over the enrollment of recruits at the
-Treasury, cautiously ventured to suggest that Kutúzov would be the man
-to satisfy all requirements.
-
-Anna Pávlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that Kutúzov had done
-nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance.
-
-“I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility,” Prince
-Vasíli interrupted, “but they did not listen to me. I told them his
-election as chief of the militia would not please the Emperor. They did
-not listen to me.
-
-“It’s all this mania for opposition,” he went on. “And who for? It is
-all because we want to ape the foolish enthusiasm of those Muscovites,”
-Prince Vasíli continued, forgetting for a moment that though at Hélène’s
-one had to ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at Anna Pávlovna’s one had to
-be ecstatic about it. But he retrieved his mistake at once. “Now, is
-it suitable that Count Kutúzov, the oldest general in Russia, should
-preside at that tribunal? He will get nothing for his pains! How could
-they make a man commander in chief who cannot mount a horse, who drops
-asleep at a council, and has the very worst morals! A good reputation
-he made for himself at Bucharest! I don’t speak of his capacity as a
-general, but at a time like this how they appoint a decrepit, blind old
-man, positively blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can’t see
-anything. To play blindman’s bluff? He can’t see at all!”
-
-No one replied to his remarks.
-
-This was quite correct on the twenty-fourth of July. But on the
-twenty-ninth of July Kutúzov received the title of Prince. This might
-indicate a wish to get rid of him, and therefore Prince Vasíli’s opinion
-continued to be correct though he was not now in any hurry to express
-it. But on the eighth of August a committee, consisting of Field Marshal
-Saltykóv, Arakchéev, Vyazmítinov, Lopukhín, and Kochubéy met to consider
-the progress of the war. This committee came to the conclusion that
-our failures were due to a want of unity in the command and though the
-members of the committee were aware of the Emperor’s dislike of Kutúzov,
-after a short deliberation they agreed to advise his appointment as
-commander in chief. That same day Kutúzov was appointed commander
-in chief with full powers over the armies and over the whole region
-occupied by them.
-
-On the ninth of August Prince Vasíli at Anna Pávlovna’s again met the
-“man of great merit.” The latter was very attentive to Anna Pávlovna
-because he wanted to be appointed director of one of the educational
-establishments for young ladies. Prince Vasíli entered the room with the
-air of a happy conqueror who has attained the object of his desires.
-
-“Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutúzov is field marshal!
-All dissensions are at an end! I am so glad, so delighted! At last
-we have a man!” said he, glancing sternly and significantly round at
-everyone in the drawing room.
-
-The “man of great merit,” despite his desire to obtain the post of
-director, could not refrain from reminding Prince Vasíli of his former
-opinion. Though this was impolite to Prince Vasíli in Anna Pávlovna’s
-drawing room, and also to Anna Pávlovna herself who had received the
-news with delight, he could not resist the temptation.
-
-“But, Prince, they say he is blind!” said he, reminding Prince Vasíli of
-his own words.
-
-“Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough,” said Prince Vasíli rapidly, in a
-deep voice and with a slight cough—the voice and cough with which he was
-wont to dispose of all difficulties.
-
-“He sees well enough,” he added. “And what I am so pleased about,” he
-went on, “is that our sovereign has given him full powers over all
-the armies and the whole region—powers no commander in chief ever had
-before. He is a second autocrat,” he concluded with a victorious smile.
-
-“God grant it! God grant it!” said Anna Pávlovna.
-
-The “man of great merit,” who was still a novice in court circles,
-wishing to flatter Anna Pávlovna by defending her former position on
-this question, observed:
-
-“It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give Kutúzov those powers.
-They say he blushed like a girl to whom Joconde is read, when he said to
-Kutúzov: ‘Your Emperor and the Fatherland award you this honor.’”
-
-“Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech,” said Anna Pávlovna.
-
-“Oh, no, no!” warmly rejoined Prince Vasíli, who would not now yield
-Kutúzov to anyone; in his opinion Kutúzov was not only admirable
-himself, but was adored by everybody. “No, that’s impossible,” said he,
-“for our sovereign appreciated him so highly before.”
-
-“God grant only that Prince Kutúzov assumes real power and does not
-allow anyone to put a spoke in his wheel,” observed Anna Pávlovna.
-
-Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince Vasíli said in a
-whisper:
-
-“I know for a fact that Kutúzov made it an absolute condition that the
-Tsarévich should not be with the army. Do you know what he said to the
-Emperor?”
-
-And Prince Vasíli repeated the words supposed to have been spoken by
-Kutúzov to the Emperor. “I can neither punish him if he does wrong nor
-reward him if he does right.”
-
-“Oh, a very wise man is Prince Kutúzov! I have known him a long time!”
-
-“They even say,” remarked the “man of great merit” who did not yet
-possess courtly tact, “that his excellency made it an express condition
-that the sovereign himself should not be with the army.”
-
-As soon as he said this both Prince Vasíli and Anna Pávlovna turned away
-from him and glanced sadly at one another with a sigh at his naïveté.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already passed
-Smolénsk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow. Napoleon’s
-historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to justify his
-hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against his will. He
-is as right as other historians who look for the explanation of historic
-events in the will of one man; he is as right as the Russian historians
-who maintain that Napoleon was drawn to Moscow by the skill of the
-Russian commanders. Here besides the law of retrospection, which regards
-all the past as a preparation for events that subsequently occur,
-the law of reciprocity comes in, confusing the whole matter. A good
-chessplayer having lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss
-resulted from a mistake he made and looks for that mistake in the
-opening, but forgets that at each stage of the game there were similar
-mistakes and that none of his moves were perfect. He only notices the
-mistake to which he pays attention, because his opponent took advantage
-of it. How much more complex than this is the game of war, which
-occurs under certain limits of time, and where it is not one will that
-manipulates lifeless objects, but everything results from innumerable
-conflicts of various wills!
-
-After Smolénsk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobúzh at Vyázma, and
-then at Tsárevo-Zaymíshche, but it happened that owing to a conjunction
-of innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give battle till
-they reached Borodinó, seventy miles from Moscow. From Vyázma Napoleon
-ordered a direct advance on Moscow.
-
-Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacrée des
-peuples d’Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables églises en forme de
-pagodes chinoises, * this Moscow gave Napoleon’s imagination no rest.
-On the march from Vyázma to Tsárevo-Zaymíshche he rode his light bay
-bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his pages,
-and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of staff, dropped behind to
-question a Russian prisoner captured by the cavalry. Followed by
-Lelorgne d’Ideville, an interpreter, he overtook Napoleon at a gallop
-and reined in his horse with an amused expression.
-
- * “Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the
- sacred city of Alexander’s people, Moscow with its
- innumerable churches shaped like Chinese pagodas.”
-
-
-“Well?” asked Napoleon.
-
-“One of Plátov’s Cossacks says that Plátov’s corps is joining up with
-the main army and that Kutúzov has been appointed commander in chief. He
-is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow.”
-
-Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and bring the
-man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several adjutants galloped
-off, and an hour later, Lavrúshka, the serf Denísov had handed over
-to Rostóv, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly’s jacket and on a French
-cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face. Napoleon told him to ride
-by his side and began questioning him.
-
-“You are a Cossack?”
-
-“Yes, a Cossack, your Honor.”
-
-“The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon’s plain
-appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental mind
-the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the
-incidents of the war,” says Thiers, narrating this episode. In
-reality Lavrúshka, having got drunk the day before and left his master
-dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the village in quest of
-chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him prisoner.
-Lavrúshka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who have seen all
-sorts of things, consider it necessary to do everything in a mean and
-cunning way, are ready to render any sort of service to their master,
-and are keen at guessing their master’s baser impulses, especially those
-prompted by vanity and pettiness.
-
-Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had easily
-and surely recognized, Lavrúshka was not in the least abashed but merely
-did his utmost to gain his new master’s favor.
-
-He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon’s presence could
-no more intimidate him than Rostóv’s, or a sergeant major’s with the
-rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant major
-or Napoleon could deprive him of.
-
-So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the
-orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the
-Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrúshka screwed up
-his eyes and considered.
-
-In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see cunning
-in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.
-
-“It’s like this,” he said thoughtfully, “if there’s a battle soon, yours
-will win. That’s right. But if three days pass, then after that, well,
-then that same battle will not soon be over.”
-
-Lelorgne d’Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon thus:
-“If a battle takes place within the next three days the French will
-win, but if later, God knows what will happen.” Napoleon did not smile,
-though he was evidently in high good humor, and he ordered these words
-to be repeated.
-
-Lavrúshka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending not to
-know who Napoleon was, added:
-
-“We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in the
-world, but we are a different matter...”—without knowing why or how this
-bit of boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.
-
-The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase, and
-Bonaparte smiled. “The young Cossack made his mighty interlocutor
-smile,” says Thiers. After riding a few paces in silence, Napoleon
-turned to Berthier and said he wished to see how the news that he was
-talking to the Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who had written his
-immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would affect this enfant du
-Don. *
-
- * “Child of the Don.”
-
-
-The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrúshka.
-
-Lavrúshka, understanding that this was done to perplex him and that
-Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his new masters
-promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his eyes
-wide, and assumed the expression he usually put on when taken to be
-whipped. “As soon as Napoleon’s interpreter had spoken,” says Thiers,
-“the Cossack, seized by amazement, did not utter another word, but rode
-on, his eyes fixed on the conqueror whose fame had reached him across
-the steppes of the East. All his loquacity was suddenly arrested and
-replaced by a naïve and silent feeling of admiration. Napoleon, after
-making the Cossack a present, had him set free like a bird restored to
-its native fields.”
-
-Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed to his
-imagination, and “the bird restored to its native fields” galloped to
-our outposts, inventing on the way all that had not taken place but that
-he meant to relate to his comrades. What had really taken place he did
-not wish to relate because it seemed to him not worth telling. He
-found the Cossacks, inquired for the regiment operating with Plátov’s
-detachment and by evening found his master, Nicholas Rostóv, quartered
-at Yankóvo. Rostóv was just mounting to go for a ride round the
-neighboring villages with Ilyín; he let Lavrúshka have another horse and
-took him along with him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-Princess Mary was not in Moscow and out of danger as Prince Andrew
-supposed.
-
-After the return of Alpátych from Smolénsk the old prince suddenly
-seemed to awake as from a dream. He ordered the militiamen to be called
-up from the villages and armed, and wrote a letter to the commander in
-chief informing him that he had resolved to remain at Bald Hills to the
-last extremity and to defend it, leaving to the commander in chief’s
-discretion to take measures or not for the defense of Bald Hills, where
-one of Russia’s oldest generals would be captured or killed, and he
-announced to his household that he would remain at Bald Hills.
-
-But while himself remaining, he gave instructions for the departure of
-the princess and Dessalles with the little prince to Boguchárovo and
-thence to Moscow. Princess Mary, alarmed by her father’s feverish and
-sleepless activity after his previous apathy, could not bring herself to
-leave him alone and for the first time in her life ventured to disobey
-him. She refused to go away and her father’s fury broke over her in a
-terrible storm. He repeated every injustice he had ever inflicted on
-her. Trying to convict her, he told her she had worn him out, had caused
-his quarrel with his son, had harbored nasty suspicions of him, making
-it the object of her life to poison his existence, and he drove her from
-his study telling her that if she did not go away it was all the same
-to him. He declared that he did not wish to remember her existence and
-warned her not to dare to let him see her. The fact that he did not, as
-she had feared, order her to be carried away by force but only told her
-not to let him see her cheered Princess Mary. She knew it was a proof
-that in the depth of his soul he was glad she was remaining at home and
-had not gone away.
-
-The morning after little Nicholas had left, the old prince donned his
-full uniform and prepared to visit the commander in chief. His calèche
-was already at the door. Princess Mary saw him walk out of the house in
-his uniform wearing all his orders and go down the garden to review his
-armed peasants and domestic serfs. She sat by the window listening to
-his voice which reached her from the garden. Suddenly several men came
-running up the avenue with frightened faces.
-
-Princess Mary ran out to the porch, down the flower-bordered path, and
-into the avenue. A large crowd of militiamen and domestics were moving
-toward her, and in their midst several men were supporting by
-the armpits and dragging along a little old man in a uniform and
-decorations. She ran up to him and, in the play of the sunlight that
-fell in small round spots through the shade of the lime-tree avenue,
-could not be sure what change there was in his face. All she could see
-was that his former stern and determined expression had altered to one
-of timidity and submission. On seeing his daughter he moved his helpless
-lips and made a hoarse sound. It was impossible to make out what he
-wanted. He was lifted up, carried to his study, and laid on the very
-couch he had so feared of late.
-
-The doctor, who was fetched that same night, bled him and said that the
-prince had had a seizure paralyzing his right side.
-
-It was becoming more and more dangerous to remain at Bald Hills, and
-next day they moved the prince to Boguchárovo, the doctor accompanying
-him.
-
-By the time they reached Boguchárovo, Dessalles and the little prince
-had already left for Moscow.
-
-For three weeks the old prince lay stricken by paralysis in the new
-house Prince Andrew had built at Boguchárovo, ever in the same state,
-getting neither better nor worse. He was unconscious and lay like
-a distorted corpse. He muttered unceasingly, his eyebrows and lips
-twitching, and it was impossible to tell whether he understood what was
-going on around him or not. One thing was certain—that he was suffering
-and wished to say something. But what it was, no one could tell: it
-might be some caprice of a sick and half-crazy man, or it might relate
-to public affairs, or possibly to family concerns.
-
-The doctor said this restlessness did not mean anything and was due
-to physical causes; but Princess Mary thought he wished to tell
-her something, and the fact that her presence always increased his
-restlessness confirmed her opinion.
-
-He was evidently suffering both physically and mentally. There was no
-hope of recovery. It was impossible for him to travel, it would not do
-to let him die on the road. “Would it not be better if the end did come,
-the very end?” Princess Mary sometimes thought. Night and day, hardly
-sleeping at all, she watched him and, terrible to say, often watched
-him not with hope of finding signs of improvement but wishing to find
-symptoms of the approach of the end.
-
-Strange as it was to her to acknowledge this feeling in herself, yet
-there it was. And what seemed still more terrible to her was that since
-her father’s illness began (perhaps even sooner, when she stayed with
-him expecting something to happen), all the personal desires and hopes
-that had been forgotten or sleeping within her had awakened. Thoughts
-that had not entered her mind for years—thoughts of a life free from
-the fear of her father, and even the possibility of love and of family
-happiness—floated continually in her imagination like temptations of the
-devil. Thrust them aside as she would, questions continually recurred
-to her as to how she would order her life now, after that. These were
-temptations of the devil and Princess Mary knew it. She knew that the
-sole weapon against him was prayer, and she tried to pray. She assumed
-an attitude of prayer, looked at the icons, repeated the words of a
-prayer, but she could not pray. She felt that a different world had
-now taken possession of her—the life of a world of strenuous and free
-activity, quite opposed to the spiritual world in which till now she
-had been confined and in which her greatest comfort had been prayer.
-She could not pray, could not weep, and worldly cares took possession of
-her.
-
-It was becoming dangerous to remain in Boguchárovo. News of the approach
-of the French came from all sides, and in one village, ten miles from
-Boguchárovo, a homestead had been looted by French marauders.
-
-The doctor insisted on the necessity of moving the prince; the
-provincial Marshal of the Nobility sent an official to Princess Mary
-to persuade her to get away as quickly as possible, and the head of the
-rural police having come to Boguchárovo urged the same thing, saying
-that the French were only some twenty-five miles away, that French
-proclamations were circulating in the villages, and that if the princess
-did not take her father away before the fifteenth, he could not answer
-for the consequences.
-
-The princess decided to leave on the fifteenth. The cares of preparation
-and giving orders, for which everyone came to her, occupied her all day.
-She spent the night of the fourteenth as usual, without undressing, in
-the room next to the one where the prince lay. Several times, waking up,
-she heard his groans and muttering, the creak of his bed, and the steps
-of Tíkhon and the doctor when they turned him over. Several times she
-listened at the door, and it seemed to her that his mutterings were
-louder than usual and that they turned him over oftener. She could not
-sleep and several times went to the door and listened, wishing to enter
-but not deciding to do so. Though he did not speak, Princess Mary saw
-and knew how unpleasant every sign of anxiety on his account was to him.
-She had noticed with what dissatisfaction he turned from the look she
-sometimes involuntarily fixed on him. She knew that her going in during
-the night at an unusual hour would irritate him.
-
-But never had she felt so grieved for him or so much afraid of losing
-him. She recalled all her life with him and in every word and act of his
-found an expression of his love of her. Occasionally amid these memories
-temptations of the devil would surge into her imagination: thoughts of
-how things would be after his death, and how her new, liberated life
-would be ordered. But she drove these thoughts away with disgust. Toward
-morning he became quiet and she fell asleep.
-
-She woke late. That sincerity which often comes with waking showed her
-clearly what chiefly concerned her about her father’s illness. On waking
-she listened to what was going on behind the door and, hearing him
-groan, said to herself with a sigh that things were still the same.
-
-“But what could have happened? What did I want? I want his death!” she
-cried with a feeling of loathing for herself.
-
-She washed, dressed, said her prayers, and went out to the porch. In
-front of it stood carriages without horses and things were being packed
-into the vehicles.
-
-It was a warm, gray morning. Princess Mary stopped at the porch, still
-horrified by her spiritual baseness and trying to arrange her thoughts
-before going to her father. The doctor came downstairs and went out to
-her.
-
-“He is a little better today,” said he. “I was looking for you. One can
-make out something of what he is saying. His head is clearer. Come in,
-he is asking for you....”
-
-Princess Mary’s heart beat so violently at this news that she grew pale
-and leaned against the wall to keep from falling. To see him, talk to
-him, feel his eyes on her now that her whole soul was overflowing with
-those dreadful, wicked temptations, was a torment of joy and terror.
-
-“Come,” said the doctor.
-
-Princess Mary entered her father’s room and went up to his bed. He was
-lying on his back propped up high, and his small bony hands with
-their knotted purple veins were lying on the quilt; his left eye gazed
-straight before him, his right eye was awry, and his brows and lips
-motionless. He seemed altogether so thin, small, and pathetic. His face
-seemed to have shriveled or melted; his features had grown smaller.
-Princess Mary went up and kissed his hand. His left hand pressed hers
-so that she understood that he had long been waiting for her to come. He
-twitched her hand, and his brows and lips quivered angrily.
-
-She looked at him in dismay trying to guess what he wanted of her. When
-she changed her position so that his left eye could see her face he
-calmed down, not taking his eyes off her for some seconds. Then his lips
-and tongue moved, sounds came, and he began to speak, gazing timidly and
-imploringly at her, evidently afraid that she might not understand.
-
-Straining all her faculties Princess Mary looked at him. The comic
-efforts with which he moved his tongue made her drop her eyes and with
-difficulty repress the sobs that rose to her throat. He said something,
-repeating the same words several times. She could not understand them,
-but tried to guess what he was saying and inquiringly repeated the words
-he uttered.
-
-“Mmm...ar...ate...ate...” he repeated several times.
-
-It was quite impossible to understand these sounds. The doctor thought
-he had guessed them, and inquiringly repeated: “Mary, are you afraid?”
-The prince shook his head, again repeated the same sounds.
-
-“My mind, my mind aches?” questioned Princess Mary.
-
-He made a mumbling sound in confirmation of this, took her hand, and
-began pressing it to different parts of his breast as if trying to find
-the right place for it.
-
-“Always thoughts... about you... thoughts...” he then uttered much
-more clearly than he had done before, now that he was sure of being
-understood.
-
-Princess Mary pressed her head against his hand, trying to hide her sobs
-and tears.
-
-He moved his hand over her hair.
-
-“I have been calling you all night...” he brought out.
-
-“If only I had known...” she said through her tears. “I was afraid to
-come in.”
-
-He pressed her hand.
-
-“Weren’t you asleep?”
-
-“No, I did not sleep,” said Princess Mary, shaking her head.
-
-Unconsciously imitating her father, she now tried to express herself as
-he did, as much as possible by signs, and her tongue too seemed to move
-with difficulty.
-
-“Dear one... Dearest...” Princess Mary could not quite make out what he
-had said, but from his look it was clear that he had uttered a tender
-caressing word such as he had never used to her before. “Why didn’t you
-come in?”
-
-“And I was wishing for his death!” thought Princess Mary.
-
-He was silent awhile.
-
-“Thank you... daughter dear!... for all, for all... forgive!... thank
-you!... forgive!... thank you!...” and tears began to flow from his
-eyes. “Call Andrew!” he said suddenly, and a childish, timid expression
-of doubt showed itself on his face as he spoke.
-
-He himself seemed aware that his demand was meaningless. So at least it
-seemed to Princess Mary.
-
-“I have a letter from him,” she replied.
-
-He glanced at her with timid surprise.
-
-“Where is he?”
-
-“He’s with the army, Father, at Smolénsk.”
-
-He closed his eyes and remained silent a long time. Then as if in
-answer to his doubts and to confirm the fact that now he understood and
-remembered everything, he nodded his head and reopened his eyes.
-
-“Yes,” he said, softly and distinctly. “Russia has perished. They’ve
-destroyed her.”
-
-And he began to sob, and again tears flowed from his eyes. Princess Mary
-could no longer restrain herself and wept while she gazed at his face.
-
-Again he closed his eyes. His sobs ceased, he pointed to his eyes, and
-Tíkhon, understanding him, wiped away the tears.
-
-Then he again opened his eyes and said something none of them could
-understand for a long time, till at last Tíkhon understood and repeated
-it. Princess Mary had sought the meaning of his words in the mood in
-which he had just been speaking. She thought he was speaking of Russia,
-or Prince Andrew, of herself, of his grandson, or of his own death, and
-so she could not guess his words.
-
-“Put on your white dress. I like it,” was what he said.
-
-Having understood this Princess Mary sobbed still louder, and the doctor
-taking her arm led her out to the veranda, soothing her and trying to
-persuade her to prepare for her journey. When she had left the room the
-prince again began speaking about his son, about the war, and about the
-Emperor, angrily twitching his brows and raising his hoarse voice, and
-then he had a second and final stroke.
-
-Princess Mary stayed on the veranda. The day had cleared, it was hot and
-sunny. She could understand nothing, think of nothing and feel nothing,
-except passionate love for her father, love such as she thought she had
-never felt till that moment. She ran out sobbing into the garden and as
-far as the pond, along the avenues of young lime trees Prince Andrew had
-planted.
-
-“Yes... I... I... I wished for his death! Yes, I wanted it to end
-quicker.... I wished to be at peace.... And what will become of me? What
-use will peace be when he is no longer here?” Princess Mary murmured,
-pacing the garden with hurried steps and pressing her hands to her bosom
-which heaved with convulsive sobs.
-
-When she had completed the tour of the garden, which brought her
-again to the house, she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne—who had remained
-at Boguchárovo and did not wish to leave it—coming toward her with a
-stranger. This was the Marshal of the Nobility of the district, who
-had come personally to point out to the princess the necessity for her
-prompt departure. Princess Mary listened without understanding him; she
-led him to the house, offered him lunch, and sat down with him. Then,
-excusing herself, she went to the door of the old prince’s room. The
-doctor came out with an agitated face and said she could not enter.
-
-“Go away, Princess! Go away... go away!”
-
-She returned to the garden and sat down on the grass at the foot of the
-slope by the pond, where no one could see her. She did not know how
-long she had been there when she was aroused by the sound of a woman’s
-footsteps running along the path. She rose and saw Dunyásha her maid,
-who was evidently looking for her, and who stopped suddenly as if in
-alarm on seeing her mistress.
-
-“Please come, Princess... The Prince,” said Dunyásha in a breaking
-voice.
-
-“Immediately, I’m coming, I’m coming!” replied the princess hurriedly,
-not giving Dunyásha time to finish what she was saying, and trying to
-avoid seeing the girl she ran toward the house.
-
-“Princess, it’s God’s will! You must be prepared for everything,” said
-the Marshal, meeting her at the house door.
-
-“Let me alone; it’s not true!” she cried angrily to him.
-
-The doctor tried to stop her. She pushed him aside and ran to her
-father’s door. “Why are these people with frightened faces stopping me?
-I don’t want any of them! And what are they doing here?” she thought.
-She opened the door and the bright daylight in that previously darkened
-room startled her. In the room were her nurse and other women. They all
-drew back from the bed, making way for her. He was still lying on the
-bed as before, but the stern expression of his quiet face made Princess
-Mary stop short on the threshold.
-
-“No, he’s not dead—it’s impossible!” she told herself and approached
-him, and repressing the terror that seized her, she pressed her lips
-to his cheek. But she stepped back immediately. All the force of the
-tenderness she had been feeling for him vanished instantly and was
-replaced by a feeling of horror at what lay there before her. “No, he
-is no more! He is not, but here where he was is something unfamiliar and
-hostile, some dreadful, terrifying, and repellent mystery!” And hiding
-her face in her hands, Princess Mary sank into the arms of the doctor,
-who held her up.
-
-
-In the presence of Tíkhon and the doctor the women washed what had been
-the prince, tied his head up with a handkerchief that the mouth should
-not stiffen while open, and with another handkerchief tied together the
-legs that were already spreading apart. Then they dressed him in uniform
-with his decorations and placed his shriveled little body on a table.
-Heaven only knows who arranged all this and when, but it all got done
-as if of its own accord. Toward night candles were burning round his
-coffin, a pall was spread over it, the floor was strewn with sprays of
-juniper, a printed band was tucked in under his shriveled head, and in a
-corner of the room sat a chanter reading the psalms.
-
-Just as horses shy and snort and gather about a dead horse, so the
-inmates of the house and strangers crowded into the drawing room round
-the coffin—the Marshal, the village Elder, peasant women—and all with
-fixed and frightened eyes, crossing themselves, bowed and kissed the old
-prince’s cold and stiffened hand.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-Until Prince Andrew settled in Boguchárovo its owners had always been
-absentees, and its peasants were of quite a different character from
-those of Bald Hills. They differed from them in speech, dress, and
-disposition. They were called steppe peasants. The old prince used to
-approve of them for their endurance at work when they came to Bald Hills
-to help with the harvest or to dig ponds, and ditches, but he disliked
-them for their boorishness.
-
-Prince Andrew’s last stay at Boguchárovo, when he introduced hospitals
-and schools and reduced the quitrent the peasants had to pay, had not
-softened their disposition but had on the contrary strengthened in
-them the traits of character the old prince called boorishness. Various
-obscure rumors were always current among them: at one time a rumor that
-they would all be enrolled as Cossacks; at another of a new religion to
-which they were all to be converted; then of some proclamation of the
-Tsar’s and of an oath to the Tsar Paul in 1797 (in connection with which
-it was rumored that freedom had been granted them but the landowners had
-stopped it), then of Peter Fëdorovich’s return to the throne in seven
-years’ time, when everything would be made free and so “simple” that
-there would be no restrictions. Rumors of the war with Bonaparte and
-his invasion were connected in their minds with the same sort of vague
-notions of Antichrist, the end of the world, and “pure freedom.”
-
-In the vicinity of Boguchárovo were large villages belonging to the
-crown or to owners whose serfs paid quitrent and could work where they
-pleased. There were very few resident landlords in the neighborhood
-and also very few domestic or literate serfs, and in the lives of the
-peasantry of those parts the mysterious undercurrents in the life of
-the Russian people, the causes and meaning of which are so baffling to
-contemporaries, were more clearly and strongly noticeable than among
-others. One instance, which had occurred some twenty years before, was
-a movement among the peasants to emigrate to some unknown “warm rivers.”
-Hundreds of peasants, among them the Boguchárovo folk, suddenly began
-selling their cattle and moving in whole families toward the southeast.
-As birds migrate to somewhere beyond the sea, so these men with their
-wives and children streamed to the southeast, to parts where none of
-them had ever been. They set off in caravans, bought their freedom one
-by one or ran away, and drove or walked toward the “warm rivers.” Many
-of them were punished, some sent to Siberia, many died of cold and
-hunger on the road, many returned of their own accord, and the movement
-died down of itself just as it had sprung up, without apparent reason.
-But such undercurrents still existed among the people and gathered new
-forces ready to manifest themselves just as strangely, unexpectedly, and
-at the same time simply, naturally, and forcibly. Now in 1812, to anyone
-living in close touch with these people it was apparent that these
-undercurrents were acting strongly and nearing an eruption.
-
-Alpátych, who had reached Boguchárovo shortly before the old prince’s
-death, noticed an agitation among the peasants, and that contrary to
-what was happening in the Bald Hills district, where over a radius of
-forty miles all the peasants were moving away and leaving their villages
-to be devastated by the Cossacks, the peasants in the steppe region
-round Boguchárovo were, it was rumored, in touch with the French,
-received leaflets from them that passed from hand to hand, and did not
-migrate. He learned from domestic serfs loyal to him that the peasant
-Karp, who possessed great influence in the village commune and had
-recently been away driving a government transport, had returned with
-news that the Cossacks were destroying deserted villages, but that the
-French did not harm them. Alpátych also knew that on the previous day
-another peasant had even brought from the village of Visloúkhovo, which
-was occupied by the French, a proclamation by a French general that no
-harm would be done to the inhabitants, and if they remained they would
-be paid for anything taken from them. As proof of this the peasant had
-brought from Visloúkhovo a hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that
-they were false) paid to him in advance for hay.
-
-More important still, Alpátych learned that on the morning of the
-very day he gave the village Elder orders to collect carts to move the
-princess’ luggage from Boguchárovo, there had been a village meeting at
-which it had been decided not to move but to wait. Yet there was no
-time to waste. On the fifteenth, the day of the old prince’s death,
-the Marshal had insisted on Princess Mary’s leaving at once, as it was
-becoming dangerous. He had told her that after the sixteenth he could
-not be responsible for what might happen. On the evening of the day the
-old prince died the Marshal went away, promising to return next day for
-the funeral. But this he was unable to do, for he received tidings that
-the French had unexpectedly advanced, and had barely time to remove his
-own family and valuables from his estate.
-
-For some thirty years Boguchárovo had been managed by the village Elder,
-Dron, whom the old prince called by the diminutive “Drónushka.”
-
-Dron was one of those physically and mentally vigorous peasants who grow
-big beards as soon as they are of age and go on unchanged till they
-are sixty or seventy, without a gray hair or the loss of a tooth, as
-straight and strong at sixty as at thirty.
-
-Soon after the migration to the “warm rivers,” in which he had taken
-part like the rest, Dron was made village Elder and overseer of
-Boguchárovo, and had since filled that post irreproachably for
-twenty-three years. The peasants feared him more than they did their
-master. The masters, both the old prince and the young, and the steward
-respected him and jestingly called him “the Minister.” During the
-whole time of his service Dron had never been drunk or ill, never after
-sleepless nights or the hardest tasks had he shown the least fatigue,
-and though he could not read he had never forgotten a single money
-account or the number of quarters of flour in any of the endless
-cartloads he sold for the prince, nor a single shock of the whole corn
-crop on any single acre of the Boguchárovo fields.
-
-Alpátych, arriving from the devastated Bald Hills estate, sent for his
-Dron on the day of the prince’s funeral and told him to have twelve
-horses got ready for the princess’ carriages and eighteen carts for
-the things to be removed from Boguchárovo. Though the peasants paid
-quitrent, Alpátych thought no difficulty would be made about complying
-with this order, for there were two hundred and thirty households at
-work in Boguchárovo and the peasants were well to do. But on hearing the
-order Dron lowered his eyes and remained silent. Alpátych named certain
-peasants he knew, from whom he told him to take the carts.
-
-Dron replied that the horses of these peasants were away carting.
-Alpátych named others, but they too, according to Dron, had no horses
-available: some horses were carting for the government, others were too
-weak, and others had died for want of fodder. It seemed that no horses
-could be had even for the carriages, much less for the carting.
-
-Alpátych looked intently at Dron and frowned. Just as Dron was a model
-village Elder, so Alpátych had not managed the prince’s estates for
-twenty years in vain. He was a model steward, possessing in the highest
-degree the faculty of divining the needs and instincts of those he dealt
-with. Having glanced at Dron he at once understood that his answers did
-not express his personal views but the general mood of the Boguchárovo
-commune, by which the Elder had already been carried away. But he also
-knew that Dron, who had acquired property and was hated by the commune,
-must be hesitating between the two camps: the masters’ and the serfs’.
-He noticed this hesitation in Dron’s look and therefore frowned and
-moved closer up to him.
-
-“Now just listen, Drónushka,” said he. “Don’t talk nonsense to me. His
-excellency Prince Andrew himself gave me orders to move all the people
-away and not leave them with the enemy, and there is an order from the
-Tsar about it too. Anyone who stays is a traitor to the Tsar. Do you
-hear?”
-
-“I hear,” Dron answered without lifting his eyes.
-
-Alpátych was not satisfied with this reply.
-
-“Eh, Dron, it will turn out badly!” he said, shaking his head.
-
-“The power is in your hands,” Dron rejoined sadly.
-
-“Eh, Dron, drop it!” Alpátych repeated, withdrawing his hand from his
-bosom and solemnly pointing to the floor at Dron’s feet. “I can see
-through you and three yards into the ground under you,” he continued,
-gazing at the floor in front of Dron.
-
-Dron was disconcerted, glanced furtively at Alpátych and again lowered
-his eyes.
-
-“You drop this nonsense and tell the people to get ready to leave their
-homes and go to Moscow and to get carts ready for tomorrow morning
-for the princess’ things. And don’t go to any meeting yourself, do you
-hear?”
-
-Dron suddenly fell on his knees.
-
-“Yákov Alpátych, discharge me! Take the keys from me and discharge me,
-for Christ’s sake!”
-
-“Stop that!” cried Alpátych sternly. “I see through you and three yards
-under you,” he repeated, knowing that his skill in beekeeping, his
-knowledge of the right time to sow the oats, and the fact that he had
-been able to retain the old prince’s favor for twenty years had long
-since gained him the reputation of being a wizard, and that the power of
-seeing three yards under a man is considered an attribute of wizards.
-
-Dron got up and was about to say something, but Alpátych interrupted
-him.
-
-“What is it you have got into your heads, eh?... What are you thinking
-of, eh?”
-
-“What am I to do with the people?” said Dron. “They’re quite beside
-themselves; I have already told them...”
-
-“‘Told them,’ I dare say!” said Alpátych. “Are they drinking?” he asked
-abruptly.
-
-“Quite beside themselves, Yákov Alpátych; they’ve fetched another
-barrel.”
-
-“Well, then, listen! I’ll go to the police officer, and you tell them
-so, and that they must stop this and the carts must be got ready.”
-
-“I understand.”
-
-Alpátych did not insist further. He had managed people for a long time
-and knew that the chief way to make them obey is to show no suspicion
-that they can possibly disobey. Having wrung a submissive “I understand”
-from Dron, Alpátych contented himself with that, though he not only
-doubted but felt almost certain that without the help of troops the
-carts would not be forthcoming.
-
-And so it was, for when evening came no carts had been provided. In the
-village, outside the drink shop, another meeting was being held, which
-decided that the horses should be driven out into the woods and the
-carts should not be provided. Without saying anything of this to the
-princess, Alpátych had his own belongings taken out of the carts which
-had arrived from Bald Hills and had those horses got ready for
-the princess’ carriages. Meanwhile he went himself to the police
-authorities.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-After her father’s funeral Princess Mary shut herself up in her room and
-did not admit anyone. A maid came to the door to say that Alpátych was
-asking for orders about their departure. (This was before his talk with
-Dron.) Princess Mary raised herself on the sofa on which she had been
-lying and replied through the closed door that she did not mean to go
-away and begged to be left in peace.
-
-The windows of the room in which she was lying looked westward. She
-lay on the sofa with her face to the wall, fingering the buttons of the
-leather cushion and seeing nothing but that cushion, and her confused
-thoughts were centered on one subject—the irrevocability of death and
-her own spiritual baseness, which she had not suspected, but which had
-shown itself during her father’s illness. She wished to pray but did not
-dare to, dared not in her present state of mind address herself to God.
-She lay for a long time in that position.
-
-The sun had reached the other side of the house, and its slanting rays
-shone into the open window, lighting up the room and part of the morocco
-cushion at which Princess Mary was looking. The flow of her thoughts
-suddenly stopped. Unconsciously she sat up, smoothed her hair, got up,
-and went to the window, involuntarily inhaling the freshness of the
-clear but windy evening.
-
-“Yes, you can well enjoy the evening now! He is gone and no one will
-hinder you,” she said to herself, and sinking into a chair she let her
-head fall on the window sill.
-
-Someone spoke her name in a soft and tender voice from the garden and
-kissed her head. She looked up. It was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a black
-dress and weepers. She softly approached Princess Mary, sighed, kissed
-her, and immediately began to cry. The princess looked up at her. All
-their former disharmony and her own jealousy recurred to her mind.
-But she remembered too how he had changed of late toward Mademoiselle
-Bourienne and could not bear to see her, thereby showing how unjust were
-the reproaches Princess Mary had mentally addressed to her. “Besides,
-is it for me, for me who desired his death, to condemn anyone?” she
-thought.
-
-Princess Mary vividly pictured to herself the position of Mademoiselle
-Bourienne, whom she had of late kept at a distance, but who yet was
-dependent on her and living in her house. She felt sorry for her
-and held out her hand with a glance of gentle inquiry. Mademoiselle
-Bourienne at once began crying again and kissed that hand, speaking of
-the princess’ sorrow and making herself a partner in it. She said her
-only consolation was the fact that the princess allowed her to share her
-sorrow, that all the old misunderstandings should sink into nothing but
-this great grief; that she felt herself blameless in regard to everyone,
-and that he, from above, saw her affection and gratitude. The princess
-heard her, not heeding her words but occasionally looking up at her and
-listening to the sound of her voice.
-
-“Your position is doubly terrible, dear princess,” said Mademoiselle
-Bourienne after a pause. “I understand that you could not, and cannot,
-think of yourself, but with my love for you I must do so.... Has
-Alpátych been to you? Has he spoken to you of going away?” she asked.
-
-Princess Mary did not answer. She did not understand who was to go or
-where to. “Is it possible to plan or think of anything now? Is it not
-all the same?” she thought, and did not reply.
-
-“You know, chère Marie,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, “that we are in
-danger—are surrounded by the French. It would be dangerous to move now.
-If we go we are almost sure to be taken prisoners, and God knows...”
-
-Princess Mary looked at her companion without understanding what she was
-talking about.
-
-“Oh, if anyone knew how little anything matters to me now,” she said.
-“Of course I would on no account wish to go away from him.... Alpátych
-did say something about going.... Speak to him; I can do nothing,
-nothing, and don’t want to....”
-
-“I’ve spoken to him. He hopes we should be in time to get away tomorrow,
-but I think it would now be better to stay here,” said Mademoiselle
-Bourienne. “Because, you will agree, chère Marie, to fall into the hands
-of the soldiers or of riotous peasants would be terrible.”
-
-Mademoiselle Bourienne took from her reticule a proclamation (not
-printed on ordinary Russian paper) of General Rameau’s, telling people
-not to leave their homes and that the French authorities would afford
-them proper protection. She handed this to the princess.
-
-“I think it would be best to appeal to that general,” she continued,
-“and I am sure that all due respect would be shown you.”
-
-Princess Mary read the paper, and her face began to quiver with stifled
-sobs.
-
-“From whom did you get this?” she asked.
-
-“They probably recognized that I am French, by my name,” replied
-Mademoiselle Bourienne blushing.
-
-Princess Mary, with the paper in her hand, rose from the window and with
-a pale face went out of the room and into what had been Prince Andrew’s
-study.
-
-“Dunyásha, send Alpátych, or Drónushka, or somebody to me!” she said,
-“and tell Mademoiselle Bourienne not to come to me,” she added, hearing
-Mademoiselle Bourienne’s voice. “We must go at once, at once!” she said,
-appalled at the thought of being left in the hands of the French.
-
-“If Prince Andrew heard that I was in the power of the French! That
-I, the daughter of Prince Nicholas Bolkónski, asked General Rameau for
-protection and accepted his favor!” This idea horrified her, made her
-shudder, blush, and feel such a rush of anger and pride as she had never
-experienced before. All that was distressing, and especially all that
-was humiliating, in her position rose vividly to her mind. “They, the
-French, would settle in this house: M. le Général Rameau would occupy
-Prince Andrew’s study and amuse himself by looking through and reading
-his letters and papers. Mademoiselle Bourienne would do the honors of
-Boguchárovo for him. I should be given a small room as a favor, the
-soldiers would violate my father’s newly dug grave to steal his crosses
-and stars, they would tell me of their victories over the Russians, and
-would pretend to sympathize with my sorrow...” thought Princess Mary,
-not thinking her own thoughts but feeling bound to think like her father
-and her brother. For herself she did not care where she remained or what
-happened to her, but she felt herself the representative of her dead
-father and of Prince Andrew. Involuntarily she thought their thoughts
-and felt their feelings. What they would have said and what they would
-have done she felt bound to say and do. She went into Prince Andrew’s
-study, trying to enter completely into his ideas, and considered her
-position.
-
-The demands of life, which had seemed to her annihilated by her father’s
-death, all at once rose before her with a new, previously unknown force
-and took possession of her.
-
-Agitated and flushed she paced the room, sending now for Michael
-Ivánovich and now for Tíkhon or Dron. Dunyásha, the nurse, and the other
-maids could not say in how far Mademoiselle Bourienne’s statement was
-correct. Alpátych was not at home, he had gone to the police. Neither
-could the architect Michael Ivánovich, who on being sent for came in
-with sleepy eyes, tell Princess Mary anything. With just the same smile
-of agreement with which for fifteen years he had been accustomed to
-answer the old prince without expressing views of his own, he now
-replied to Princess Mary, so that nothing definite could be got from his
-answers. The old valet Tíkhon, with sunken, emaciated face that bore the
-stamp of inconsolable grief, replied: “Yes, Princess” to all Princess
-Mary’s questions and hardly refrained from sobbing as he looked at her.
-
-At length Dron, the village Elder, entered the room and with a deep bow
-to Princess Mary came to a halt by the doorpost.
-
-Princess Mary walked up and down the room and stopped in front of him.
-
-“Drónushka,” she said, regarding as a sure friend this Drónushka who
-always used to bring a special kind of gingerbread from his visit to the
-fair at Vyázma every year and smilingly offer it to her, “Drónushka, now
-since our misfortune...” she began, but could not go on.
-
-“We are all in God’s hands,” said he, with a sigh.
-
-They were silent for a while.
-
-“Drónushka, Alpátych has gone off somewhere and I have no one to turn
-to. Is it true, as they tell me, that I can’t even go away?”
-
-“Why shouldn’t you go away, your excellency? You can go,” said Dron.
-
-“I was told it would be dangerous because of the enemy. Dear friend, I
-can do nothing. I understand nothing. I have nobody! I want to go away
-tonight or early tomorrow morning.”
-
-Dron paused. He looked askance at Princess Mary and said: “There are no
-horses; I told Yákov Alpátych so.”
-
-“Why are there none?” asked the princess.
-
-“It’s all God’s scourge,” said Dron. “What horses we had have been
-taken for the army or have died—this is such a year! It’s not a case of
-feeding horses—we may die of hunger ourselves! As it is, some go three
-days without eating. We’ve nothing, we’ve been ruined.”
-
-Princess Mary listened attentively to what he told her.
-
-“The peasants are ruined? They have no bread?” she asked.
-
-“They’re dying of hunger,” said Dron. “It’s not a case of carting.”
-
-“But why didn’t you tell me, Drónushka? Isn’t it possible to help them?
-I’ll do all I can....”
-
-To Princess Mary it was strange that now, at a moment when such sorrow
-was filling her soul, there could be rich people and poor, and the rich
-could refrain from helping the poor. She had heard vaguely that there
-was such a thing as “landlord’s corn” which was sometimes given to the
-peasants. She also knew that neither her father nor her brother would
-refuse to help the peasants in need, she only feared to make some
-mistake in speaking about the distribution of the grain she wished to
-give. She was glad such cares presented themselves, enabling her
-without scruple to forget her own grief. She began asking Dron about the
-peasants’ needs and what there was in Boguchárovo that belonged to the
-landlord.
-
-“But we have grain belonging to my brother?” she said.
-
-“The landlord’s grain is all safe,” replied Dron proudly. “Our prince
-did not order it to be sold.”
-
-“Give it to the peasants, let them have all they need; I give you leave
-in my brother’s name,” said she.
-
-Dron made no answer but sighed deeply.
-
-“Give them that corn if there is enough of it. Distribute it all. I
-give this order in my brother’s name; and tell them that what is ours is
-theirs. We do not grudge them anything. Tell them so.”
-
-Dron looked intently at the princess while she was speaking.
-
-“Discharge me, little mother, for God’s sake! Order the keys to be taken
-from me,” said he. “I have served twenty-three years and have done no
-wrong. Discharge me, for God’s sake!”
-
-Princess Mary did not understand what he wanted of her or why he was
-asking to be discharged. She replied that she had never doubted his
-devotion and that she was ready to do anything for him and for the
-peasants.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-An hour later Dunyásha came to tell the princess that Dron had come, and
-all the peasants had assembled at the barn by the princess’ order and
-wished to have word with their mistress.
-
-“But I never told them to come,” said Princess Mary. “I only told Dron
-to let them have the grain.”
-
-“Only, for God’s sake, Princess dear, have them sent away and don’t go
-out to them. It’s all a trick,” said Dunyásha, “and when Yákov Alpátych
-returns let us get away... and please don’t...”
-
-“What is a trick?” asked Princess Mary in surprise.
-
-“I know it is, only listen to me for God’s sake! Ask nurse too. They say
-they don’t agree to leave Boguchárovo as you ordered.”
-
-“You’re making some mistake. I never ordered them to go away,” said
-Princess Mary. “Call Drónushka.”
-
-Dron came and confirmed Dunyásha’s words; the peasants had come by the
-princess’ order.
-
-“But I never sent for them,” declared the princess. “You must have given
-my message wrong. I only said that you were to give them the grain.”
-
-Dron only sighed in reply.
-
-“If you order it they will go away,” said he.
-
-“No, no. I’ll go out to them,” said Princess Mary, and in spite of
-the nurse’s and Dunyásha’s protests she went out into the porch; Dron,
-Dunyásha, the nurse, and Michael Ivánovich following her.
-
-“They probably think I am offering them the grain to bribe them to
-remain here, while I myself go away leaving them to the mercy of the
-French,” thought Princess Mary. “I will offer them monthly rations and
-housing at our Moscow estate. I am sure Andrew would do even more in
-my place,” she thought as she went out in the twilight toward the crowd
-standing on the pasture by the barn.
-
-The men crowded closer together, stirred, and rapidly took off their
-hats. Princess Mary lowered her eyes and, tripping over her skirt, came
-close up to them. So many different eyes, old and young, were fixed
-on her, and there were so many different faces, that she could not
-distinguish any of them and, feeling that she must speak to them all
-at once, did not know how to do it. But again the sense that she
-represented her father and her brother gave her courage, and she boldly
-began her speech.
-
-“I am very glad you have come,” she said without raising her eyes, and
-feeling her heart beating quickly and violently. “Drónushka tells me
-that the war has ruined you. That is our common misfortune, and I
-shall grudge nothing to help you. I am myself going away because it
-is dangerous here... the enemy is near... because... I am giving you
-everything, my friends, and I beg you to take everything, all our grain,
-so that you may not suffer want! And if you have been told that I am
-giving you the grain to keep you here—that is not true. On the contrary,
-I ask you to go with all your belongings to our estate near Moscow, and
-I promise you I will see to it that there you shall want for nothing.
-You shall be given food and lodging.”
-
-The princess stopped. Sighs were the only sound heard in the crowd.
-
-“I am not doing this on my own account,” she continued, “I do it in the
-name of my dead father, who was a good master to you, and of my brother
-and his son.”
-
-Again she paused. No one broke the silence.
-
-“Ours is a common misfortune and we will share it together. All that is
-mine is yours,” she concluded, scanning the faces before her.
-
-All eyes were gazing at her with one and the same expression. She
-could not fathom whether it was curiosity, devotion, gratitude, or
-apprehension and distrust—but the expression on all the faces was
-identical.
-
-“We are all very thankful for your bounty, but it won’t do for us to
-take the landlord’s grain,” said a voice at the back of the crowd.
-
-“But why not?” asked the princess.
-
-No one replied and Princess Mary, looking round at the crowd, found that
-every eye she met now was immediately dropped.
-
-“But why don’t you want to take it?” she asked again.
-
-No one answered.
-
-The silence began to oppress the princess and she tried to catch
-someone’s eye.
-
-“Why don’t you speak?” she inquired of a very old man who stood just
-in front of her leaning on his stick. “If you think something more is
-wanted, tell me! I will do anything,” said she, catching his eye.
-
-But as if this angered him, he bent his head quite low and muttered:
-
-“Why should we agree? We don’t want the grain.”
-
-“Why should we give up everything? We don’t agree. Don’t agree.... We
-are sorry for you, but we’re not willing. Go away yourself, alone...”
-came from various sides of the crowd.
-
-And again all the faces in that crowd bore an identical expression,
-though now it was certainly not an expression of curiosity or gratitude,
-but of angry resolve.
-
-“But you can’t have understood me,” said Princess Mary with a sad smile.
-“Why don’t you want to go? I promise to house and feed you, while here
-the enemy would ruin you....”
-
-But her voice was drowned by the voices of the crowd.
-
-“We’re not willing. Let them ruin us! We won’t take your grain. We don’t
-agree.”
-
-Again Princess Mary tried to catch someone’s eye, but not a single eye
-in the crowd was turned to her; evidently they were all trying to avoid
-her look. She felt strange and awkward.
-
-“Oh yes, an artful tale! Follow her into slavery! Pull down your houses
-and go into bondage! I dare say! ‘I’ll give you grain, indeed!’ she
-says,” voices in the crowd were heard saying.
-
-With drooping head Princess Mary left the crowd and went back to the
-house. Having repeated her order to Dron to have horses ready for her
-departure next morning, she went to her room and remained alone with her
-own thoughts.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open window of her
-room hearing the sound of the peasants’ voices that reached her from
-the village, but it was not of them she was thinking. She felt that she
-could not understand them however much she might think about them. She
-thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which, after the break caused
-by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to the past. Now she
-could remember it and weep or pray.
-
-After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh. Toward
-midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full moon began
-to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist began to
-rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.
-
-Pictures of the near past—her father’s illness and last moments—rose
-one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now lingered
-over these images, repelling with horror only the last one, the
-picture of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate even in
-imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And these pictures
-presented themselves to her so clearly and in such detail that they
-seemed now present, now past, and now future.
-
-She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first stroke and was
-being dragged along by his armpits through the garden at Bald Hills,
-muttering something with his helpless tongue, twitching his gray
-eyebrows and looking uneasily and timidly at her.
-
-“Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day he died,” she
-thought. “He had always thought what he said then.” And she recalled in
-all its detail the night at Bald Hills before he had the last stroke,
-when with a foreboding of disaster she had remained at home against his
-will. She had not slept and had stolen downstairs on tiptoe, and going
-to the door of the conservatory where he slept that night had listened
-at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he was saying something to
-Tíkhon, speaking of the Crimea and its warm nights and of the Empress.
-Evidently he had wanted to talk. “And why didn’t he call me? Why didn’t
-he let me be there instead of Tíkhon?” Princess Mary had thought and
-thought again now. “Now he will never tell anyone what he had in his
-soul. Never will that moment return for him or for me when he might have
-said all he longed to say, and not Tíkhon but I might have heard and
-understood him. Why didn’t I enter the room?” she thought. “Perhaps he
-would then have said to me what he said the day he died. While talking
-to Tíkhon he asked about me twice. He wanted to see me, and I was
-standing close by, outside the door. It was sad and painful for him
-to talk to Tíkhon who did not understand him. I remember how he began
-speaking to him about Lise as if she were alive—he had forgotten she
-was dead—and Tíkhon reminded him that she was no more, and he shouted,
-‘Fool!’ He was greatly depressed. From behind the door I heard how he
-lay down on his bed groaning and loudly exclaimed, ‘My God!’ Why didn’t
-I go in then? What could he have done to me? What could I have lost? And
-perhaps he would then have been comforted and would have said that word
-to me.” And Princess Mary uttered aloud the caressing word he had said
-to her on the day of his death. “Dear-est!” she repeated, and began
-sobbing, with tears that relieved her soul. She now saw his face before
-her. And not the face she had known ever since she could remember and
-had always seen at a distance, but the timid, feeble face she had seen
-for the first time quite closely, with all its wrinkles and details,
-when she stooped near to his mouth to catch what he said.
-
-“Dear-est!” she repeated again.
-
-“What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What is he thinking
-now?” This question suddenly presented itself to her, and in answer she
-saw him before her with the expression that was on his face as he lay
-in his coffin with his chin bound up with a white handkerchief. And the
-horror that had seized her when she touched him and convinced herself
-that that was not he, but something mysterious and horrible, seized her
-again. She tried to think of something else and to pray, but could do
-neither. With wide-open eyes she gazed at the moonlight and the shadows,
-expecting every moment to see his dead face, and she felt that the
-silence brooding over the house and within it held her fast.
-
-“Dunyásha,” she whispered. “Dunyásha!” she screamed wildly, and tearing
-herself out of this silence she ran to the servants’ quarters to meet
-her old nurse and the maidservants who came running toward her.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-On the seventeenth of August Rostóv and Ilyín, accompanied by Lavrúshka
-who had just returned from captivity and by an hussar orderly, left
-their quarters at Yankóvo, ten miles from Boguchárovo, and went for a
-ride—to try a new horse Ilyín had bought and to find out whether there
-was any hay to be had in the villages.
-
-For the last three days Boguchárovo had lain between the two hostile
-armies, so that it was as easy for the Russian rearguard to get to it as
-for the French vanguard; Rostóv, as a careful squadron commander, wished
-to take such provisions as remained at Boguchárovo before the French
-could get them.
-
-Rostóv and Ilyín were in the merriest of moods. On the way to
-Boguchárovo, a princely estate with a dwelling house and farm where
-they hoped to find many domestic serfs and pretty girls, they questioned
-Lavrúshka about Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and raced one
-another to try Ilyín’s horse.
-
-Rostóv had no idea that the village he was entering was the property of
-that very Bolkónski who had been engaged to his sister.
-
-Rostóv and Ilyín gave rein to their horses for a last race along the
-incline before reaching Boguchárovo, and Rostóv, outstripping Ilyín, was
-the first to gallop into the village street.
-
-“You’re first!” cried Ilyín, flushed.
-
-“Yes, always first both on the grassland and here,” answered Rostóv,
-stroking his heated Donéts horse.
-
-“And I’d have won on my Frenchy, your excellency,” said Lavrúshka
-from behind, alluding to his shabby cart horse, “only I didn’t wish to
-mortify you.”
-
-They rode at a footpace to the barn, where a large crowd of peasants was
-standing.
-
-Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the new arrivals
-without doffing their caps. Two tall old peasants with wrinkled faces
-and scanty beards emerged from the tavern, smiling, staggering, and
-singing some incoherent song, and approached the officers.
-
-“Fine fellows!” said Rostóv laughing. “Is there any hay here?”
-
-“And how like one another,” said Ilyín.
-
-“A mo-o-st me-r-r-y co-o-m-pa...!” sang one of the peasants with a
-blissful smile.
-
-One of the men came out of the crowd and went up to Rostóv.
-
-“Who do you belong to?” he asked.
-
-“The French,” replied Ilyín jestingly, “and here is Napoleon
-himself”—and he pointed to Lavrúshka.
-
-“Then you are Russians?” the peasant asked again.
-
-“And is there a large force of you here?” said another, a short man,
-coming up.
-
-“Very large,” answered Rostóv. “But why have you collected here?” he
-added. “Is it a holiday?”
-
-“The old men have met to talk over the business of the commune,” replied
-the peasant, moving away.
-
-At that moment, on the road leading from the big house, two women and a
-man in a white hat were seen coming toward the officers.
-
-“The one in pink is mine, so keep off!” said Ilyín on seeing Dunyásha
-running resolutely toward him.
-
-“She’ll be ours!” said Lavrúshka to Ilyín, winking.
-
-“What do you want, my pretty?” said Ilyín with a smile.
-
-“The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and your name.”
-
-“This is Count Rostóv, squadron commander, and I am your humble
-servant.”
-
-“Co-o-om-pa-ny!” roared the tipsy peasant with a beatific smile as
-he looked at Ilyín talking to the girl. Following Dunyásha, Alpátych
-advanced to Rostóv, having bared his head while still at a distance.
-
-“May I make bold to trouble your honor?” said he respectfully, but with
-a shade of contempt for the youthfulness of this officer and with a hand
-thrust into his bosom. “My mistress, daughter of General in Chief Prince
-Nicholas Bolkónski who died on the fifteenth of this month, finding
-herself in difficulties owing to the boorishness of these people”—he
-pointed to the peasants—“asks you to come up to the house.... Won’t
-you, please, ride on a little farther,” said Alpátych with a melancholy
-smile, “as it is not convenient in the presence of...?” He pointed to
-the two peasants who kept as close to him as horseflies to a horse.
-
-“Ah!... Alpátych... Ah, Yákov Alpátych... Grand! Forgive us for Christ’s
-sake, eh?” said the peasants, smiling joyfully at him.
-
-Rostóv looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled.
-
-“Or perhaps they amuse your honor?” remarked Alpátych with a staid air,
-as he pointed at the old men with his free hand.
-
-“No, there’s not much to be amused at here,” said Rostóv, and rode on a
-little way. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
-
-“I make bold to inform your honor that the rude peasants here don’t
-wish to let the mistress leave the estate, and threaten to unharness her
-horses, so that though everything has been packed up since morning, her
-excellency cannot get away.”
-
-“Impossible!” exclaimed Rostóv.
-
-“I have the honor to report to you the actual truth,” said Alpátych.
-
-Rostóv dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and followed Alpátych
-to the house, questioning him as to the state of affairs. It appeared
-that the princess’ offer of corn to the peasants the previous day, and
-her talk with Dron and at the meeting, had actually had so bad an effect
-that Dron had finally given up the keys and joined the peasants and had
-not appeared when Alpátych sent for him; and that in the morning when
-the princess gave orders to harness for her journey, the peasants had
-come in a large crowd to the barn and sent word that they would not let
-her leave the village: that there was an order not to move, and that
-they would unharness the horses. Alpátych had gone out to admonish them,
-but was told (it was chiefly Karp who did the talking, Dron not showing
-himself in the crowd) that they could not let the princess go, that
-there was an order to the contrary, but that if she stayed they would
-serve her as before and obey her in everything.
-
-At the moment when Rostóv and Ilyín were galloping along the road,
-Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alpátych, her nurse, and the
-maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the
-cavalrymen were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran
-away, and the women in the house began to wail.
-
-“Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!” exclaimed deeply moved voices as
-Rostóv passed through the anteroom.
-
-Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large sitting
-room, when Rostóv was shown in. She could not grasp who he was and why
-he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his Russian
-face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered recognized him as a
-man of her own class, she glanced at him with her deep radiant look and
-began speaking in a voice that faltered and trembled with emotion. This
-meeting immediately struck Rostóv as a romantic event. “A helpless girl
-overwhelmed with grief, left to the mercy of coarse, rioting peasants!
-And what a strange fate sent me here! What gentleness and nobility there
-are in her features and expression!” thought he as he looked at her and
-listened to her timid story.
-
-When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day after her
-father’s funeral, her voice trembled. She turned away, and then, as if
-fearing he might take her words as meant to move him to pity, looked at
-him with an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There were tears in Rostóv’s
-eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced gratefully at him with that
-radiant look which caused the plainness of her face to be forgotten.
-
-“I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride here
-and am able to show my readiness to serve you,” said Rostóv, rising. “Go
-when you please, and I give you my word of honor that no one shall dare
-to cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act as your escort.”
-And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal blood, he moved toward
-the door.
-
-Rostóv’s deferential tone seemed to indicate that though he would
-consider himself happy to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to
-take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her.
-
-Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy.
-
-“I am very, very grateful to you,” she said in French, “but I hope it
-was all a misunderstanding and that no one is to blame for it.” She
-suddenly began to cry.
-
-“Excuse me!” she said.
-
-Rostóv, knitting his brows, left the room with another low bow.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-“Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend—my pink one is delicious; her name is
-Dunyásha....”
-
-But on glancing at Rostóv’s face Ilyín stopped short. He saw that his
-hero and commander was following quite a different train of thought.
-
-Rostóv glanced angrily at Ilyín and without replying strode off with
-rapid steps to the village.
-
-“I’ll show them; I’ll give it to them, the brigands!” said he to
-himself.
-
-Alpátych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run, kept up with
-him with difficulty.
-
-“What decision have you been pleased to come to?” said he.
-
-Rostóv stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly turned on
-Alpátych.
-
-“Decision? What decision? Old dotard!...” cried he. “What have you been
-about? Eh? The peasants are rioting, and you can’t manage them? You’re
-a traitor yourself! I know you. I’ll flay you all alive!...” And as if
-afraid of wasting his store of anger, he left Alpátych and went rapidly
-forward. Alpátych, mastering his offended feelings, kept pace with
-Rostóv at a gliding gait and continued to impart his views. He said
-the peasants were obdurate and that at the present moment it would be
-imprudent to “overresist” them without an armed force, and would it not
-be better first to send for the military?
-
-“I’ll give them armed force... I’ll ‘overresist’ them!” uttered Rostóv
-meaninglessly, breathless with irrational animal fury and the need to
-vent it.
-
-Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with quick,
-resolute steps toward the crowd. And the nearer he drew to it the more
-Alpátych felt that this unreasonable action might produce good results.
-The peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed when they saw
-Rostóv’s rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face.
-
-After the hussars had come to the village and Rostóv had gone to see the
-princess, a certain confusion and dissension had arisen among the crowd.
-Some of the peasants said that these new arrivals were Russians and
-might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained. Dron was of
-this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it Karp and others attacked
-their ex-Elder.
-
-“How many years have you been fattening on the commune?” Karp shouted at
-him. “It’s all one to you! You’ll dig up your pot of money and take
-it away with you.... What does it matter to you whether our homes are
-ruined or not?”
-
-“We’ve been told to keep order, and that no one is to leave their homes
-or take away a single grain, and that’s all about it!” cried another.
-
-“It was your son’s turn to be conscripted, but no fear! You begrudged
-your lump of a son,” a little old man suddenly began attacking Dron—“and
-so they took my Vánka to be shaved for a soldier! But we all have to
-die.”
-
-“To be sure, we all have to die. I’m not against the commune,” said
-Dron.
-
-“That’s it—not against it! You’ve filled your belly....”
-
-The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostóv, followed by
-Ilyín, Lavrúshka, and Alpátych, came up to the crowd, Karp, thrusting
-his fingers into his belt and smiling a little, walked to the front.
-Dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the crowd drew closer
-together.
-
-“Who is your Elder here? Hey?” shouted Rostóv, coming up to the crowd
-with quick steps.
-
-“The Elder? What do you want with him?...” asked Karp.
-
-But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap flew off and a
-fierce blow jerked his head to one side.
-
-“Caps off, traitors!” shouted Rostóv in a wrathful voice. “Where’s the
-Elder?” he cried furiously.
-
-“The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakhárych, you!” meek and
-flustered voices here and there were heard calling and caps began to
-come off their heads.
-
-“We don’t riot, we’re following the orders,” declared Karp, and at that
-moment several voices began speaking together.
-
-“It’s as the old men have decided—there’s too many of you giving
-orders.”
-
-“Arguing? Mutiny!... Brigands! Traitors!” cried Rostóv unmeaningly in a
-voice not his own, gripping Karp by the collar. “Bind him, bind him!” he
-shouted, though there was no one to bind him but Lavrúshka and Alpátych.
-
-Lavrúshka, however, ran up to Karp and seized him by the arms from
-behind.
-
-“Shall I call up our men from beyond the hill?” he called out.
-
-Alpátych turned to the peasants and ordered two of them by name to come
-and bind Karp. The men obediently came out of the crowd and began taking
-off their belts.
-
-“Where’s the Elder?” demanded Rostóv in a loud voice.
-
-With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the crowd.
-
-“Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrúshka!” shouted Rostóv, as if that
-order, too, could not possibly meet with any opposition.
-
-And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron, who took off his own
-belt and handed it to them, as if to aid them.
-
-“And you all listen to me!” said Rostóv to the peasants. “Be off to your
-houses at once, and don’t let one of your voices be heard!”
-
-“Why, we’ve not done any harm! We did it just out of foolishness. It’s
-all nonsense.... I said then that it was not in order,” voices were
-heard bickering with one another.
-
-“There! What did I say?” said Alpátych, coming into his own again. “It’s
-wrong, lads!”
-
-“All our stupidity, Yákov Alpátych,” came the answers, and the crowd
-began at once to disperse through the village.
-
-The two bound men were led off to the master’s house. The two drunken
-peasants followed them.
-
-“Aye, when I look at you!...” said one of them to Karp.
-
-“How can one talk to the masters like that? What were you thinking of,
-you fool?” added the other—“A real fool!”
-
-Two hours later the carts were standing in the courtyard of the
-Boguchárovo house. The peasants were briskly carrying out the
-proprietor’s goods and packing them on the carts, and Dron, liberated at
-Princess Mary’s wish from the cupboard where he had been confined, was
-standing in the yard directing the men.
-
-“Don’t put it in so carelessly,” said one of the peasants, a man with a
-round smiling face, taking a casket from a housemaid. “You know it has
-cost money! How can you chuck it in like that or shove it under the cord
-where it’ll get rubbed? I don’t like that way of doing things. Let it
-all be done properly, according to rule. Look here, put it under the
-bast matting and cover it with hay—that’s the way!”
-
-“Eh, books, books!” said another peasant, bringing out Prince Andrew’s
-library cupboards. “Don’t catch up against it! It’s heavy, lads—solid
-books.”
-
-“Yes, they worked all day and didn’t play!” remarked the tall,
-round-faced peasant gravely, pointing with a significant wink at the
-dictionaries that were on the top.
-
-
-Unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess, Rostóv did not go back to
-the house but remained in the village awaiting her departure. When her
-carriage drove out of the house, he mounted and accompanied her eight
-miles from Boguchárovo to where the road was occupied by our troops. At
-the inn at Yankóvo he respectfully took leave of her, for the first time
-permitting himself to kiss her hand.
-
-“How can you speak so!” he blushingly replied to Princess Mary’s
-expressions of gratitude for her deliverance, as she termed what had
-occurred. “Any police officer would have done as much! If we had had
-only peasants to fight, we should not have let the enemy come so far,”
-said he with a sense of shame and wishing to change the subject. “I
-am only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance.
-Good-by, Princess. I wish you happiness and consolation and hope to meet
-you again in happier circumstances. If you don’t want to make me blush,
-please don’t thank me!”
-
-But the princess, if she did not again thank him in words, thanked
-him with the whole expression of her face, radiant with gratitude and
-tenderness. She could not believe that there was nothing to thank him
-for. On the contrary, it seemed to her certain that had he not been
-there she would have perished at the hands of the mutineers and of the
-French, and that he had exposed himself to terrible and obvious danger
-to save her, and even more certain was it that he was a man of lofty and
-noble soul, able to understand her position and her sorrow. His kind,
-honest eyes, with the tears rising in them when she herself had begun to
-cry as she spoke of her loss, did not leave her memory.
-
-When she had taken leave of him and remained alone she suddenly felt
-her eyes filling with tears, and then not for the first time the strange
-question presented itself to her: did she love him?
-
-On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess’ position was not
-a cheerful one, Dunyásha, who went with her in the carriage, more than
-once noticed that her mistress leaned out of the window and smiled at
-something with an expression of mingled joy and sorrow.
-
-“Well, supposing I do love him?” thought Princess Mary.
-
-Ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that she had fallen in
-love with a man who would perhaps never love her, she comforted herself
-with the thought that no one would ever know it and that she would not
-be to blame if, without ever speaking of it to anyone, she continued to
-the end of her life to love the man with whom she had fallen in love for
-the first and last time in her life.
-
-Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy, and his words,
-happiness did not appear impossible to her. It was at those moments that
-Dunyásha noticed her smiling as she looked out of the carriage window.
-
-“Was it not fate that brought him to Boguchárovo, and at that very
-moment?” thought Princess Mary. “And that caused his sister to refuse my
-brother?” And in all this Princess Mary saw the hand of Providence.
-
-The impression the princess made on Rostóv was a very agreeable one. To
-remember her gave him pleasure, and when his comrades, hearing of his
-adventure at Boguchárovo, rallied him on having gone to look for hay
-and having picked up one of the wealthiest heiresses in Russia, he grew
-angry. It made him angry just because the idea of marrying the gentle
-Princess Mary, who was attractive to him and had an enormous fortune,
-had against his will more than once entered his head. For himself
-personally Nicholas could not wish for a better wife: by marrying her
-he would make the countess his mother happy, would be able to put his
-father’s affairs in order, and would even—he felt it—ensure Princess
-Mary’s happiness.
-
-But Sónya? And his plighted word? That was why Rostóv grew angry when he
-was rallied about Princess Bolkónskaya.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-On receiving command of the armies Kutúzov remembered Prince Andrew and
-sent an order for him to report at headquarters.
-
-Prince Andrew arrived at Tsárevo-Zaymíshche on the very day and at the
-very hour that Kutúzov was reviewing the troops for the first time. He
-stopped in the village at the priest’s house in front of which stood the
-commander in chief’s carriage, and he sat down on the bench at the gate
-awaiting his Serene Highness, as everyone now called Kutúzov. From the
-field beyond the village came now sounds of regimental music and now the
-roar of many voices shouting “Hurrah!” to the new commander in chief.
-Two orderlies, a courier and a major-domo, stood near by, some ten paces
-from Prince Andrew, availing themselves of Kutúzov’s absence and of the
-fine weather. A short, swarthy lieutenant colonel of hussars with thick
-mustaches and whiskers rode up to the gate and, glancing at Prince
-Andrew, inquired whether his Serene Highness was putting up there and
-whether he would soon be back.
-
-Prince Andrew replied that he was not on his Serene Highness’ staff
-but was himself a new arrival. The lieutenant colonel turned to a smart
-orderly, who, with the peculiar contempt with which a commander in
-chief’s orderly speaks to officers, replied:
-
-“What? His Serene Highness? I expect he’ll be here soon. What do you
-want?”
-
-The lieutenant colonel of hussars smiled beneath his mustache at the
-orderly’s tone, dismounted, gave his horse to a dispatch runner, and
-approached Bolkónski with a slight bow. Bolkónski made room for him on
-the bench and the lieutenant colonel sat down beside him.
-
-“You’re also waiting for the commander in chief?” said he. “They say he
-weceives evewyone, thank God!... It’s awful with those sausage eaters!
-Ermólov had weason to ask to be pwomoted to be a German! Now p’waps
-Wussians will get a look in. As it was, devil only knows what was
-happening. We kept wetweating and wetweating. Did you take part in the
-campaign?” he asked.
-
-“I had the pleasure,” replied Prince Andrew, “not only of taking part in
-the retreat but of losing in that retreat all I held dear—not to mention
-the estate and home of my birth—my father, who died of grief. I belong
-to the province of Smolénsk.”
-
-“Ah? You’re Pwince Bolkónski? Vewy glad to make your acquaintance! I’m
-Lieutenant Colonel Denísov, better known as ‘Váska,’” said Denísov,
-pressing Prince Andrew’s hand and looking into his face with a
-particularly kindly attention. “Yes, I heard,” said he sympathetically,
-and after a short pause added: “Yes, it’s Scythian warfare. It’s all
-vewy well—only not for those who get it in the neck. So you are Pwince
-Andwew Bolkónski?” He swayed his head. “Vewy pleased, Pwince, to make
-your acquaintance!” he repeated again, smiling sadly, and he again
-pressed Prince Andrew’s hand.
-
-Prince Andrew knew Denísov from what Natásha had told him of her first
-suitor. This memory carried him sadly and sweetly back to those painful
-feelings of which he had not thought lately, but which still found
-place in his soul. Of late he had received so many new and very serious
-impressions—such as the retreat from Smolénsk, his visit to Bald Hills,
-and the recent news of his father’s death—and had experienced so many
-emotions, that for a long time past those memories had not entered his
-mind, and now that they did, they did not act on him with nearly their
-former strength. For Denísov, too, the memories awakened by the name of
-Bolkónski belonged to a distant, romantic past, when after supper and
-after Natásha’s singing he had proposed to a little girl of fifteen
-without realizing what he was doing. He smiled at the recollection of
-that time and of his love for Natásha, and passed at once to what now
-interested him passionately and exclusively. This was a plan of campaign
-he had devised while serving at the outposts during the retreat. He had
-proposed that plan to Barclay de Tolly and now wished to propose it
-to Kutúzov. The plan was based on the fact that the French line
-of operation was too extended, and it proposed that instead of, or
-concurrently with, action on the front to bar the advance of the French,
-we should attack their line of communication. He began explaining his
-plan to Prince Andrew.
-
-“They can’t hold all that line. It’s impossible. I will undertake to
-bweak thwough. Give me five hundwed men and I will bweak the line,
-that’s certain! There’s only one way—guewilla warfare!”
-
-Denísov rose and began gesticulating as he explained his plan to
-Bolkónski. In the midst of his explanation shouts were heard from the
-army, growing more incoherent and more diffused, mingling with music
-and songs and coming from the field where the review was held. Sounds of
-hoofs and shouts were nearing the village.
-
-“He’s coming! He’s coming!” shouted a Cossack standing at the gate.
-
-Bolkónski and Denísov moved to the gate, at which a knot of soldiers
-(a guard of honor) was standing, and they saw Kutúzov coming down the
-street mounted on a rather small sorrel horse. A huge suite of generals
-rode behind him. Barclay was riding almost beside him, and a crowd of
-officers ran after and around them shouting, “Hurrah!”
-
-His adjutants galloped into the yard before him. Kutúzov was impatiently
-urging on his horse, which ambled smoothly under his weight, and he
-raised his hand to his white Horse Guard’s cap with a red band and no
-peak, nodding his head continually. When he came up to the guard of
-honor, a fine set of Grenadiers mostly wearing decorations, who were
-giving him the salute, he looked at them silently and attentively for
-nearly a minute with the steady gaze of a commander and then turned to
-the crowd of generals and officers surrounding him. Suddenly his face
-assumed a subtle expression, he shrugged his shoulders with an air of
-perplexity.
-
-“And with such fine fellows to retreat and retreat! Well, good-by,
-General,” he added, and rode into the yard past Prince Andrew and
-Denísov.
-
-“Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” shouted those behind him.
-
-Since Prince Andrew had last seen him Kutúzov had grown still more
-corpulent, flaccid, and fat. But the bleached eyeball, the scar, and the
-familiar weariness of his expression were still the same. He was wearing
-the white Horse Guard’s cap and a military overcoat with a whip hanging
-over his shoulder by a thin strap. He sat heavily and swayed limply on
-his brisk little horse.
-
-“Whew... whew... whew!” he whistled just audibly as he rode into the
-yard. His face expressed the relief of relaxed strain felt by a man who
-means to rest after a ceremony. He drew his left foot out of the stirrup
-and, lurching with his whole body and puckering his face with the
-effort, raised it with difficulty onto the saddle, leaned on his knee,
-groaned, and slipped down into the arms of the Cossacks and adjutants
-who stood ready to assist him.
-
-He pulled himself together, looked round, screwing up his eyes, glanced
-at Prince Andrew, and, evidently not recognizing him, moved with his
-waddling gait to the porch. “Whew... whew... whew!” he whistled, and
-again glanced at Prince Andrew. As often occurs with old men, it was
-only after some seconds that the impression produced by Prince Andrew’s
-face linked itself up with Kutúzov’s remembrance of his personality.
-
-“Ah, how do you do, my dear prince? How do you do, my dear boy? Come
-along...” said he, glancing wearily round, and he stepped onto the porch
-which creaked under his weight.
-
-He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a bench in the porch.
-
-“And how’s your father?”
-
-“I received news of his death, yesterday,” replied Prince Andrew
-abruptly.
-
-Kutúzov looked at him with eyes wide open with dismay and then took off
-his cap and crossed himself:
-
-“May the kingdom of Heaven be his! God’s will be done to us all!” He
-sighed deeply, his whole chest heaving, and was silent for a while. “I
-loved him and respected him, and sympathize with you with all my heart.”
-
-He embraced Prince Andrew, pressing him to his fat breast, and for some
-time did not let him go. When he released him Prince Andrew saw that
-Kutúzov’s flabby lips were trembling and that tears were in his eyes. He
-sighed and pressed on the bench with both hands to raise himself.
-
-“Come! Come with me, we’ll have a talk,” said he.
-
-But at that moment Denísov, no more intimidated by his superiors than by
-the enemy, came with jingling spurs up the steps of the porch, despite
-the angry whispers of the adjutants who tried to stop him. Kutúzov, his
-hands still pressed on the seat, glanced at him glumly. Denísov, having
-given his name, announced that he had to communicate to his Serene
-Highness a matter of great importance for their country’s welfare.
-Kutúzov looked wearily at him and, lifting his hands with a gesture of
-annoyance, folded them across his stomach, repeating the words: “For our
-country’s welfare? Well, what is it? Speak!” Denísov blushed like a
-girl (it was strange to see the color rise in that shaggy, bibulous,
-time-worn face) and boldly began to expound his plan of cutting the
-enemy’s lines of communication between Smolénsk and Vyázma. Denísov came
-from those parts and knew the country well. His plan seemed decidedly
-a good one, especially from the strength of conviction with which he
-spoke. Kutúzov looked down at his own legs, occasionally glancing at the
-door of the adjoining hut as if expecting something unpleasant to emerge
-from it. And from that hut, while Denísov was speaking, a general with a
-portfolio under his arm really did appear.
-
-“What?” said Kutúzov, in the midst of Denísov’s explanations, “are you
-ready so soon?”
-
-“Ready, your Serene Highness,” replied the general.
-
-Kutúzov swayed his head, as much as to say: “How is one man to deal with
-it all?” and again listened to Denísov.
-
-“I give my word of honor as a Wussian officer,” said Denísov, “that I
-can bweak Napoleon’s line of communication!”
-
-“What relation are you to Intendant General Kiríl Andréevich Denísov?”
-asked Kutúzov, interrupting him.
-
-“He is my uncle, your Sewene Highness.”
-
-“Ah, we were friends,” said Kutúzov cheerfully. “All right, all right,
-friend, stay here at the staff and tomorrow we’ll have a talk.”
-
-With a nod to Denísov he turned away and put out his hand for the papers
-Konovnítsyn had brought him.
-
-“Would not your Serene Highness like to come inside?” said the general
-on duty in a discontented voice, “the plans must be examined and several
-papers have to be signed.”
-
-An adjutant came out and announced that everything was in readiness
-within. But Kutúzov evidently did not wish to enter that room till he
-was disengaged. He made a grimace....
-
-“No, tell them to bring a small table out here, my dear boy. I’ll look
-at them here,” said he. “Don’t go away,” he added, turning to Prince
-Andrew, who remained in the porch and listened to the general’s report.
-
-While this was being given, Prince Andrew heard the whisper of a woman’s
-voice and the rustle of a silk dress behind the door. Several times on
-glancing that way he noticed behind that door a plump, rosy, handsome
-woman in a pink dress with a lilac silk kerchief on her head, holding
-a dish and evidently awaiting the entrance of the commander in chief.
-Kutúzov’s adjutant whispered to Prince Andrew that this was the wife of
-the priest whose home it was, and that she intended to offer his Serene
-Highness bread and salt. “Her husband has welcomed his Serene Highness
-with the cross at the church, and she intends to welcome him in the
-house.... She’s very pretty,” added the adjutant with a smile. At
-those words Kutúzov looked round. He was listening to the general’s
-report—which consisted chiefly of a criticism of the position at
-Tsárevo-Zaymíshche—as he had listened to Denísov, and seven years
-previously had listened to the discussion at the Austerlitz council of
-war. He evidently listened only because he had ears which, though there
-was a piece of tow in one of them, could not help hearing; but it
-was evident that nothing the general could say would surprise or even
-interest him, that he knew all that would be said beforehand, and heard
-it all only because he had to, as one has to listen to the chanting of
-a service of prayer. All that Denísov had said was clever and to the
-point. What the general was saying was even more clever and to
-the point, but it was evident that Kutúzov despised knowledge
-and cleverness, and knew of something else that would decide the
-matter—something independent of cleverness and knowledge. Prince
-Andrew watched the commander in chief’s face attentively, and the only
-expression he could see there was one of boredom, curiosity as to the
-meaning of the feminine whispering behind the door, and a desire to
-observe propriety. It was evident that Kutúzov despised cleverness and
-learning and even the patriotic feeling shown by Denísov, but despised
-them not because of his own intellect, feelings, or knowledge—he did not
-try to display any of these—but because of something else. He despised
-them because of his old age and experience of life. The only instruction
-Kutúzov gave of his own accord during that report referred to looting by
-the Russian troops. At the end of the report the general put before
-him for signature a paper relating to the recovery of payment from army
-commanders for green oats mown down by the soldiers, when landowners
-lodged petitions for compensation.
-
-After hearing the matter, Kutúzov smacked his lips together and shook
-his head.
-
-“Into the stove... into the fire with it! I tell you once for all, my
-dear fellow,” said he, “into the fire with all such things! Let them cut
-the crops and burn wood to their hearts’ content. I don’t order it
-or allow it, but I don’t exact compensation either. One can’t get on
-without it. ‘When wood is chopped the chips will fly.’” He looked at the
-paper again. “Oh, this German precision!” he muttered, shaking his head.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-“Well, that’s all!” said Kutúzov as he signed the last of the documents,
-and rising heavily and smoothing out the folds in his fat white neck he
-moved toward the door with a more cheerful expression.
-
-The priest’s wife, flushing rosy red, caught up the dish she had after
-all not managed to present at the right moment, though she had so long
-been preparing for it, and with a low bow offered it to Kutúzov.
-
-He screwed up his eyes, smiled, lifted her chin with his hand, and said:
-
-“Ah, what a beauty! Thank you, sweetheart!”
-
-He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and put them on the
-dish for her. “Well, my dear, and how are we getting on?” he asked,
-moving to the door of the room assigned to him. The priest’s wife
-smiled, and with dimples in her rosy cheeks followed him into the room.
-The adjutant came out to the porch and asked Prince Andrew to lunch with
-him. Half an hour later Prince Andrew was again called to Kutúzov.
-He found him reclining in an armchair, still in the same unbuttoned
-overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he closed as Prince
-Andrew entered, marking the place with a knife. Prince Andrew saw by the
-cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.
-
-“Well, sit down, sit down here. Let’s have a talk,” said Kutúzov. “It’s
-sad, very sad. But remember, my dear fellow, that I am a father to you,
-a second father....”
-
-Prince Andrew told Kutúzov all he knew of his father’s death, and what
-he had seen at Bald Hills when he passed through it.
-
-“What... what they have brought us to!” Kutúzov suddenly cried in an
-agitated voice, evidently picturing vividly to himself from Prince
-Andrew’s story the condition Russia was in. “But give me time, give me
-time!” he said with a grim look, evidently not wishing to continue this
-agitating conversation, and added: “I sent for you to keep you with me.”
-
-“I thank your Serene Highness, but I fear I am no longer fit for the
-staff,” replied Prince Andrew with a smile which Kutúzov noticed.
-
-Kutúzov glanced inquiringly at him.
-
-“But above all,” added Prince Andrew, “I have grown used to my regiment,
-am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men also like me. I should be
-sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of being with you,
-believe me...”
-
-A shrewd, kindly, yet subtly derisive expression lit up Kutúzov’s podgy
-face. He cut Bolkónski short.
-
-“I am sorry, for I need you. But you’re right, you’re right! It’s not
-here that men are needed. Advisers are always plentiful, but men are
-not. The regiments would not be what they are if the would-be advisers
-served there as you do. I remember you at Austerlitz.... I remember,
-yes, I remember you with the standard!” said Kutúzov, and a flush of
-pleasure suffused Prince Andrew’s face at this recollection.
-
-Taking his hand and drawing him downwards, Kutúzov offered his cheek to
-be kissed, and again Prince Andrew noticed tears in the old man’s eyes.
-Though Prince Andrew knew that Kutúzov’s tears came easily, and that he
-was particularly tender to and considerate of him from a wish to
-show sympathy with his loss, yet this reminder of Austerlitz was both
-pleasant and flattering to him.
-
-“Go your way and God be with you. I know your path is the path of
-honor!” He paused. “I missed you at Bucharest, but I needed someone to
-send.” And changing the subject, Kutúzov began to speak of the Turkish
-war and the peace that had been concluded. “Yes, I have been much
-blamed,” he said, “both for that war and the peace... but everything
-came at the right time. Tout vient à point à celui qui sait attendre. *
-And there were as many advisers there as here...” he went on, returning
-to the subject of “advisers” which evidently occupied him. “Ah, those
-advisers!” said he. “If we had listened to them all we should not have
-made peace with Turkey and should not have been through with that war.
-Everything in haste, but more haste, less speed. Kámenski would have
-been lost if he had not died. He stormed fortresses with thirty thousand
-men. It is not difficult to capture a fortress but it is difficult to
-win a campaign. For that, not storming and attacking but patience and
-time are wanted. Kámenski sent soldiers to Rustchuk, but I only employed
-these two things and took more fortresses than Kámenski and made them
-Turks eat horseflesh!” He swayed his head. “And the French shall too,
-believe me,” he went on, growing warmer and beating his chest, “I’ll
-make them eat horseflesh!” And tears again dimmed his eyes.
-
- * “Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.”
-
-
-“But shan’t we have to accept battle?” remarked Prince Andrew.
-
-“We shall if everybody wants it; it can’t be helped.... But believe
-me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and
-time, they will do it all. But the advisers n’entendent pas de cette
-oreille, voilà le mal. * Some want a thing—others don’t. What’s one to
-do?” he asked, evidently expecting an answer. “Well, what do you want
-us to do?” he repeated and his eye shone with a deep, shrewd look.
-“I’ll tell you what to do,” he continued, as Prince Andrew still did not
-reply: “I will tell you what to do, and what I do. Dans le doute, mon
-cher,” he paused, “abstiens-toi” *(2)—he articulated the French proverb
-deliberately.
-
- * “Don’t see it that way, that’s the trouble.”
-
- * (2) “When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing.”
-
-
-“Well, good-by, my dear fellow; remember that with all my heart I share
-your sorrow, and that for you I am not a Serene Highness, nor a prince,
-nor a commander in chief, but a father! If you want anything come
-straight to me. Good-by, my dear boy.”
-
-Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but before the latter
-had left the room Kutúzov gave a sigh of relief and went on with his
-unfinished novel, Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.
-
-Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why it was, but after that
-interview with Kutúzov he went back to his regiment reassured as to
-the general course of affairs and as to the man to whom it had been
-entrusted. The more he realized the absence of all personal motive in
-that old man—in whom there seemed to remain only the habit of passions,
-and in place of an intellect (grouping events and drawing conclusions)
-only the capacity calmly to contemplate the course of events—the more
-reassured he was that everything would be as it should. “He will not
-bring in any plan of his own. He will not devise or undertake
-anything,” thought Prince Andrew, “but he will hear everything, remember
-everything, and put everything in its place. He will not hinder
-anything useful nor allow anything harmful. He understands that there is
-something stronger and more important than his own will—the inevitable
-course of events, and he can see them and grasp their significance,
-and seeing that significance can refrain from meddling and renounce his
-personal wish directed to something else. And above all,” thought Prince
-Andrew, “one believes in him because he’s Russian, despite the novel
-by Genlis and the French proverbs, and because his voice shook when he
-said: ‘What they have brought us to!’ and had a sob in it when he said
-he would ‘make them eat horseflesh!’”
-
-On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the unanimity and
-general approval were founded with which, despite court influences, the
-popular choice of Kutúzov as commander in chief was received.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on there in its usual
-course, and its course was so very usual that it was difficult to
-remember the recent days of patriotic elation and ardor, hard to believe
-that Russia was really in danger and that the members of the English
-Club were also sons of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice everything
-for it. The one thing that recalled the patriotic fervor everyone had
-displayed during the Emperor’s stay was the call for contributions of
-men and money, a necessity that as soon as the promises had been made
-assumed a legal, official form and became unavoidable.
-
-With the enemy’s approach to Moscow, the Moscovites’ view of their
-situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even
-more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger
-approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices that
-speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a
-man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it;
-the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and
-painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man’s power to
-foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is
-therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to
-think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to
-the first voice, but in society to the second. So it was now with the
-inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people had been as gay in
-Moscow as that year.
-
-Rostopchín’s broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a potman,
-and a Moscow burgher called Karpúshka Chigírin, “who—having been a
-militiaman and having had rather too much at the pub—heard that Napoleon
-wished to come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the French in very bad
-language, came out of the drink shop, and, under the sign of the
-eagle, began to address the assembled people,” were read and discussed,
-together with the latest of Vasíli Lvóvich Púshkin’s bouts rimés.
-
-In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to read these
-broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpúshka jeered at the French,
-saying: “They will swell up with Russian cabbage, burst with our
-buckwheat porridge, and choke themselves with cabbage soup. They are all
-dwarfs and one peasant woman will toss three of them with a hayfork.”
-Others did not like that tone and said it was stupid and vulgar. It was
-said that Rostopchín had expelled all Frenchmen and even all foreigners
-from Moscow, and that there had been some spies and agents of Napoleon
-among them; but this was told chiefly to introduce Rostopchín’s witty
-remark on that occasion. The foreigners were deported to Nízhni by
-boat, and Rostopchín had said to them in French: “Rentrez en vous-mêmes;
-entrez dans la barque, et n’en faites pas une barque de Charon.” * There
-was talk of all the government offices having been already removed from
-Moscow, and to this Shinshín’s witticism was added—that for that alone
-Moscow ought to be grateful to Napoleon. It was said that Mamónov’s
-regiment would cost him eight hundred thousand rubles, and that Bezúkhov
-had spent even more on his, but that the best thing about Bezúkhov’s
-action was that he himself was going to don a uniform and ride at the
-head of his regiment without charging anything for the show.
-
- * “Think it over; get into the barque, and take care not to
- make it a barque of Charon.”
-
-
-“You don’t spare anyone,” said Julie Drubetskáya as she collected
-and pressed together a bunch of raveled lint with her thin, beringed
-fingers.
-
-Julie was preparing to leave Moscow next day and was giving a farewell
-soiree.
-
-“Bezúkhov est ridicule, but he is so kind and good-natured. What
-pleasure is there to be so caustique?”
-
-“A forfeit!” cried a young man in militia uniform whom Julie called “mon
-chevalier,” and who was going with her to Nízhni.
-
-In Julie’s set, as in many other circles in Moscow, it had been agreed
-that they would speak nothing but Russian and that those who made a
-slip and spoke French should pay fines to the Committee of Voluntary
-Contributions.
-
-“Another forfeit for a Gallicism,” said a Russian writer who was
-present. “‘What pleasure is there to be’ is not Russian!”
-
-“You spare no one,” continued Julie to the young man without heeding the
-author’s remark.
-
-“For caustique—I am guilty and will pay, and I am prepared to pay again
-for the pleasure of telling you the truth. For Gallicisms I won’t be
-responsible,” she remarked, turning to the author: “I have neither the
-money nor the time, like Prince Galítsyn, to engage a master to teach me
-Russian!”
-
-“Ah, here he is!” she added. “Quand on... No, no,” she said to the
-militia officer, “you won’t catch me. Speak of the sun and you see its
-rays!” and she smiled amiably at Pierre. “We were just talking of you,”
-she said with the facility in lying natural to a society woman. “We were
-saying that your regiment would be sure to be better than Mamónov’s.”
-
-“Oh, don’t talk to me of my regiment,” replied Pierre, kissing his
-hostess’ hand and taking a seat beside her. “I am so sick of it.”
-
-“You will, of course, command it yourself?” said Julie, directing a sly,
-sarcastic glance toward the militia officer.
-
-The latter in Pierre’s presence had ceased to be caustic, and his face
-expressed perplexity as to what Julie’s smile might mean. In spite of
-his absent-mindedness and good nature, Pierre’s personality immediately
-checked any attempt to ridicule him to his face.
-
-“No,” said Pierre, with a laughing glance at his big, stout body. “I
-should make too good a target for the French, besides I am afraid I
-should hardly be able to climb onto a horse.”
-
-Among those whom Julie’s guests happened to choose to gossip about were
-the Rostóvs.
-
-“I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way,” said Julie. “And he
-is so unreasonable, the count himself I mean. The Razumóvskis wanted
-to buy his house and his estate near Moscow, but it drags on and on. He
-asks too much.”
-
-“No, I think the sale will come off in a few days,” said someone.
-“Though it is madness to buy anything in Moscow now.”
-
-“Why?” asked Julie. “You don’t think Moscow is in danger?”
-
-“Then why are you leaving?”
-
-“I? What a question! I am going because... well, because everyone is
-going: and besides—I am not Joan of Arc or an Amazon.”
-
-“Well, of course, of course! Let me have some more strips of linen.”
-
-“If he manages the business properly he will be able to pay off all his
-debts,” said the militia officer, speaking of Rostóv.
-
-“A kindly old man but not up to much. And why do they stay on so long in
-Moscow? They meant to leave for the country long ago. Natalie is quite
-well again now, isn’t she?” Julie asked Pierre with a knowing smile.
-
-“They are waiting for their younger son,” Pierre replied. “He joined
-Obolénski’s Cossacks and went to Bélaya Tsérkov where the regiment is
-being formed. But now they have had him transferred to my regiment and
-are expecting him every day. The count wanted to leave long ago, but the
-countess won’t on any account leave Moscow till her son returns.”
-
-“I met them the day before yesterday at the Arkhárovs’. Natalie has
-recovered her looks and is brighter. She sang a song. How easily some
-people get over everything!”
-
-“Get over what?” inquired Pierre, looking displeased.
-
-Julie smiled.
-
-“You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in Madame de
-Souza’s novels.”
-
-“What knights? What do you mean?” demanded Pierre, blushing.
-
-“Oh, come, my dear count! C’est la fable de tout Moscou. Je vous admire,
-ma parole d’honneur!” *
-
- * “It is the talk of all Moscow. My word, I admire you!”
-
-
-“Forfeit, forfeit!” cried the militia officer.
-
-“All right, one can’t talk—how tiresome!”
-
-“What is ‘the talk of all Moscow’?” Pierre asked angrily, rising to his
-feet.
-
-“Come now, Count, you know!”
-
-“I don’t know anything about it,” said Pierre.
-
-“I know you were friendly with Natalie, and so... but I was always more
-friendly with Véra—that dear Véra.”
-
-“No, madame!” Pierre continued in a tone of displeasure, “I have not
-taken on myself the role of Natalie Rostóva’s knight at all, and have
-not been to their house for nearly a month. But I cannot understand the
-cruelty...”
-
-“Qui s’excuse s’accuse,” * said Julie, smiling and waving the lint
-triumphantly, and to have the last word she promptly changed the
-subject. “Do you know what I heard today? Poor Mary Bolkónskaya arrived
-in Moscow yesterday. Do you know that she has lost her father?”
-
- * “Who excuses himself, accuses himself.”
-
-
-“Really? Where is she? I should like very much to see her,” said Pierre.
-
-“I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to their estate
-near Moscow either today or tomorrow morning, with her nephew.”
-
-“Well, and how is she?” asked Pierre.
-
-“She is well, but sad. But do you know who rescued her? It is quite a
-romance. Nicholas Rostóv! She was surrounded, and they wanted to kill
-her and had wounded some of her people. He rushed in and saved her....”
-
-“Another romance,” said the militia officer. “Really, this general
-flight has been arranged to get all the old maids married off. Catiche
-is one and Princess Bolkónskaya another.”
-
-“Do you know, I really believe she is un petit peu amoureuse du jeune
-homme.” *
-
- * “A little bit in love with the young man.”
-
-
-“Forfeit, forfeit, forfeit!”
-
-“But how could one say that in Russian?”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-When Pierre returned home he was handed two of Rostopchín’s broadsheets
-that had been brought that day.
-
-The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchín had forbidden
-people to leave Moscow was false; on the contrary he was glad that
-ladies and tradesmen’s wives were leaving the city. “There will be less
-panic and less gossip,” ran the broadsheet “but I will stake my life on
-it that that scoundrel will not enter Moscow.” These words showed Pierre
-clearly for the first time that the French would enter Moscow. The
-second broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at Vyázma, that
-Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that as many of the
-inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed, weapons were ready for them
-at the arsenal: sabers, pistols, and muskets which could be had at a low
-price. The tone of the proclamation was not as jocose as in the former
-Chigírin talks. Pierre pondered over these broadsheets. Evidently the
-terrible stormcloud he had desired with the whole strength of his soul
-but which yet aroused involuntary horror in him was drawing near.
-
-“Shall I join the army and enter the service, or wait?” he asked himself
-for the hundredth time. He took a pack of cards that lay on the table
-and began to lay them out for a game of patience.
-
-“If this patience comes out,” he said to himself after shuffling the
-cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting his head, “if it comes out,
-it means... what does it mean?”
-
-He had not decided what it should mean when he heard the voice of the
-eldest princess at the door asking whether she might come in.
-
-“Then it will mean that I must go to the army,” said Pierre to himself.
-“Come in, come in!” he added to the princess.
-
-Only the eldest princess, the one with the stony face and long waist,
-was still living in Pierre’s house. The two younger ones had both
-married.
-
-“Excuse my coming to you, cousin,” she said in a reproachful and
-agitated voice. “You know some decision must be come to. What is going
-to happen? Everyone has left Moscow and the people are rioting. How is
-it that we are staying on?”
-
-“On the contrary, things seem satisfactory, ma cousine,” said Pierre
-in the bantering tone he habitually adopted toward her, always feeling
-uncomfortable in the role of her benefactor.
-
-“Satisfactory, indeed! Very satisfactory! Barbara Ivánovna told me today
-how our troops are distinguishing themselves. It certainly does them
-credit! And the people too are quite mutinous—they no longer obey,
-even my maid has taken to being rude. At this rate they will soon begin
-beating us. One can’t walk in the streets. But, above all, the French
-will be here any day now, so what are we waiting for? I ask just one
-thing of you, cousin,” she went on, “arrange for me to be taken to
-Petersburg. Whatever I may be, I can’t live under Bonaparte’s rule.”
-
-“Oh, come, ma cousine! Where do you get your information from? On the
-contrary...”
-
-“I won’t submit to your Napoleon! Others may if they please.... If you
-don’t want to do this...”
-
-“But I will, I’ll give the order at once.”
-
-The princess was apparently vexed at not having anyone to be angry with.
-Muttering to herself, she sat down on a chair.
-
-“But you have been misinformed,” said Pierre. “Everything is quiet in
-the city and there is not the slightest danger. See! I’ve just been
-reading...” He showed her the broadsheet. “Count Rostopchín writes that
-he will stake his life on it that the enemy will not enter Moscow.”
-
-“Oh, that count of yours!” said the princess malevolently. “He is a
-hypocrite, a rascal who has himself roused the people to riot. Didn’t
-he write in those idiotic broadsheets that anyone, ‘whoever it might be,
-should be dragged to the lockup by his hair’? (How silly!) ‘And honor
-and glory to whoever captures him,’ he says. This is what his cajolery
-has brought us to! Barbara Ivánovna told me the mob near killed her
-because she said something in French.”
-
-“Oh, but it’s so... You take everything so to heart,” said Pierre, and
-began laying out his cards for patience.
-
-Although that patience did come out, Pierre did not join the army,
-but remained in deserted Moscow ever in the same state of agitation,
-irresolution, and alarm, yet at the same time joyfully expecting
-something terrible.
-
-Next day toward evening the princess set off, and Pierre’s head steward
-came to inform him that the money needed for the equipment of his
-regiment could not be found without selling one of the estates. In
-general the head steward made out to Pierre that his project of raising
-a regiment would ruin him. Pierre listened to him, scarcely able to
-repress a smile.
-
-“Well then, sell it,” said he. “What’s to be done? I can’t draw back
-now!”
-
-The worse everything became, especially his own affairs, the better
-was Pierre pleased and the more evident was it that the catastrophe he
-expected was approaching. Hardly anyone he knew was left in town. Julie
-had gone, and so had Princess Mary. Of his intimate friends only the
-Rostóvs remained, but he did not go to see them.
-
-To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of Vorontsóvo
-to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to destroy the foe,
-and a trial balloon that was to go up next day. The balloon was not yet
-ready, but Pierre learned that it was being constructed by the Emperor’s
-desire. The Emperor had written to Count Rostopchín as follows:
-
-As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew of reliable and
-intelligent men for his car and send a courier to General Kutúzov to let
-him know. I have informed him of the matter.
-
-Please impress upon Leppich to be very careful where he descends for
-the first time, that he may not make a mistake and fall into the enemy’s
-hands. It is essential for him to combine his movements with those of
-the commander in chief.
-
-
-On his way home from Vorontsóvo, as he was passing the Bolótnoe Place
-Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lóbnoe Place, stopped and got out
-of his trap. A French cook accused of being a spy was being flogged. The
-flogging was only just over, and the executioner was releasing from the
-flogging bench a stout man with red whiskers, in blue stockings and
-a green jacket, who was moaning piteously. Another criminal, thin and
-pale, stood near. Judging by their faces they were both Frenchmen. With
-a frightened and suffering look resembling that on the thin Frenchman’s
-face, Pierre pushed his way in through the crowd.
-
-“What is it? Who is it? What is it for?” he kept asking.
-
-But the attention of the crowd—officials, burghers, shopkeepers,
-peasants, and women in cloaks and in pelisses—was so eagerly centered on
-what was passing in Lóbnoe Place that no one answered him. The stout man
-rose, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and evidently trying to appear
-firm began to pull on his jacket without looking about him, but suddenly
-his lips trembled and he began to cry, in the way full-blooded grown-up
-men cry, though angry with himself for doing so. In the crowd people
-began talking loudly, to stifle their feelings of pity as it seemed to
-Pierre.
-
-“He’s cook to some prince.”
-
-“Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a Frenchman... sets his
-teeth on edge!” said a wrinkled clerk who was standing behind Pierre,
-when the Frenchman began to cry.
-
-The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke would be
-appreciated. Some people began to laugh, others continued to watch in
-dismay the executioner who was undressing the other man.
-
-Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily away, went back
-to his trap muttering something to himself as he went, and took his
-seat. As they drove along he shuddered and exclaimed several times so
-audibly that the coachman asked him:
-
-“What is your pleasure?”
-
-“Where are you going?” shouted Pierre to the man, who was driving to
-Lubyánka Street.
-
-“To the Governor’s, as you ordered,” answered the coachman.
-
-“Fool! Idiot!” shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman—a thing he rarely
-did. “Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!” “I must get away
-this very day,” he murmured to himself.
-
-At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the
-Lóbnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he could no
-longer remain in Moscow and would leave for the army that very day that
-it seemed to him that either he had told the coachman this or that the
-man ought to have known it for himself.
-
-On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstáfey—his head coachman who
-knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow—that
-he would leave that night for the army at Mozháysk, and that his saddle
-horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged that day,
-so on Evstáfey’s representation Pierre had to put off his departure till
-next day to allow time for the relay horses to be sent on in advance.
-
-On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell of rain, and
-after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night
-in Perkhúshkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that
-evening. (This was the battle of Shevárdino.) He was told that there in
-Perkhúshkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could answer
-his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was approaching
-Mozháysk.
-
-Every house in Mozháysk had soldiers quartered in it, and at the hostel
-where Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no room to be
-had. It was full of officers.
-
-Everywhere in Mozháysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on the
-march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, caissons, and cannon
-were everywhere. Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and the
-farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into that sea
-of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation and a new and
-joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a feeling akin
-to what he had felt at the Slobóda Palace during the Emperor’s visit—a
-sense of the necessity of undertaking something and sacrificing
-something. He now experienced a glad consciousness that everything that
-constitutes men’s happiness—the comforts of life, wealth, even
-life itself—is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away, compared with
-something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did not try to
-determine for whom and for what he felt such particular delight in
-sacrificing everything. He was not occupied with the question of what to
-sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing in itself afforded him a new and
-joyous sensation.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the Shevárdino Redoubt was
-fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by either side, and on
-the twenty-sixth the battle of Borodinó itself took place.
-
-Why and how were the battles of Shevárdino and Borodinó given and
-accepted? Why was the battle of Borodinó fought? There was not the least
-sense in it for either the French or the Russians. Its immediate result
-for the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were brought nearer
-to the destruction of Moscow—which we feared more than anything in
-the world; and for the French its immediate result was that they were
-brought nearer to the destruction of their whole army—which they feared
-more than anything in the world. What the result must be was quite
-obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutúzov accepted that battle.
-
-If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would seem that it must
-have been obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteen hundred miles
-and giving battle with a probability of losing a quarter of his army,
-he was advancing to certain destruction, and it must have been equally
-clear to Kutúzov that by accepting battle and risking the loss of a
-quarter of his army he would certainly lose Moscow. For Kutúzov this was
-mathematically clear, as it is that if when playing draughts I have one
-man less and go on exchanging, I shall certainly lose, and therefore
-should not exchange. When my opponent has sixteen men and I have
-fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker than he, but when I have exchanged
-thirteen more men he will be three times as strong as I am.
-
-Before the battle of Borodinó our strength in proportion to the French
-was about as five to six, but after that battle it was little more than
-one to two: previously we had a hundred thousand against a hundred and
-twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fifty thousand against a
-hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and experienced Kutúzov accepted the
-battle, while Napoleon, who was said to be a commander of genius,
-gave it, losing a quarter of his army and lengthening his lines of
-communication still more. If it is said that he expected to end the
-campaign by occupying Moscow as he had ended a previous campaign by
-occupying Vienna, there is much evidence to the contrary. Napoleon’s
-historians themselves tell us that from Smolénsk onwards he wished
-to stop, knew the danger of his extended position, and knew that the
-occupation of Moscow would not be the end of the campaign, for he had
-seen at Smolénsk the state in which Russian towns were left to him, and
-had not received a single reply to his repeated announcements of his
-wish to negotiate.
-
-In giving and accepting battle at Borodinó, Kutúzov acted involuntarily
-and irrationally. But later on, to fit what had occurred, the historians
-provided cunningly devised evidence of the foresight and genius of the
-generals who, of all the blind tools of history were the most enslaved
-and involuntary.
-
-The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes furnish
-the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to accustom
-ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that kind are
-meaningless.
-
-On the other question, how the battle of Borodinó and the preceding
-battle of Shevárdino were fought, there also exists a definite and
-well-known, but quite false, conception. All the historians describe the
-affair as follows:
-
-The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolénsk sought out
-for itself the best position for a general engagement and found such a
-position at Borodinó.
-
-The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the left
-of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolénsk) and almost at a right angle
-to it, from Borodinó to Utítsa, at the very place where the battle was
-fought.
-
-In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was set up on
-the Shevárdino mound to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth, we
-are told, Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on the
-twenty-sixth, attacked the whole Russian army, which was in position on
-the field of Borodinó.
-
-So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone who cares to
-look into the matter can easily convince himself.
-
-The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on the contrary,
-during the retreat passed many positions better than Borodinó. They did
-not stop at any one of these positions because Kutúzov did not wish to
-occupy a position he had not himself chosen, because the popular demand
-for a battle had not yet expressed itself strongly enough, and because
-Milorádovich had not yet arrived with the militia, and for many other
-reasons. The fact is that other positions they had passed were stronger,
-and that the position at Borodinó (the one where the battle was fought),
-far from being strong, was no more a position than any other spot one
-might find in the Russian Empire by sticking a pin into the map at
-hazard.
-
-Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on the field of
-Borodinó to the left of, and at a right angle to, the highroad (that
-is, the position on which the battle took place), but never till the
-twenty-fifth of August, 1812, did they think that a battle might be
-fought there. This was shown first by the fact that there were no
-entrenchments there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the
-twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly, by the
-position of the Shevárdino Redoubt. That redoubt was quite senseless
-in front of the position where the battle was accepted. Why was it
-more strongly fortified than any other post? And why were all efforts
-exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till late at
-night on the twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol would have sufficed to
-observe the enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the position on which the
-battle was fought had not been foreseen and that the Shevárdino Redoubt
-was not an advanced post of that position, we have the fact that up to
-the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly and Bagratión were convinced that the
-Shevárdino Redoubt was the left flank of the position, and that Kutúzov
-himself in his report, written in hot haste after the battle, speaks of
-the Shevárdino Redoubt as the left flank of the position. It was much
-later, when reports on the battle of Borodinó were written at leisure,
-that the incorrect and extraordinary statement was invented (probably to
-justify the mistakes of a commander in chief who had to be represented
-as infallible) that the Shevárdino Redoubt was an advanced post—whereas
-in reality it was simply a fortified point on the left flank—and that
-the battle of Borodinó was fought by us on an entrenched position
-previously selected, whereas it was fought on a quite unexpected spot
-which was almost unentrenched.
-
-The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the river
-Kolochá—which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an acute
-angle—so that the left flank was at Shevárdino, the right flank near the
-village of Nóvoe, and the center at Borodinó at the confluence of the
-rivers Kolochá and Vóyna.
-
-To anyone who looks at the field of Borodinó without thinking of how
-the battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the river
-Kolochá, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was to
-prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolénsk road to Moscow.
-
-Napoleon, riding to Valúevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as the
-history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utítsa
-to Borodinó (he could not have seen that position because it did not
-exist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but while
-pursuing the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the
-Russian position—at the Shevárdino Redoubt—and unexpectedly for the
-Russians moved his army across the Kolochá. And the Russians, not having
-time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left wing from the
-position they had intended to occupy and took up a new position which
-had not been foreseen and was not fortified. By crossing to the other
-side of the Kolochá to the left of the highroad, Napoleon shifted the
-whole forthcoming battle from right to left (looking from the Russian
-side) and transferred it to the plain between Utítsa, Semënovsk, and
-Borodinó—a plain no more advantageous as a position than any other plain
-in Russia—and there the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of August took
-place.
-
-Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth to the
-Kolochá, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the redoubt
-but had begun the attack next morning, no one would have doubted that
-the Shevárdino Redoubt was the left flank of our position, and the
-battle would have taken place where we expected it. In that case
-we should probably have defended the Shevárdino Redoubt—our left
-flank—still more obstinately. We should have attacked Napoleon in the
-center or on the right, and the engagement would have taken place on the
-twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. But as the
-attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the retreat of
-our rear guard (that is, immediately after the fight at Gridnëva), and
-as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were not in time, to begin a
-general engagement then on the evening of the twenty-fourth, the first
-and chief action of the battle of Borodinó was already lost on the
-twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss of the one fought on the
-twenty-sixth.
-
-After the loss of the Shevárdino Redoubt, we found ourselves on the
-morning of the twenty-fifth without a position for our left flank, and
-were forced to bend it back and hastily entrench it where it chanced to
-be.
-
-Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth defended by weak,
-unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of that position was
-increased by the fact that the Russian commanders—not having fully
-realized what had happened, namely the loss of our position on the left
-flank and the shifting of the whole field of the forthcoming battle from
-right to left—maintained their extended position from the village of
-Nóvoe to Utítsa, and consequently had to move their forces from right to
-left during the battle. So it happened that throughout the whole battle
-the Russians opposed the entire French army launched against our left
-flank with but half as many men. (Poniatowski’s action against Utítsa,
-and Uvárov’s on the right flank against the French, were actions
-distinct from the main course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodinó
-did not take place at all as (in an effort to conceal our commanders’
-mistakes even at the cost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian
-army and people) it has been described. The battle of Borodinó was not
-fought on a chosen and entrenched position with forces only slightly
-weaker than those of the enemy, but, as a result of the loss of the
-Shevárdino Redoubt, the Russians fought the battle of Borodinó on an
-open and almost unentrenched position, with forces only half as numerous
-as the French; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not
-merely unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive
-result, but unthinkable to keep an army even from complete
-disintegration and flight.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-On the morning of the twenty-fifth Pierre was leaving Mozháysk. At the
-descent of the high steep hill, down which a winding road led out of the
-town past the cathedral on the right, where a service was being held and
-the bells were ringing, Pierre got out of his vehicle and proceeded on
-foot. Behind him a cavalry regiment was coming down the hill preceded by
-its singers. Coming up toward him was a train of carts carrying men who
-had been wounded in the engagement the day before. The peasant drivers,
-shouting and lashing their horses, kept crossing from side to side. The
-carts, in each of which three or four wounded soldiers were lying
-or sitting, jolted over the stones that had been thrown on the steep
-incline to make it something like a road. The wounded, bandaged with
-rags, with pale cheeks, compressed lips, and knitted brows, held on to
-the sides of the carts as they were jolted against one another. Almost
-all of them stared with naïve, childlike curiosity at Pierre’s white hat
-and green swallow-tail coat.
-
-Pierre’s coachman shouted angrily at the convoy of wounded to keep to
-one side of the road. The cavalry regiment, as it descended the hill
-with its singers, surrounded Pierre’s carriage and blocked the road.
-Pierre stopped, being pressed against the side of the cutting in which
-the road ran. The sunshine from behind the hill did not penetrate into
-the cutting and there it was cold and damp, but above Pierre’s head was
-the bright August sunshine and the bells sounded merrily. One of the
-carts with wounded stopped by the side of the road close to Pierre. The
-driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it, placed a stone under one
-of its tireless hind wheels, and began arranging the breech-band on his
-little horse.
-
-One of the wounded, an old soldier with a bandaged arm who was following
-the cart on foot, caught hold of it with his sound hand and turned to
-look at Pierre.
-
-“I say, fellow countryman! Will they set us down here or take us on to
-Moscow?” he asked.
-
-Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the question. He was
-looking now at the cavalry regiment that had met the convoy of wounded,
-now at the cart by which he was standing, in which two wounded men
-were sitting and one was lying. One of those sitting up in the cart had
-probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was wrapped in rags
-and one cheek was swollen to the size of a baby’s head. His nose
-and mouth were twisted to one side. This soldier was looking at the
-cathedral and crossing himself. Another, a young lad, a fair-haired
-recruit as white as though there was no blood in his thin face, looked
-at Pierre kindly, with a fixed smile. The third lay prone so that his
-face was not visible. The cavalry singers were passing close by:
-
- Ah lost, quite lost... is my head so keen,
- Living in a foreign land...
-
-they sang their soldiers’ dance song.
-
-As if responding to them but with a different sort of merriment, the
-metallic sound of the bells reverberated high above and the hot rays of
-the sun bathed the top of the opposite slope with yet another sort of
-merriment. But beneath the slope, by the cart with the wounded near the
-panting little nag where Pierre stood, it was damp, somber, and sad.
-
-The soldier with the swollen cheek looked angrily at the cavalry
-singers.
-
-“Oh, the coxcombs!” he muttered reproachfully.
-
-“It’s not the soldiers only, but I’ve seen peasants today, too....
-The peasants—even they have to go,” said the soldier behind the cart,
-addressing Pierre with a sad smile. “No distinctions made nowadays....
-They want the whole nation to fall on them—in a word, it’s Moscow! They
-want to make an end of it.”
-
-In spite of the obscurity of the soldier’s words Pierre understood what
-he wanted to say and nodded approval.
-
-The road was clear again; Pierre descended the hill and drove on.
-
-He kept looking to either side of the road for familiar faces, but only
-saw everywhere the unfamiliar faces of various military men of different
-branches of the service, who all looked with astonishment at his white
-hat and green tail coat.
-
-Having gone nearly three miles he at last met an acquaintance and
-eagerly addressed him. This was one of the head army doctors. He was
-driving toward Pierre in a covered gig, sitting beside a young surgeon,
-and on recognizing Pierre he told the Cossack who occupied the driver’s
-seat to pull up.
-
-“Count! Your excellency, how come you to be here?” asked the doctor.
-
-“Well, you know, I wanted to see...”
-
-“Yes, yes, there will be something to see....”
-
-Pierre got out and talked to the doctor, explaining his intention of
-taking part in a battle.
-
-The doctor advised him to apply direct to Kutúzov.
-
-“Why should you be God knows where out of sight, during the battle?” he
-said, exchanging glances with his young companion. “Anyhow his Serene
-Highness knows you and will receive you graciously. That’s what you must
-do.”
-
-The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry.
-
-“You think so?... Ah, I also wanted to ask you where our position is
-exactly?” said Pierre.
-
-“The position?” repeated the doctor. “Well, that’s not my line. Drive
-past Tatárinova, a lot of digging is going on there. Go up the hillock
-and you’ll see.”
-
-“Can one see from there?... If you would...”
-
-But the doctor interrupted him and moved toward his gig.
-
-“I would go with you but on my honor I’m up to here”—and he pointed to
-his throat. “I’m galloping to the commander of the corps. How do matters
-stand?... You know, Count, there’ll be a battle tomorrow. Out of an army
-of a hundred thousand we must expect at least twenty thousand wounded,
-and we haven’t stretchers, or bunks, or dressers, or doctors enough for
-six thousand. We have ten thousand carts, but we need other things as
-well—we must manage as best we can!”
-
-The strange thought that of the thousands of men, young and old, who
-had stared with merry surprise at his hat (perhaps the very men he had
-noticed), twenty thousand were inevitably doomed to wounds and death
-amazed Pierre.
-
-“They may die tomorrow; why are they thinking of anything but death?”
-And by some latent sequence of thought the descent of the Mozháysk hill,
-the carts with the wounded, the ringing bells, the slanting rays of the
-sun, and the songs of the cavalrymen vividly recurred to his mind.
-
-“The cavalry ride to battle and meet the wounded and do not for a moment
-think of what awaits them, but pass by, winking at the wounded. Yet from
-among these men twenty thousand are doomed to die, and they wonder at my
-hat! Strange!” thought Pierre, continuing his way to Tatárinova.
-
-In front of a landowner’s house to the left of the road stood carriages,
-wagons, and crowds of orderlies and sentinels. The commander in chief
-was putting up there, but just when Pierre arrived he was not in and
-hardly any of the staff were there—they had gone to the church service.
-Pierre drove on toward Górki.
-
-When he had ascended the hill and reached the little village street, he
-saw for the first time peasant militiamen in their white shirts and with
-crosses on their caps, who, talking and laughing loudly, animated and
-perspiring, were at work on a huge knoll overgrown with grass to the
-right of the road.
-
-Some of them were digging, others were wheeling barrowloads of earth
-along planks, while others stood about doing nothing.
-
-Two officers were standing on the knoll, directing the men. On seeing
-these peasants, who were evidently still amused by the novelty of their
-position as soldiers, Pierre once more thought of the wounded men at
-Mozháysk and understood what the soldier had meant when he said: “They
-want the whole nation to fall on them.” The sight of these bearded
-peasants at work on the battlefield, with their queer, clumsy boots
-and perspiring necks, and their shirts opening from the left toward
-the middle, unfastened, exposing their sunburned collarbones, impressed
-Pierre more strongly with the solemnity and importance of the moment
-than anything he had yet seen or heard.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-Pierre stepped out of his carriage and, passing the toiling militiamen,
-ascended the knoll from which, according to the doctor, the battlefield
-could be seen.
-
-It was about eleven o’clock. The sun shone somewhat to the left and
-behind him and brightly lit up the enormous panorama which, rising like
-an amphitheater, extended before him in the clear rarefied atmosphere.
-
-From above on the left, bisecting that amphitheater, wound the Smolénsk
-highroad, passing through a village with a white church some five
-hundred paces in front of the knoll and below it. This was Borodinó.
-Below the village the road crossed the river by a bridge and, winding
-down and up, rose higher and higher to the village of Valúevo visible
-about four miles away, where Napoleon was then stationed. Beyond Valúevo
-the road disappeared into a yellowing forest on the horizon. Far in
-the distance in that birch and fir forest to the right of the road, the
-cross and belfry of the Kolochá Monastery gleamed in the sun. Here and
-there over the whole of that blue expanse, to right and left of the
-forest and the road, smoking campfires could be seen and indefinite
-masses of troops—ours and the enemy’s. The ground to the right—along the
-course of the Kolochá and Moskvá rivers—was broken and hilly. Between
-the hollows the villages of Bezúbova and Zakhárino showed in the
-distance. On the left the ground was more level; there were fields of
-grain, and the smoking ruins of Semënovsk, which had been burned down,
-could be seen.
-
-All that Pierre saw was so indefinite that neither the left nor the
-right side of the field fully satisfied his expectations. Nowhere
-could he see the battlefield he had expected to find, but only fields,
-meadows, troops, woods, the smoke of campfires, villages, mounds, and
-streams; and try as he would he could descry no military “position” in
-this place which teemed with life, nor could he even distinguish our
-troops from the enemy’s.
-
-“I must ask someone who knows,” he thought, and addressed an officer who
-was looking with curiosity at his huge unmilitary figure.
-
-“May I ask you,” said Pierre, “what village that is in front?”
-
-“Búrdino, isn’t it?” said the officer, turning to his companion.
-
-“Borodinó,” the other corrected him.
-
-The officer, evidently glad of an opportunity for a talk, moved up to
-Pierre.
-
-“Are those our men there?” Pierre inquired.
-
-“Yes, and there, further on, are the French,” said the officer. “There
-they are, there... you can see them.”
-
-“Where? Where?” asked Pierre.
-
-“One can see them with the naked eye... Why, there!”
-
-The officer pointed with his hand to the smoke visible on the left
-beyond the river, and the same stern and serious expression that Pierre
-had noticed on many of the faces he had met came into his face.
-
-“Ah, those are the French! And over there?...” Pierre pointed to a knoll
-on the left, near which some troops could be seen.
-
-“Those are ours.”
-
-“Ah, ours! And there?...” Pierre pointed to another knoll in the
-distance with a big tree on it, near a village that lay in a hollow
-where also some campfires were smoking and something black was visible.
-
-“That’s his again,” said the officer. (It was the Shevárdino Redoubt.)
-“It was ours yesterday, but now it is his.”
-
-“Then how about our position?”
-
-“Our position?” replied the officer with a smile of satisfaction. “I
-can tell you quite clearly, because I constructed nearly all our
-entrenchments. There, you see? There’s our center, at Borodinó, just
-there,” and he pointed to the village in front of them with the white
-church. “That’s where one crosses the Kolochá. You see down there where
-the rows of hay are lying in the hollow, there’s the bridge. That’s our
-center. Our right flank is over there”—he pointed sharply to the right,
-far away in the broken ground—“That’s where the Moskvá River is, and
-we have thrown up three redoubts there, very strong ones. The left
-flank...” here the officer paused. “Well, you see, that’s difficult to
-explain.... Yesterday our left flank was there at Shevárdino, you see,
-where the oak is, but now we have withdrawn our left wing—now it is over
-there, do you see that village and the smoke? That’s Semënovsk, yes,
-there,” he pointed to Raévski’s knoll. “But the battle will hardly
-be there. His having moved his troops there is only a ruse; he will
-probably pass round to the right of the Moskvá. But wherever it may be,
-many a man will be missing tomorrow!” he remarked.
-
-An elderly sergeant who had approached the officer while he was giving
-these explanations had waited in silence for him to finish speaking, but
-at this point, evidently not liking the officer’s remark, interrupted
-him.
-
-“Gabions must be sent for,” said he sternly.
-
-The officer appeared abashed, as though he understood that one might
-think of how many men would be missing tomorrow but ought not to speak
-of it.
-
-“Well, send number three company again,” the officer replied hurriedly.
-
-“And you, are you one of the doctors?”
-
-“No, I’ve come on my own,” answered Pierre, and he went down the hill
-again, passing the militiamen.
-
-“Oh, those damned fellows!” muttered the officer who followed him,
-holding his nose as he ran past the men at work.
-
-“There they are... bringing her, coming... There they are... They’ll be
-here in a minute...” voices were suddenly heard saying; and officers,
-soldiers, and militiamen began running forward along the road.
-
-A church procession was coming up the hill from Borodinó. First along
-the dusty road came the infantry in ranks, bareheaded and with arms
-reversed. From behind them came the sound of church singing.
-
-Soldiers and militiamen ran bareheaded past Pierre toward the
-procession.
-
-“They are bringing her, our Protectress!... The Iberian Mother of God!”
-someone cried.
-
-“The Smolénsk Mother of God,” another corrected him.
-
-The militiamen, both those who had been in the village and those who had
-been at work on the battery, threw down their spades and ran to meet the
-church procession. Following the battalion that marched along the dusty
-road came priests in their vestments—one little old man in a hood with
-attendants and singers. Behind them soldiers and officers bore a large,
-dark-faced icon with an embossed metal cover. This was the icon that had
-been brought from Smolénsk and had since accompanied the army. Behind,
-before, and on both sides, crowds of militiamen with bared heads walked,
-ran, and bowed to the ground.
-
-At the summit of the hill they stopped with the icon; the men who had
-been holding it up by the linen bands attached to it were relieved by
-others, the chanters relit their censers, and service began. The hot
-rays of the sun beat down vertically and a fresh soft wind played with
-the hair of the bared heads and with the ribbons decorating the icon.
-The singing did not sound loud under the open sky. An immense crowd
-of bareheaded officers, soldiers, and militiamen surrounded the icon.
-Behind the priest and a chanter stood the notabilities on a spot
-reserved for them. A bald general with a St. George’s Cross on his neck
-stood just behind the priest’s back, and without crossing himself (he
-was evidently a German) patiently awaited the end of the service, which
-he considered it necessary to hear to the end, probably to arouse the
-patriotism of the Russian people. Another general stood in a martial
-pose, crossing himself by shaking his hand in front of his chest
-while looking about him. Standing among the crowd of peasants, Pierre
-recognized several acquaintances among these notables, but did not
-look at them—his whole attention was absorbed in watching the serious
-expression on the faces of the crowd of soldiers and militiamen who were
-all gazing eagerly at the icon. As soon as the tired chanters, who were
-singing the service for the twentieth time that day, began lazily and
-mechanically to sing: “Save from calamity Thy servants, O Mother of
-God,” and the priest and deacon chimed in: “For to Thee under God we all
-flee as to an inviolable bulwark and protection,” there again kindled in
-all those faces the same expression of consciousness of the solemnity
-of the impending moment that Pierre had seen on the faces at the foot of
-the hill at Mozháysk and momentarily on many and many faces he had met
-that morning; and heads were bowed more frequently and hair tossed back,
-and sighs and the sound men made as they crossed themselves were heard.
-
-The crowd round the icon suddenly parted and pressed against Pierre.
-Someone, a very important personage judging by the haste with which way
-was made for him, was approaching the icon.
-
-It was Kutúzov, who had been riding round the position and on his way
-back to Tatárinova had stopped where the service was being held. Pierre
-recognized him at once by his peculiar figure, which distinguished him
-from everybody else.
-
-With a long overcoat on his exceedingly stout, round-shouldered body,
-with uncovered white head and puffy face showing the white ball of the
-eye he had lost, Kutúzov walked with plunging, swaying gait into
-the crowd and stopped behind the priest. He crossed himself with an
-accustomed movement, bent till he touched the ground with his hand, and
-bowed his white head with a deep sigh. Behind Kutúzov was Bennigsen and
-the suite. Despite the presence of the commander in chief, who attracted
-the attention of all the superior officers, the militiamen and soldiers
-continued their prayers without looking at him.
-
-When the service was over, Kutúzov stepped up to the icon, sank heavily
-to his knees, bowed to the ground, and for a long time tried vainly to
-rise, but could not do so on account of his weakness and weight. His
-white head twitched with the effort. At last he rose, kissed the icon as
-a child does with naïvely pouting lips, and again bowed till he touched
-the ground with his hand. The other generals followed his example,
-then the officers, and after them with excited faces, pressing on one
-another, crowding, panting, and pushing, scrambled the soldiers and
-militiamen.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII
-
-Staggering amid the crush, Pierre looked about him.
-
-“Count Peter Kirílovich! How did you get here?” said a voice.
-
-Pierre looked round. Borís Drubetskóy, brushing his knees with his hand
-(he had probably soiled them when he, too, had knelt before the icon),
-came up to him smiling. Borís was elegantly dressed, with a slightly
-martial touch appropriate to a campaign. He wore a long coat and like
-Kutúzov had a whip slung across his shoulder.
-
-Meanwhile Kutúzov had reached the village and seated himself in the
-shade of the nearest house, on a bench which one Cossack had run
-to fetch and another had hastily covered with a rug. An immense and
-brilliant suite surrounded him.
-
-The icon was carried further, accompanied by the throng. Pierre stopped
-some thirty paces from Kutúzov, talking to Borís.
-
-He explained his wish to be present at the battle and to see the
-position.
-
-“This is what you must do,” said Borís. “I will do the honors of the
-camp to you. You will see everything best from where Count Bennigsen
-will be. I am in attendance on him, you know; I’ll mention it to him.
-But if you want to ride round the position, come along with us. We are
-just going to the left flank. Then when we get back, do spend the night
-with me and we’ll arrange a game of cards. Of course you know Dmítri
-Sergéevich? Those are his quarters,” and he pointed to the third house
-in the village of Górki.
-
-“But I should like to see the right flank. They say it’s very strong,”
-said Pierre. “I should like to start from the Moskvá River and ride
-round the whole position.”
-
-“Well, you can do that later, but the chief thing is the left flank.”
-
-“Yes, yes. But where is Prince Bolkónski’s regiment? Can you point it
-out to me?”
-
-“Prince Andrew’s? We shall pass it and I’ll take you to him.”
-
-“What about the left flank?” asked Pierre
-
-“To tell you the truth, between ourselves, God only knows what state our
-left flank is in,” said Borís confidentially lowering his voice. “It is
-not at all what Count Bennigsen intended. He meant to fortify that knoll
-quite differently, but...” Borís shrugged his shoulders, “his Serene
-Highness would not have it, or someone persuaded him. You see...” but
-Borís did not finish, for at that moment Kaysárov, Kutúzov’s adjutant,
-came up to Pierre. “Ah, Kaysárov!” said Borís, addressing him with an
-unembarrassed smile, “I was just trying to explain our position to
-the count. It is amazing how his Serene Highness could so foresee the
-intentions of the French!”
-
-“You mean the left flank?” asked Kaysárov.
-
-“Yes, exactly; the left flank is now extremely strong.”
-
-Though Kutúzov had dismissed all unnecessary men from the staff, Borís
-had contrived to remain at headquarters after the changes. He had
-established himself with Count Bennigsen, who, like all on whom Borís
-had been in attendance, considered young Prince Drubetskóy an invaluable
-man.
-
-In the higher command there were two sharply defined parties: Kutúzov’s
-party and that of Bennigsen, the chief of staff. Borís belonged to the
-latter and no one else, while showing servile respect to Kutúzov, could
-so create an impression that the old fellow was not much good and that
-Bennigsen managed everything. Now the decisive moment of battle had come
-when Kutúzov would be destroyed and the power pass to Bennigsen, or even
-if Kutúzov won the battle it would be felt that everything was done by
-Bennigsen. In any case many great rewards would have to be given for
-tomorrow’s action, and new men would come to the front. So Borís was
-full of nervous vivacity all day.
-
-After Kaysárov, others whom Pierre knew came up to him, and he had not
-time to reply to all the questions about Moscow that were showered upon
-him, or to listen to all that was told him. The faces all expressed
-animation and apprehension, but it seemed to Pierre that the cause of
-the excitement shown in some of these faces lay chiefly in questions
-of personal success; his mind, however, was occupied by the different
-expression he saw on other faces—an expression that spoke not of
-personal matters but of the universal questions of life and death.
-Kutúzov noticed Pierre’s figure and the group gathered round him.
-
-“Call him to me,” said Kutúzov.
-
-An adjutant told Pierre of his Serene Highness’ wish, and Pierre went
-toward Kutúzov’s bench. But a militiaman got there before him. It was
-Dólokhov.
-
-“How did that fellow get here?” asked Pierre.
-
-“He’s a creature that wriggles in anywhere!” was the answer. “He
-has been degraded, you know. Now he wants to bob up again. He’s been
-proposing some scheme or other and has crawled into the enemy’s picket
-line at night.... He’s a brave fellow.”
-
-Pierre took off his hat and bowed respectfully to Kutúzov.
-
-“I concluded that if I reported to your Serene Highness you might send
-me away or say that you knew what I was reporting, but then I shouldn’t
-lose anything...” Dólokhov was saying.
-
-“Yes, yes.”
-
-“But if I were right, I should be rendering a service to my Fatherland
-for which I am ready to die.”
-
-“Yes, yes.”
-
-“And should your Serene Highness require a man who will not spare his
-skin, please think of me.... Perhaps I may prove useful to your Serene
-Highness.”
-
-“Yes... Yes...” Kutúzov repeated, his laughing eye narrowing more and
-more as he looked at Pierre.
-
-Just then Borís, with his courtierlike adroitness, stepped up to
-Pierre’s side near Kutúzov and in a most natural manner, without
-raising his voice, said to Pierre, as though continuing an interrupted
-conversation:
-
-“The militia have put on clean white shirts to be ready to die. What
-heroism, Count!”
-
-Borís evidently said this to Pierre in order to be overheard by his
-Serene Highness. He knew Kutúzov’s attention would be caught by those
-words, and so it was.
-
-“What are you saying about the militia?” he asked Borís.
-
-“Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highness—for death—they have put on
-clean shirts.”
-
-“Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!” said Kutúzov; and he closed his
-eyes and swayed his head. “A matchless people!” he repeated with a sigh.
-
-“So you want to smell gunpowder?” he said to Pierre. “Yes, it’s a
-pleasant smell. I have the honor to be one of your wife’s adorers. Is
-she well? My quarters are at your service.”
-
-And as often happens with old people, Kutúzov began looking about
-absent-mindedly as if forgetting all he wanted to say or do.
-
-Then, evidently remembering what he wanted, he beckoned to Andrew
-Kaysárov, his adjutant’s brother.
-
-“Those verses... those verses of Márin’s... how do they go, eh? Those he
-wrote about Gerákov: ‘Lectures for the corps inditing’... Recite them,
-recite them!” said he, evidently preparing to laugh.
-
-Kaysárov recited.... Kutúzov smilingly nodded his head to the rhythm of
-the verses.
-
-When Pierre had left Kutúzov, Dólokhov came up to him and took his hand.
-
-“I am very glad to meet you here, Count,” he said aloud, regardless
-of the presence of strangers and in a particularly resolute and solemn
-tone. “On the eve of a day when God alone knows who of us is fated to
-survive, I am glad of this opportunity to tell you that I regret the
-misunderstandings that occurred between us and should wish you not to
-have any ill feeling for me. I beg you to forgive me.”
-
-Pierre looked at Dólokhov with a smile, not knowing what to say to him.
-With tears in his eyes Dólokhov embraced Pierre and kissed him.
-
-Borís said a few words to his general, and Count Bennigsen turned to
-Pierre and proposed that he should ride with him along the line.
-
-“It will interest you,” said he.
-
-“Yes, very much,” replied Pierre.
-
-Half an hour later Kutúzov left for Tatárinova, and Bennigsen and his
-suite, with Pierre among them, set out on their ride along the line.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII
-
-From Górki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the bridge which, when
-they had looked at it from the hill, the officer had pointed out as
-being the center of our position and where rows of fragrant new-mown hay
-lay by the riverside. They rode across that bridge into the village of
-Borodinó and thence turned to the left, passing an enormous number of
-troops and guns, and came to a high knoll where militiamen were digging.
-This was the redoubt, as yet unnamed, which afterwards became known as
-the Raévski Redoubt, or the Knoll Battery, but Pierre paid no special
-attention to it. He did not know that it would become more memorable to
-him than any other spot on the plain of Borodinó.
-
-They then crossed the hollow to Semënovsk, where the soldiers were
-dragging away the last logs from the huts and barns. Then they rode
-downhill and uphill, across a ryefield trodden and beaten down as if by
-hail, following a track freshly made by the artillery over the furrows
-of the plowed land, and reached some flèches * which were still being
-dug.
-
- * A kind of entrenchment.
-
-At the flèches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at the Shevárdino
-Redoubt opposite, which had been ours the day before and where several
-horsemen could be descried. The officers said that either Napoleon or
-Murat was there, and they all gazed eagerly at this little group of
-horsemen. Pierre also looked at them, trying to guess which of the
-scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon. At last those mounted men
-rode away from the mound and disappeared.
-
-Bennigsen spoke to a general who approached him, and began explaining
-the whole position of our troops. Pierre listened to him, straining each
-faculty to understand the essential points of the impending battle, but
-was mortified to feel that his mental capacity was inadequate for the
-task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsen stopped speaking and,
-noticing that Pierre was listening, suddenly said to him:
-
-“I don’t think this interests you?”
-
-“On the contrary it’s very interesting!” replied Pierre not quite
-truthfully.
-
-From the flèches they rode still farther to the left, along a road
-winding through a thick, low-growing birch wood. In the middle of the
-wood a brown hare with white feet sprang out and, scared by the tramp of
-the many horses, grew so confused that it leaped along the road in front
-of them for some time, arousing general attention and laughter, and only
-when several voices shouted at it did it dart to one side and disappear
-in the thicket. After going through the wood for about a mile and a half
-they came out on a glade where troops of Túchkov’s corps were stationed
-to defend the left flank.
-
-Here, at the extreme left flank, Bennigsen talked a great deal and with
-much heat, and, as it seemed to Pierre, gave orders of great military
-importance. In front of Túchkov’s troops was some high ground not
-occupied by troops. Bennigsen loudly criticized this mistake, saying
-that it was madness to leave a height which commanded the country around
-unoccupied and to place troops below it. Some of the generals expressed
-the same opinion. One in particular declared with martial heat that they
-were put there to be slaughtered. Bennigsen on his own authority ordered
-the troops to occupy the high ground. This disposition on the left flank
-increased Pierre’s doubt of his own capacity to understand military
-matters. Listening to Bennigsen and the generals criticizing the
-position of the troops behind the hill, he quite understood them and
-shared their opinion, but for that very reason he could not understand
-how the man who put them there behind the hill could have made so gross
-and palpable a blunder.
-
-Pierre did not know that these troops were not, as Bennigsen supposed,
-put there to defend the position, but were in a concealed position as
-an ambush, that they should not be seen and might be able to strike an
-approaching enemy unexpectedly. Bennigsen did not know this and moved
-the troops forward according to his own ideas without mentioning the
-matter to the commander in chief.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV
-
-On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew lay leaning on his
-elbow in a broken-down shed in the village of Knyazkóvo at the further
-end of his regiment’s encampment. Through a gap in the broken wall he
-could see, beside the wooden fence, a row of thirty-year-old birches
-with their lower branches lopped off, a field on which shocks of
-oats were standing, and some bushes near which rose the smoke of
-campfires—the soldiers’ kitchens.
-
-Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his life now seemed to
-him, Prince Andrew on the eve of battle felt agitated and irritable as
-he had done seven years before at Austerlitz.
-
-He had received and given the orders for next day’s battle and had
-nothing more to do. But his thoughts—the simplest, clearest, and
-therefore most terrible thoughts—would give him no peace. He knew that
-tomorrow’s battle would be the most terrible of all he had taken
-part in, and for the first time in his life the possibility of death
-presented itself to him—not in relation to any worldly matter or with
-reference to its effect on others, but simply in relation to himself, to
-his own soul—vividly, plainly, terribly, and almost as a certainty. And
-from the height of this perception all that had previously tormented and
-preoccupied him suddenly became illumined by a cold white light without
-shadows, without perspective, without distinction of outline. All life
-appeared to him like magic-lantern pictures at which he had long been
-gazing by artificial light through a glass. Now he suddenly saw those
-badly daubed pictures in clear daylight and without a glass. “Yes,
-yes! There they are, those false images that agitated, enraptured,
-and tormented me,” said he to himself, passing in review the principal
-pictures of the magic lantern of life and regarding them now in the cold
-white daylight of his clear perception of death. “There they are, those
-rudely painted figures that once seemed splendid and mysterious.
-Glory, the good of society, love of a woman, the Fatherland itself—how
-important these pictures appeared to me, with what profound meaning they
-seemed to be filled! And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the
-cold white light of this morning which I feel is dawning for me.” The
-three great sorrows of his life held his attention in particular: his
-love for a woman, his father’s death, and the French invasion which had
-overrun half Russia. “Love... that little girl who seemed to me brimming
-over with mystic forces! Yes, indeed, I loved her. I made romantic plans
-of love and happiness with her! Oh, what a boy I was!” he said aloud
-bitterly. “Ah me! I believed in some ideal love which was to keep her
-faithful to me for the whole year of my absence! Like the gentle dove
-in the fable she was to pine apart from me.... But it was much simpler
-really.... It was all very simple and horrible.”
-
-“When my father built Bald Hills he thought the place was his: his
-land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came and swept him aside,
-unconscious of his existence, as he might brush a chip from his path,
-and his Bald Hills and his whole life fell to pieces. Princess Mary says
-it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, when he is not
-here and will never return? He is not here! For whom then is the trial
-intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of Moscow! And tomorrow I
-shall be killed, perhaps not even by a Frenchman but by one of our own
-men, by a soldier discharging a musket close to my ear as one of them
-did yesterday, and the French will come and take me by head and heels
-and fling me into a hole that I may not stink under their noses, and new
-conditions of life will arise, which will seem quite ordinary to others
-and about which I shall know nothing. I shall not exist....”
-
-He looked at the row of birches shining in the sunshine, with their
-motionless green and yellow foliage and white bark. “To die... to be
-killed tomorrow... That I should not exist... That all this should still
-be, but no me....”
-
-And the birches with their light and shade, the curly clouds, the
-smoke of the campfires, and all that was around him changed and seemed
-terrible and menacing. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He rose
-quickly, went out of the shed, and began to walk about.
-
-After he had returned, voices were heard outside the shed. “Who’s that?”
-he cried.
-
-The red-nosed Captain Timókhin, formerly Dólokhov’s squadron commander,
-but now from lack of officers a battalion commander, shyly entered the
-shed followed by an adjutant and the regimental paymaster.
-
-Prince Andrew rose hastily, listened to the business they had come
-about, gave them some further instructions, and was about to dismiss
-them when he heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed.
-
-“Devil take it!” said the voice of a man stumbling over something.
-
-Prince Andrew looked out of the shed and saw Pierre, who had tripped
-over a pole on the ground and had nearly fallen, coming his way. It was
-unpleasant to Prince Andrew to meet people of his own set in general,
-and Pierre especially, for he reminded him of all the painful moments of
-his last visit to Moscow.
-
-“You? What a surprise!” said he. “What brings you here? This is
-unexpected!”
-
-As he said this his eyes and face expressed more than coldness—they
-expressed hostility, which Pierre noticed at once. He had approached
-the shed full of animation, but on seeing Prince Andrew’s face he felt
-constrained and ill at ease.
-
-“I have come... simply... you know... come... it interests me,” said
-Pierre, who had so often that day senselessly repeated that word
-“interesting.” “I wish to see the battle.”
-
-“Oh yes, and what do the Masonic brothers say about war? How would they
-stop it?” said Prince Andrew sarcastically. “Well, and how’s Moscow? And
-my people? Have they reached Moscow at last?” he asked seriously.
-
-“Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskáya told me so. I went to see them, but
-missed them. They have gone to your estate near Moscow.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXV
-
-The officers were about to take leave, but Prince Andrew, apparently
-reluctant to be left alone with his friend, asked them to stay and have
-tea. Seats were brought in and so was the tea. The officers gazed with
-surprise at Pierre’s huge stout figure and listened to his talk of
-Moscow and the position of our army, round which he had ridden. Prince
-Andrew remained silent, and his expression was so forbidding that Pierre
-addressed his remarks chiefly to the good-natured battalion commander.
-
-“So you understand the whole position of our troops?” Prince Andrew
-interrupted him.
-
-“Yes—that is, how do you mean?” said Pierre. “Not being a military man
-I can’t say I have understood it fully, but I understand the general
-position.”
-
-“Well, then, you know more than anyone else, be it who it may,” said
-Prince Andrew.
-
-“Oh!” said Pierre, looking over his spectacles in perplexity at Prince
-Andrew. “Well, and what do you think of Kutúzov’s appointment?” he
-asked.
-
-“I was very glad of his appointment, that’s all I know,” replied Prince
-Andrew.
-
-“And tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In Moscow they are saying
-heaven knows what about him.... What do you think of him?”
-
-“Ask them,” replied Prince Andrew, indicating the officers.
-
-Pierre looked at Timókhin with the condescendingly interrogative smile
-with which everybody involuntarily addressed that officer.
-
-“We see light again, since his Serenity has been appointed, your
-excellency,” said Timókhin timidly, and continually turning to glance at
-his colonel.
-
-“Why so?” asked Pierre.
-
-“Well, to mention only firewood and fodder, let me inform you. Why, when
-we were retreating from Sventsyáni we dare not touch a stick or a wisp
-of hay or anything. You see, we were going away, so he would get it all;
-wasn’t it so, your excellency?” and again Timókhin turned to the prince.
-“But we daren’t. In our regiment two officers were court-martialed for
-that kind of thing. But when his Serenity took command everything became
-straightforward. Now we see light....”
-
-“Then why was it forbidden?”
-
-Timókhin looked about in confusion, not knowing what or how to answer
-such a question. Pierre put the same question to Prince Andrew.
-
-“Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were abandoning to the
-enemy,” said Prince Andrew with venomous irony. “It is very sound:
-one can’t permit the land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to
-marauding. At Smolénsk too he judged correctly that the French might
-outflank us, as they had larger forces. But he could not understand
-this,” cried Prince Andrew in a shrill voice that seemed to escape him
-involuntarily: “he could not understand that there, for the first time,
-we were fighting for Russian soil, and that there was a spirit in the
-men such as I had never seen before, that we had held the French for
-two days, and that that success had increased our strength tenfold. He
-ordered us to retreat, and all our efforts and losses went for nothing.
-He had no thought of betraying us, he tried to do the best he could,
-he thought out everything, and that is why he is unsuitable. He is
-unsuitable now, just because he plans out everything very thoroughly and
-accurately as every German has to. How can I explain?... Well, say your
-father has a German valet, and he is a splendid valet and satisfies your
-father’s requirements better than you could, then it’s all right to let
-him serve. But if your father is mortally sick you’ll send the valet
-away and attend to your father with your own unpracticed, awkward hands,
-and will soothe him better than a skilled man who is a stranger could.
-So it has been with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could
-serve her and be a splendid minister; but as soon as she is in danger
-she needs one of her own kin. But in your Club they have been making him
-out a traitor! They slander him as a traitor, and the only result will
-be that afterwards, ashamed of their false accusations, they will make
-him out a hero or a genius instead of a traitor, and that will be still
-more unjust. He is an honest and very punctilious German.”
-
-“And they say he’s a skillful commander,” rejoined Pierre.
-
-“I don’t understand what is meant by ‘a skillful commander,’” replied
-Prince Andrew ironically.
-
-“A skillful commander?” replied Pierre. “Why, one who foresees all
-contingencies... and foresees the adversary’s intentions.”
-
-“But that’s impossible,” said Prince Andrew as if it were a matter
-settled long ago.
-
-Pierre looked at him in surprise.
-
-“And yet they say that war is like a game of chess?” he remarked.
-
-“Yes,” replied Prince Andrew, “but with this little difference, that
-in chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are not
-limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is always
-stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than one, while
-in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division and sometimes
-weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies of troops can
-never be known to anyone. Believe me,” he went on, “if things
-depended on arrangements made by the staff, I should be there making
-arrangements, but instead of that I have the honor to serve here in
-the regiment with these gentlemen, and I consider that on us tomorrow’s
-battle will depend and not on those others.... Success never depends,
-and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or even on numbers,
-and least of all on position.”
-
-“But on what then?”
-
-“On the feeling that is in me and in him,” he pointed to Timókhin, “and
-in each soldier.”
-
-Prince Andrew glanced at Timókhin, who looked at his commander in alarm
-and bewilderment. In contrast to his former reticent taciturnity
-Prince Andrew now seemed excited. He could apparently not refrain from
-expressing the thoughts that had suddenly occurred to him.
-
-“A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it! Why did we lose
-the battle at Austerlitz? The French losses were almost equal to ours,
-but very early we said to ourselves that we were losing the battle,
-and we did lose it. And we said so because we had nothing to fight for
-there, we wanted to get away from the battlefield as soon as we could.
-‘We’ve lost, so let us run,’ and we ran. If we had not said that till
-the evening, heaven knows what might not have happened. But tomorrow we
-shan’t say it! You talk about our position, the left flank weak and the
-right flank too extended,” he went on. “That’s all nonsense, there’s
-nothing of the kind. But what awaits us tomorrow? A hundred million most
-diverse chances which will be decided on the instant by the fact that
-our men or theirs run or do not run, and that this man or that man is
-killed, but all that is being done at present is only play. The fact is
-that those men with whom you have ridden round the position not only
-do not help matters, but hinder. They are only concerned with their own
-petty interests.”
-
-“At such a moment?” said Pierre reproachfully.
-
-“At such a moment!” Prince Andrew repeated. “To them it is only a moment
-affording opportunities to undermine a rival and obtain an extra cross
-or ribbon. For me tomorrow means this: a Russian army of a hundred
-thousand and a French army of a hundred thousand have met to fight, and
-the thing is that these two hundred thousand men will fight and the side
-that fights more fiercely and spares itself least will win. And if you
-like I will tell you that whatever happens and whatever muddles those at
-the top may make, we shall win tomorrow’s battle. Tomorrow, happen what
-may, we shall win!”
-
-“There now, your excellency! That’s the truth, the real truth,” said
-Timókhin. “Who would spare himself now? The soldiers in my battalion,
-believe me, wouldn’t drink their vodka! ‘It’s not the day for that!’
-they say.”
-
-All were silent. The officers rose. Prince Andrew went out of the shed
-with them, giving final orders to the adjutant. After they had gone
-Pierre approached Prince Andrew and was about to start a conversation
-when they heard the clatter of three horses’ hoofs on the road not far
-from the shed, and looking in that direction Prince Andrew recognized
-Wolzogen and Clausewitz accompanied by a Cossack. They rode close by
-continuing to converse, and Prince Andrew involuntarily heard these
-words:
-
-“Der Krieg muss in Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht kann ich nicht genug
-Preis geben,” * said one of them.
-
- * “The war must be extended widely. I cannot sufficiently
- commend that view.”
-
-
-“Oh, ja,” said the other, “der Zweck ist nur den Feind zu schwächen,
-so kann man gewiss nicht den Verlust der Privat-Personen in Achtung
-nehmen.” *
-
- * “Oh, yes, the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of
- course one cannot take into account the loss of private
- individuals.”
-
-
-“Oh, no,” agreed the other.
-
-“Extend widely!” said Prince Andrew with an angry snort, when they had
-ridden past. “In that ‘extend’ were my father, son, and sister, at Bald
-Hills. That’s all the same to him! That’s what I was saying to you—those
-German gentlemen won’t win the battle tomorrow but will only make all
-the mess they can, because they have nothing in their German heads but
-theories not worth an empty eggshell and haven’t in their hearts the one
-thing needed tomorrow—that which Timókhin has. They have yielded up all
-Europe to him, and have now come to teach us. Fine teachers!” and again
-his voice grew shrill.
-
-“So you think we shall win tomorrow’s battle?” asked Pierre.
-
-“Yes, yes,” answered Prince Andrew absently. “One thing I would do if
-I had the power,” he began again, “I would not take prisoners. Why take
-prisoners? It’s chivalry! The French have destroyed my home and are on
-their way to destroy Moscow, they have outraged and are outraging me
-every moment. They are my enemies. In my opinion they are all criminals.
-And so thinks Timókhin and the whole army. They should be executed!
-Since they are my foes they cannot be my friends, whatever may have been
-said at Tilsit.”
-
-“Yes, yes,” muttered Pierre, looking with shining eyes at Prince Andrew.
-“I quite agree with you!”
-
-The question that had perturbed Pierre on the Mozháysk hill and all
-that day now seemed to him quite clear and completely solved. He now
-understood the whole meaning and importance of this war and of the
-impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the significant and
-stern expressions on the faces he had seen in passing, were lit up
-for him by a new light. He understood that latent heat (as they say in
-physics) of patriotism which was present in all these men he had seen,
-and this explained to him why they all prepared for death calmly, and as
-it were lightheartedly.
-
-“Not take prisoners,” Prince Andrew continued: “That by itself would
-quite change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is we have
-played at war—that’s what’s vile! We play at magnanimity and all that
-stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and
-sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she
-is so kindhearted that she can’t look at blood, but enjoys eating the
-calf served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of war, of
-chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on. It’s
-all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they humbugged
-us and we humbugged them. They plunder other people’s houses, issue
-false paper money, and worst of all they kill my children and my
-father, and then talk of rules of war and magnanimity to foes! Take no
-prisoners, but kill and be killed! He who has come to this as I have
-through the same sufferings...”
-
-Prince Andrew, who had thought it was all the same to him whether or
-not Moscow was taken as Smolénsk had been, was suddenly checked in his
-speech by an unexpected cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a
-few times in silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips
-quivered as he began speaking.
-
-“If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we should go to war only
-when it was worth while going to certain death, as now. Then there would
-not be war because Paul Ivánovich had offended Michael Ivánovich. And
-when there was a war, like this one, it would be war! And then the
-determination of the troops would be quite different. Then all these
-Westphalians and Hessians whom Napoleon is leading would not follow
-him into Russia, and we should not go to fight in Austria and Prussia
-without knowing why. War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in
-life; and we ought to understand that and not play at war. We ought to
-accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in
-that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is
-now, war is the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous. The military
-calling is the most highly honored.
-
-“But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are the
-habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of war
-are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a country’s
-inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, and fraud
-and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the military class
-are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance,
-cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in spite of all this it is the
-highest class, respected by everyone. All the kings, except the Chinese,
-wear military uniforms, and he who kills most people receives the
-highest rewards.
-
-“They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they kill
-and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services for
-having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), and they
-announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed
-the greater their achievement. How does God above look at them and hear
-them?” exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill, piercing voice. “Ah, my
-friend, it has of late become hard for me to live. I see that I have
-begun to understand too much. And it doesn’t do for man to taste of the
-tree of knowledge of good and evil.... Ah, well, it’s not for long!” he
-added.
-
-“However, you’re sleepy, and it’s time for me to sleep. Go back to
-Górki!” said Prince Andrew suddenly.
-
-“Oh no!” Pierre replied, looking at Prince Andrew with frightened,
-compassionate eyes.
-
-“Go, go! Before a battle one must have one’s sleep out,” repeated Prince
-Andrew.
-
-He came quickly up to Pierre and embraced and kissed him. “Good-by, be
-off!” he shouted. “Whether we meet again or not...” and turning away
-hurriedly he entered the shed.
-
-It was already dark, and Pierre could not make out whether the
-expression of Prince Andrew’s face was angry or tender.
-
-For some time he stood in silence considering whether he should follow
-him or go away. “No, he does not want it!” Pierre concluded. “And I know
-that this is our last meeting!” He sighed deeply and rode back to Górki.
-
-On re-entering the shed Prince Andrew lay down on a rug, but he could
-not sleep.
-
-He closed his eyes. One picture succeeded another in his imagination. On
-one of them he dwelt long and joyfully. He vividly recalled an evening
-in Petersburg. Natásha with animated and excited face was telling him
-how she had gone to look for mushrooms the previous summer and had lost
-her way in the big forest. She incoherently described the depths of
-the forest, her feelings, and a talk with a beekeeper she met, and
-constantly interrupted her story to say: “No, I can’t! I’m not telling
-it right; no, you don’t understand,” though he encouraged her by saying
-that he did understand, and he really had understood all she wanted to
-say. But Natásha was not satisfied with her own words: she felt that
-they did not convey the passionately poetic feeling she had experienced
-that day and wished to convey. “He was such a delightful old man, and
-it was so dark in the forest... and he had such kind... No, I can’t
-describe it,” she had said, flushed and excited. Prince Andrew smiled
-now the same happy smile as then when he had looked into her eyes. “I
-understood her,” he thought. “I not only understood her, but it was just
-that inner, spiritual force, that sincerity, that frankness of soul—that
-very soul of hers which seemed to be fettered by her body—it was that
-soul I loved in her... loved so strongly and happily...” and suddenly
-he remembered how his love had ended. “He did not need anything of that
-kind. He neither saw nor understood anything of the sort. He only saw in
-her a pretty and fresh young girl, with whom he did not deign to unite
-his fate. And I?... and he is still alive and gay!”
-
-Prince Andrew jumped up as if someone had burned him, and again began
-pacing up and down in front of the shed.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI
-
-On August 25, the eve of the battle of Borodinó, M. de Beausset, prefect
-of the French Emperor’s palace, arrived at Napoleon’s quarters at
-Valúevo with Colonel Fabvier, the former from Paris and the latter from
-Madrid.
-
-Donning his court uniform, M. de Beausset ordered a box he had
-brought for the Emperor to be carried before him and entered the first
-compartment of Napoleon’s tent, where he began opening the box while
-conversing with Napoleon’s aides-de-camp who surrounded him.
-
-Fabvier, not entering the tent, remained at the entrance talking to some
-generals of his acquaintance.
-
-The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom and was finishing his
-toilet. Slightly snorting and grunting, he presented now his back and
-now his plump hairy chest to the brush with which his valet was rubbing
-him down. Another valet, with his finger over the mouth of a bottle,
-was sprinkling Eau de Cologne on the Emperor’s pampered body with an
-expression which seemed to say that he alone knew where and how much Eau
-de Cologne should be sprinkled. Napoleon’s short hair was wet and
-matted on the forehead, but his face, though puffy and yellow, expressed
-physical satisfaction. “Go on, harder, go on!” he muttered to the valet
-who was rubbing him, slightly twitching and grunting. An aide-de-camp,
-who had entered the bedroom to report to the Emperor the number of
-prisoners taken in yesterday’s action, was standing by the door after
-delivering his message, awaiting permission to withdraw. Napoleon,
-frowning, looked at him from under his brows.
-
-“No prisoners!” said he, repeating the aide-de-camp’s words. “They
-are forcing us to exterminate them. So much the worse for the Russian
-army.... Go on... harder, harder!” he muttered, hunching his back and
-presenting his fat shoulders.
-
-“All right. Let Monsieur de Beausset enter, and Fabvier too,” he said,
-nodding to the aide-de-camp.
-
-“Yes, sire,” and the aide-de-camp disappeared through the door of the
-tent.
-
-Two valets rapidly dressed His Majesty, and wearing the blue uniform of
-the Guards he went with firm quick steps to the reception room.
-
-De Beausset’s hands meanwhile were busily engaged arranging the present
-he had brought from the Empress, on two chairs directly in front of the
-entrance. But Napoleon had dressed and come out with such unexpected
-rapidity that he had not time to finish arranging the surprise.
-
-Napoleon noticed at once what they were about and guessed that they were
-not ready. He did not wish to deprive them of the pleasure of giving him
-a surprise, so he pretended not to see de Beausset and called Fabvier to
-him, listening silently and with a stern frown to what Fabvier told him
-of the heroism and devotion of his troops fighting at Salamanca, at
-the other end of Europe, with but one thought—to be worthy of their
-Emperor—and but one fear—to fail to please him. The result of that
-battle had been deplorable. Napoleon made ironic remarks during
-Fabvier’s account, as if he had not expected that matters could go
-otherwise in his absence.
-
-“I must make up for that in Moscow,” said Napoleon. “I’ll see you
-later,” he added, and summoned de Beausset, who by that time had
-prepared the surprise, having placed something on the chairs and covered
-it with a cloth.
-
-De Beausset bowed low, with that courtly French bow which only the
-old retainers of the Bourbons knew how to make, and approached him,
-presenting an envelope.
-
-Napoleon turned to him gaily and pulled his ear.
-
-“You have hurried here. I am very glad. Well, what is Paris saying?” he
-asked, suddenly changing his former stern expression for a most cordial
-tone.
-
-“Sire, all Paris regrets your absence,” replied de Beausset as was
-proper.
-
-But though Napoleon knew that de Beausset had to say something of this
-kind, and though in his lucid moments he knew it was untrue, he was
-pleased to hear it from him. Again he honored him by touching his ear.
-
-“I am very sorry to have made you travel so far,” said he.
-
-“Sire, I expected nothing less than to find you at the gates of Moscow,”
-replied de Beausset.
-
-Napoleon smiled and, lifting his head absent-mindedly, glanced to the
-right. An aide-de-camp approached with gliding steps and offered him a
-gold snuffbox, which he took.
-
-“Yes, it has happened luckily for you,” he said, raising the open
-snuffbox to his nose. “You are fond of travel, and in three days you
-will see Moscow. You surely did not expect to see that Asiatic capital.
-You will have a pleasant journey.”
-
-De Beausset bowed gratefully at this regard for his taste for travel (of
-which he had not till then been aware).
-
-“Ha, what’s this?” asked Napoleon, noticing that all the courtiers were
-looking at something concealed under a cloth.
-
-With courtly adroitness de Beausset half turned and without turning his
-back to the Emperor retired two steps, twitching off the cloth at the
-same time, and said:
-
-“A present to Your Majesty from the Empress.”
-
-It was a portrait, painted in bright colors by Gérard, of the son borne
-to Napoleon by the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, the boy whom for
-some reason everyone called “The King of Rome.”
-
-A very pretty curly-headed boy with a look of the Christ in the Sistine
-Madonna was depicted playing at stick and ball. The ball represented the
-terrestrial globe and the stick in his other hand a scepter.
-
-Though it was not clear what the artist meant to express by depicting
-the so-called King of Rome spiking the earth with a stick, the allegory
-apparently seemed to Napoleon, as it had done to all who had seen it in
-Paris, quite clear and very pleasing.
-
-“The King of Rome!” he said, pointing to the portrait with a graceful
-gesture. “Admirable!”
-
-With the natural capacity of an Italian for changing the expression of
-his face at will, he drew nearer to the portrait and assumed a look
-of pensive tenderness. He felt that what he now said and did would be
-historical, and it seemed to him that it would now be best for him—whose
-grandeur enabled his son to play stick and ball with the terrestrial
-globe—to show, in contrast to that grandeur, the simplest paternal
-tenderness. His eyes grew dim, he moved forward, glanced round at a
-chair (which seemed to place itself under him), and sat down on it
-before the portrait. At a single gesture from him everyone went out on
-tiptoe, leaving the great man to himself and his emotion.
-
-Having sat still for a while he touched—himself not knowing why—the
-thick spot of paint representing the highest light in the portrait,
-rose, and recalled de Beausset and the officer on duty. He ordered the
-portrait to be carried outside his tent, that the Old Guard, stationed
-round it, might not be deprived of the pleasure of seeing the King of
-Rome, the son and heir of their adored monarch.
-
-And while he was doing M. de Beausset the honor of breakfasting with
-him, they heard, as Napoleon had anticipated, the rapturous cries of the
-officers and men of the Old Guard who had run up to see the portrait.
-
-“Vive l’Empereur! Vive le roi de Rome! Vive l’Empereur!” came those
-ecstatic cries.
-
-After breakfast Napoleon in de Beausset’s presence dictated his order of
-the day to the army.
-
-“Short and energetic!” he remarked when he had read over the
-proclamation which he had dictated straight off without corrections. It
-ran:
-
-Soldiers! This is the battle you have so longed for. Victory depends on
-you. It is essential for us; it will give us all we need: comfortable
-quarters and a speedy return to our country. Behave as you did at
-Austerlitz, Friedland, Vítebsk, and Smolénsk. Let our remotest posterity
-recall your achievements this day with pride. Let it be said of each of
-you: “He was in the great battle before Moscow!”
-
-“Before Moscow!” repeated Napoleon, and inviting M. de Beausset, who was
-so fond of travel, to accompany him on his ride, he went out of the tent
-to where the horses stood saddled.
-
-“Your Majesty is too kind!” replied de Beausset to the invitation to
-accompany the Emperor; he wanted to sleep, did not know how to ride and
-was afraid of doing so.
-
-But Napoleon nodded to the traveler, and de Beausset had to mount. When
-Napoleon came out of the tent the shouting of the Guards before his
-son’s portrait grew still louder. Napoleon frowned.
-
-“Take him away!” he said, pointing with a gracefully majestic gesture to
-the portrait. “It is too soon for him to see a field of battle.”
-
-De Beausset closed his eyes, bowed his head, and sighed deeply, to
-indicate how profoundly he valued and comprehended the Emperor’s words.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVII
-
-On the twenty-fifth of August, so his historians tell us, Napoleon spent
-the whole day on horseback inspecting the locality, considering plans
-submitted to him by his marshals, and personally giving commands to his
-generals.
-
-The original line of the Russian forces along the river Kolochá had
-been dislocated by the capture of the Shevárdino Redoubt on the
-twenty-fourth, and part of the line—the left flank—had been drawn back.
-That part of the line was not entrenched and in front of it the ground
-was more open and level than elsewhere. It was evident to anyone,
-military or not, that it was here the French should attack. It would
-seem that not much consideration was needed to reach this conclusion,
-nor any particular care or trouble on the part of the Emperor and his
-marshals, nor was there any need of that special and supreme quality
-called genius that people are so apt to ascribe to Napoleon; yet the
-historians who described the event later and the men who then surrounded
-Napoleon, and he himself, thought otherwise.
-
-Napoleon rode over the plain and surveyed the locality with a profound
-air and in silence, nodded with approval or shook his head dubiously,
-and without communicating to the generals around him the profound
-course of ideas which guided his decisions merely gave them his final
-conclusions in the form of commands. Having listened to a suggestion
-from Davout, who was now called Prince d’Eckmühl, to turn the Russian
-left wing, Napoleon said it should not be done, without explaining
-why not. To a proposal made by General Campan (who was to attack the
-flèches) to lead his division through the woods, Napoleon agreed, though
-the so-called Duke of Elchingen (Ney) ventured to remark that a movement
-through the woods was dangerous and might disorder the division.
-
-Having inspected the country opposite the Shevárdino Redoubt, Napoleon
-pondered a little in silence and then indicated the spots where two
-batteries should be set up by the morrow to act against the Russian
-entrenchments, and the places where, in line with them, the field
-artillery should be placed.
-
-After giving these and other commands he returned to his tent, and the
-dispositions for the battle were written down from his dictation.
-
-These dispositions, of which the French historians write with enthusiasm
-and other historians with profound respect, were as follows:
-
-At dawn the two new batteries established during the night on the
-plain occupied by the Prince d’Eckmühl will open fire on the opposing
-batteries of the enemy.
-
-At the same time the commander of the artillery of the 1st Corps,
-General Pernetti, with thirty cannon of Campan’s division and all the
-howitzers of Dessaix’s and Friant’s divisions, will move forward, open
-fire, and overwhelm with shellfire the enemy’s battery, against which
-will operate:
-
- 24 guns of the artillery of the Guards
- 30 guns of Campan’s division
-
- and 8 guns of Friant’s and Dessaix’s divisions
- —
-
- in all 62 guns.
-
-The commander of the artillery of the 3rd Corps, General Fouché, will
-place the howitzers of the 3rd and 8th Corps, sixteen in all, on the
-flanks of the battery that is to bombard the entrenchment on the left,
-which will have forty guns in all directed against it.
-
-General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to advance with all the
-howitzers of the Guard’s artillery against either one or other of the
-entrenchments.
-
-During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to advance through the wood
-on the village and turn the enemy’s position.
-
-General Campan will move through the wood to seize the first
-fortification.
-
-After the advance has begun in this manner, orders will be given in
-accordance with the enemy’s movements.
-
-The cannonade on the left flank will begin as soon as the guns of the
-right wing are heard. The sharpshooters of Morand’s division and of
-the vice-King’s division will open a heavy fire on seeing the attack
-commence on the right wing.
-
-The vice-King will occupy the village and cross by its three bridges,
-advancing to the same heights as Morand’s and Gibrard’s divisions, which
-under his leadership will be directed against the redoubt and come into
-line with the rest of the forces.
-
-All this must be done in good order (le tout se fera avec ordre et
-méthode) as far as possible retaining troops in reserve.
-
-The Imperial Camp near Mozháysk,
-
-September, 6, 1812.
-
-
-These dispositions, which are very obscure and confused if one allows
-oneself to regard the arrangements without religious awe of his genius,
-related to Napoleon’s orders to deal with four points—four different
-orders. Not one of these was, or could be, carried out.
-
-In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed on the
-spot chosen by Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti and Fouché; which
-were to come in line with them, 102 guns in all, were to open fire and
-shower shells on the Russian flèches and redoubts. This could not be
-done, as from the spots selected by Napoleon the projectiles did not
-carry to the Russian works, and those 102 guns shot into the air until
-the nearest commander, contrary to Napoleon’s instructions, moved them
-forward.
-
-The second order was that Poniatowski, moving to the village through the
-wood, should turn the Russian left flank. This could not be done and
-was not done, because Poniatowski, advancing on the village through the
-wood, met Túchkov there barring his way, and could not and did not turn
-the Russian position.
-
-The third order was: General Campan will move through the wood to seize
-the first fortification. General Campan’s division did not seize the
-first fortification but was driven back, for on emerging from the wood
-it had to reform under grapeshot, of which Napoleon was unaware.
-
-The fourth order was: The vice-King will occupy the village (Borodinó)
-and cross by its three bridges, advancing to the same heights as
-Morand’s and Gérard’s divisions (for whose movements no directions are
-given), which under his leadership will be directed against the redoubt
-and come into line with the rest of the forces.
-
-As far as one can make out, not so much from this unintelligible
-sentence as from the attempts the vice-King made to execute the orders
-given him, he was to advance from the left through Borodinó to the
-redoubt while the divisions of Morand and Gérard were to advance
-simultaneously from the front.
-
-All this, like the other parts of the disposition, was not and could
-not be executed. After passing through Borodinó the vice-King was driven
-back to the Kolochá and could get no farther; while the divisions of
-Morand and Gérard did not take the redoubt but were driven back, and the
-redoubt was only taken at the end of the battle by the cavalry (a thing
-probably unforeseen and not heard of by Napoleon). So not one of
-the orders in the disposition was, or could be, executed. But in the
-disposition it is said that, after the fight has commenced in this
-manner, orders will be given in accordance with the enemy’s movements,
-and so it might be supposed that all necessary arrangements would be
-made by Napoleon during the battle. But this was not and could not be
-done, for during the whole battle Napoleon was so far away that, as
-appeared later, he could not know the course of the battle and not one
-of his orders during the fight could be executed.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVIII
-
-Many historians say that the French did not win the battle of Borodinó
-because Napoleon had a cold, and that if he had not had a cold the
-orders he gave before and during the battle would have been still more
-full of genius and Russia would have been lost and the face of the world
-have been changed. To historians who believe that Russia was shaped
-by the will of one man—Peter the Great—and that France from a republic
-became an empire and French armies went to Russia at the will of one
-man—Napoleon—to say that Russia remained a power because Napoleon had a
-bad cold on the twenty-fourth of August may seem logical and convincing.
-
-If it had depended on Napoleon’s will to fight or not to fight the
-battle of Borodinó, and if this or that other arrangement depended on
-his will, then evidently a cold affecting the manifestation of his will
-might have saved Russia, and consequently the valet who omitted to bring
-Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth would have been
-the savior of Russia. Along that line of thought such a deduction is
-indubitable, as indubitable as the deduction Voltaire made in jest
-(without knowing what he was jesting at) when he saw that the Massacre
-of St. Bartholomew was due to Charles IX’s stomach being deranged. But
-to men who do not admit that Russia was formed by the will of one man,
-Peter I, or that the French Empire was formed and the war with Russia
-begun by the will of one man, Napoleon, that argument seems not merely
-untrue and irrational, but contrary to all human reality. To the
-question of what causes historic events another answer presents itself,
-namely, that the course of human events is predetermined from on
-high—depends on the coincidence of the wills of all who take part in the
-events, and that a Napoleon’s influence on the course of these events is
-purely external and fictitious.
-
-Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that the Massacre of
-St. Bartholomew was not due to Charles IX’s will, though he gave the
-order for it and thought it was done as a result of that order; and
-strange as it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of eighty thousand
-men at Borodinó was not due to Napoleon’s will, though he ordered the
-commencement and conduct of the battle and thought it was done
-because he ordered it; strange as these suppositions appear, yet human
-dignity—which tells me that each of us is, if not more at least not less
-a man than the great Napoleon—demands the acceptance of that solution of
-the question, and historic investigation abundantly confirms it.
-
-At the battle of Borodinó Napoleon shot at no one and killed no one.
-That was all done by the soldiers. Therefore it was not he who killed
-people.
-
-The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of Borodinó
-not because of Napoleon’s orders but by their own volition. The whole
-army—French, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutch—hungry, ragged, and
-weary of the campaign, felt at the sight of an army blocking their road
-to Moscow that the wine was drawn and must be drunk. Had Napoleon then
-forbidden them to fight the Russians, they would have killed him and
-have proceeded to fight the Russians because it was inevitable.
-
-When they heard Napoleon’s proclamation offering them, as compensation
-for mutilation and death, the words of posterity about their having been
-in the battle before Moscow, they cried “Vive l’Empereur!” just as they
-had cried “Vive l’Empereur!” at the sight of the portrait of the boy
-piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy stick, and just as they would
-have cried “Vive l’Empereur!” at any nonsense that might be told them.
-There was nothing left for them to do but cry “Vive l’Empereur!” and go
-to fight, in order to get food and rest as conquerors in Moscow. So it
-was not because of Napoleon’s commands that they killed their fellow
-men.
-
-And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for none
-of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know what
-was going on before him. So the way in which these people killed one
-another was not decided by Napoleon’s will but occurred independently of
-him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands of people who took
-part in the common action. It only seemed to Napoleon that it all took
-place by his will. And so the question whether he had or had not a
-cold has no more historic interest than the cold of the least of the
-transport soldiers.
-
-Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was
-the cause of his dispositions not being as well-planned as on former
-occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as
-previously, is quite baseless, which again shows that Napoleon’s cold on
-the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant.
-
-The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even
-better, than previous dispositions by which he had won victories. His
-pseudo-orders during the battle were also no worse than formerly, but
-much the same as usual. These dispositions and orders only seem worse
-than previous ones because the battle of Borodinó was the first Napoleon
-did not win. The profoundest and most excellent dispositions and orders
-seem very bad, and every learned militarist criticizes them with looks
-of importance, when they relate to a battle that has been lost, and the
-very worst dispositions and orders seem very good, and serious people
-fill whole volumes to demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a
-battle that has been won.
-
-The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of Austerlitz were
-a model of perfection for that kind of composition, but still they were
-criticized—criticized for their very perfection, for their excessive
-minuteness.
-
-Napoleon at the battle of Borodinó fulfilled his office as
-representative of authority as well as, and even better than, at other
-battles. He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle; he
-inclined to the most reasonable opinions, he made no confusion, did not
-contradict himself, did not get frightened or run away from the field of
-battle, but with his great tact and military experience carried out his
-role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIX
-
-On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon remarked:
-
-“The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!”
-
-Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he began to talk to him
-about Paris and about some changes he meant to make in the Empress’
-household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details
-relating to the court.
-
-He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset’s love of
-travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon who
-knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on his apron
-while a patient is being strapped to the operating table. “The matter is
-in my hands and is clear and definite in my head. When the time comes to
-set to work I shall do it as no one else could, but now I can jest, and
-the more I jest and the calmer I am the more tranquil and confident you
-ought to be, and the more amazed at my genius.”
-
-Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon went to rest before
-the serious business which, he considered, awaited him next day. He
-was so much interested in that task that he was unable to sleep, and
-in spite of his cold which had grown worse from the dampness of the
-evening, he went into the large division of the tent at three o’clock in
-the morning, loudly blowing his nose. He asked whether the Russians had
-not withdrawn, and was told that the enemy’s fires were still in the
-same places. He nodded approval.
-
-The adjutant in attendance came into the tent.
-
-“Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business today?” Napoleon
-asked him.
-
-“Without doubt, sire,” replied Rapp.
-
-Napoleon looked at him.
-
-“Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to say at Smolénsk?”
-continued Rapp. “The wine is drawn and must be drunk.”
-
-Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time leaning his head on his
-hand.
-
-“This poor army!” he suddenly remarked. “It has diminished greatly since
-Smolénsk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always said so
-and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the Guards
-are intact?” he remarked interrogatively.
-
-“Yes, sire,” replied Rapp.
-
-Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and glanced at his watch.
-He was not sleepy and it was still not nearly morning. It was impossible
-to give further orders for the sake of killing time, for the orders had
-all been given and were now being executed.
-
-“Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of the
-Guards?” asked Napoleon sternly.
-
-“Yes, sire.”
-
-“The rice too?”
-
-Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor’s order about the rice, but
-Napoleon shook his head in dissatisfaction as if not believing that
-his order had been executed. An attendant came in with punch. Napoleon
-ordered another glass to be brought for Rapp, and silently sipped his
-own.
-
-“I have neither taste nor smell,” he remarked, sniffing at his glass.
-“This cold is tiresome. They talk about medicine—what is the good of
-medicine when it can’t cure a cold! Corvisart gave me these lozenges but
-they don’t help at all. What can doctors cure? One can’t cure anything.
-Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its
-nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it
-will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.
-Our body is like a perfect watch that should go for a certain time; the
-watchmaker cannot open it, he can only adjust it by fumbling, and that
-blindfold.... Yes, our body is just a machine for living, that is all.”
-
-And having entered on the path of definition, of which he was fond,
-Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a new one.
-
-“Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?” asked he. “It is the art of
-being stronger than the enemy at a given moment. That’s all.”
-
-Rapp made no reply.
-
-“Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutúzov!” said Napoleon. “We shall
-see! Do you remember at Braunau he commanded an army for three weeks
-and did not once mount a horse to inspect his entrenchments.... We shall
-see!”
-
-He looked at his watch. It was still only four o’clock. He did not feel
-sleepy. The punch was finished and there was still nothing to do. He
-rose, walked to and fro, put on a warm overcoat and a hat, and went
-out of the tent. The night was dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible
-moisture was descending from above. Near by, the campfires were dimly
-burning among the French Guards, and in the distance those of the
-Russian line shone through the smoke. The weather was calm, and the
-rustle and tramp of the French troops already beginning to move to take
-up their positions were clearly audible.
-
-Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at the fires and
-listened to these sounds, and as he was passing a tall guardsman in
-a shaggy cap, who was standing sentinel before his tent and had drawn
-himself up like a black pillar at sight of the Emperor, Napoleon stopped
-in front of him.
-
-“What year did you enter the service?” he asked with that affectation
-of military bluntness and geniality with which he always addressed the
-soldiers.
-
-The man answered the question.
-
-“Ah! One of the old ones! Has your regiment had its rice?”
-
-“It has, Your Majesty.”
-
-Napoleon nodded and walked away.
-
-
-At half-past five Napoleon rode to the village of Shevárdino.
-
-It was growing light, the sky was clearing, only a single cloud lay in
-the east. The abandoned campfires were burning themselves out in the
-faint morning light.
-
-On the right a single deep report of a cannon resounded and died away in
-the prevailing silence. Some minutes passed. A second and a third report
-shook the air, then a fourth and a fifth boomed solemnly near by on the
-right.
-
-The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before others rang out
-and yet more were heard mingling with and overtaking one another.
-
-Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevárdino Redoubt where he
-dismounted. The game had begun.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXX
-
-On returning to Górki after having seen Prince Andrew, Pierre ordered
-his groom to get the horses ready and to call him early in the morning,
-and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a corner Borís
-had given up to him.
-
-Before he was thoroughly awake next morning everybody had already left
-the hut. The panes were rattling in the little windows and his groom was
-shaking him.
-
-“Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!” he kept repeating
-pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by the shoulder without looking at
-him, having apparently lost hope of getting him to wake up.
-
-“What? Has it begun? Is it time?” Pierre asked, waking up.
-
-“Hear the firing,” said the groom, a discharged soldier. “All the
-gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene Highness himself rode past long
-ago.”
-
-Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all was bright,
-fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just bursting forth from behind a
-cloud that had concealed it, was shining, with rays still half broken
-by the clouds, over the roofs of the street opposite, on the
-dew-besprinkled dust of the road, on the walls of the houses, on the
-windows, the fence, and on Pierre’s horses standing before the hut. The
-roar of guns sounded more distinct outside. An adjutant accompanied by a
-Cossack passed by at a sharp trot.
-
-“It’s time, Count; it’s time!” cried the adjutant.
-
-Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre went down the
-street to the knoll from which he had looked at the field of battle the
-day before. A crowd of military men was assembled there, members of the
-staff could be heard conversing in French, and Kutúzov’s gray head in
-a white cap with a red band was visible, his gray nape sunk between his
-shoulders. He was looking through a field glass down the highroad before
-him.
-
-Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene before him,
-spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama he had admired from that
-spot the day before, but now the whole place was full of troops and
-covered by smoke clouds from the guns, and the slanting rays of the
-bright sun, rising slightly to the left behind Pierre, cast upon it
-through the clear morning air penetrating streaks of rosy, golden-tinted
-light and long dark shadows. The forest at the farthest extremity of
-the panorama seemed carved in some precious stone of a yellowish-green
-color; its undulating outline was silhouetted against the horizon and
-was pierced beyond Valúevo by the Smolénsk highroad crowded with troops.
-Nearer at hand glittered golden cornfields interspersed with copses.
-There were troops to be seen everywhere, in front and to the right and
-left. All this was vivid, majestic, and unexpected; but what impressed
-Pierre most of all was the view of the battlefield itself, of Borodinó
-and the hollows on both sides of the Kolochá.
-
-Above the Kolochá, in Borodinó and on both sides of it, especially to
-the left where the Vóyna flowing between its marshy banks falls into
-the Kolochá, a mist had spread which seemed to melt, to dissolve, and to
-become translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and magically colored
-and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns mingled with this mist,
-and over the whole expanse and through that mist the rays of the morning
-sun were reflected, flashing back like lightning from the water, from
-the dew, and from the bayonets of the troops crowded together by the
-riverbanks and in Borodinó. A white church could be seen through the
-mist, and here and there the roofs of huts in Borodinó as well as dense
-masses of soldiers, or green ammunition chests and ordnance. And all
-this moved, or seemed to move, as the smoke and mist spread out over
-the whole space. Just as in the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodinó, so
-along the entire line outside and above it and especially in the woods
-and fields to the left, in the valleys and on the summits of the high
-ground, clouds of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of
-nothing, now singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others
-dense, which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over
-the whole expanse.
-
-These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of the firing
-produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.
-
-“Puff!”—suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was seen merging from
-violet into gray and milky white, and “boom!” came the report a second
-later.
-
-“Puff! puff!”—and two clouds arose pushing one another and blending
-together; and “boom, boom!” came the sounds confirming what the eye had
-seen.
-
-Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had seen as a round
-compact ball, and in its place already were balloons of smoke floating
-to one side, and—“puff” (with a pause)—“puff, puff!” three and then four
-more appeared and then from each, with the same interval—“boom—boom,
-boom!” came the fine, firm, precise sounds in reply. It seemed as if
-those smoke clouds sometimes ran and sometimes stood still while woods,
-fields, and glittering bayonets ran past them. From the left, over
-fields and bushes, those large balls of smoke were continually appearing
-followed by their solemn reports, while nearer still, in the hollows and
-woods, there burst from the muskets small cloudlets that had no time
-to become balls, but had their little echoes in just the same way.
-“Trakh-ta-ta-takh!” came the frequent crackle of musketry, but it was
-irregular and feeble in comparison with the reports of the cannon.
-
-Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets, that
-movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutúzov and his suite,
-to compare his impressions with those of others. They were all looking
-at the field of battle as he was, and, as it seemed to him, with the
-same feelings. All their faces were now shining with that latent warmth
-of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before and had fully understood
-after his talk with Prince Andrew.
-
-“Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!” Kutúzov was
-saying to a general who stood beside him, not taking his eye from the
-battlefield.
-
-Having received this order the general passed by Pierre on his way down
-the knoll.
-
-“To the crossing!” said the general coldly and sternly in reply to one
-of the staff who asked where he was going.
-
-“I’ll go there too, I too!” thought Pierre, and followed the general.
-
-The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought him. Pierre went to
-his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which was the quietest,
-clambered onto it, seized it by the mane, and turning out his toes
-pressed his heels against its sides and, feeling that his spectacles
-were slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and reins, he
-galloped after the general, causing the staff officers to smile as they
-watched him from the knoll.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXI
-
-Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre was galloping
-turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him, galloped
-in among some ranks of infantry marching ahead of him. He tried to pass
-either in front of them or to the right or left, but there were soldiers
-everywhere, all with the same preoccupied expression and busy with
-some unseen but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same
-dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in a white hat,
-who for some unknown reason threatened to trample them under his horse’s
-hoofs.
-
-“Why ride into the middle of the battalion?” one of them shouted at him.
-
-Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a musket, and Pierre,
-bending over his saddlebow and hardly able to control his shying horse,
-galloped ahead of the soldiers where there was a free space.
-
-There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers stood firing.
-Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware of it he had come to the
-bridge across the Kolochá between Górki and Borodinó, which the French
-(having occupied Borodinó) were attacking in the first phase of the
-battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front of him and that
-soldiers were doing something on both sides of it and in the meadow,
-among the rows of new-mown hay which he had taken no notice of amid the
-smoke of the campfires the day before; but despite the incessant firing
-going on there he had no idea that this was the field of battle. He did
-not notice the sound of the bullets whistling from every side, or the
-projectiles that flew over him, did not see the enemy on the other side
-of the river, and for a long time did not notice the killed and wounded,
-though many fell near him. He looked about him with a smile which did
-not leave his face.
-
-“Why’s that fellow in front of the line?” shouted somebody at him again.
-
-“To the left!... Keep to the right!” the men shouted to him.
-
-Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered one of Raévski’s
-adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant looked angrily at him, evidently
-also intending to shout at him, but on recognizing him he nodded.
-
-“How have you got here?” he said, and galloped on.
-
-Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do, and afraid of
-getting in someone’s way again, galloped after the adjutant.
-
-“What’s happening here? May I come with you?” he asked.
-
-“One moment, one moment!” replied the adjutant, and riding up to a stout
-colonel who was standing in the meadow, he gave him some message and
-then addressed Pierre.
-
-“Why have you come here, Count?” he asked with a smile. “Still
-inquisitive?”
-
-“Yes, yes,” assented Pierre.
-
-But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on.
-
-“Here it’s tolerable,” said he, “but with Bagratión on the left flank
-they’re getting it frightfully hot.”
-
-“Really?” said Pierre. “Where is that?”
-
-“Come along with me to our knoll. We can get a view from there and in
-our battery it is still bearable,” said the adjutant. “Will you come?”
-
-“Yes, I’ll come with you,” replied Pierre, looking round for his groom.
-
-It was only now that he noticed wounded men staggering along or being
-carried on stretchers. On that very meadow he had ridden over the day
-before, a soldier was lying athwart the rows of scented hay, with his
-head thrown awkwardly back and his shako off.
-
-“Why haven’t they carried him away?” Pierre was about to ask, but seeing
-the stern expression of the adjutant who was also looking that way, he
-checked himself.
-
-Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the hollow with the
-adjutant to Raévski’s Redoubt. His horse lagged behind the adjutant’s
-and jolted him at every step.
-
-“You don’t seem to be used to riding, Count?” remarked the adjutant.
-
-“No it’s not that, but her action seems so jerky,” said Pierre in a
-puzzled tone.
-
-“Why... she’s wounded!” said the adjutant. “In the off foreleg above the
-knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate you, Count, on your baptism of
-fire!”
-
-Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps, behind the artillery
-which had been moved forward and was in action, deafening them with the
-noise of firing, they came to a small wood. There it was cool and quiet,
-with a scent of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant dismounted and walked up
-the hill on foot.
-
-“Is the general here?” asked the adjutant on reaching the knoll.
-
-“He was here a minute ago but has just gone that way,” someone told him,
-pointing to the right.
-
-The adjutant looked at Pierre as if puzzled what to do with him now.
-
-“Don’t trouble about me,” said Pierre. “I’ll go up onto the knoll if I
-may?”
-
-“Yes, do. You’ll see everything from there and it’s less dangerous, and
-I’ll come for you.”
-
-Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on. They did not meet
-again, and only much later did Pierre learn that he lost an arm that
-day.
-
-The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous one afterwards known
-to the Russians as the Knoll Battery or Raévski’s Redoubt, and to the
-French as la grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du centre,
-around which tens of thousands fell, and which the French regarded as
-the key to the whole position.
-
-This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which trenches had
-been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that were being fired
-through openings in the earthwork.
-
-In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns which also fired
-incessantly. A little behind the guns stood infantry. When ascending
-that knoll Pierre had no notion that this spot, on which small trenches
-had been dug and from which a few guns were firing, was the most
-important point of the battle.
-
-On the contrary, just because he happened to be there he thought it one
-of the least significant parts of the field.
-
-Having reached the knoll, Pierre sat down at one end of a trench
-surrounding the battery and gazed at what was going on around him with
-an unconsciously happy smile. Occasionally he rose and walked about the
-battery still with that same smile, trying not to obstruct the soldiers
-who were loading, hauling the guns, and continually running past
-him with bags and charges. The guns of that battery were being fired
-continually one after another with a deafening roar, enveloping the
-whole neighborhood in powder smoke.
-
-In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen placed in support,
-here in the battery where a small number of men busy at their work were
-separated from the rest by a trench, everyone experienced a common and
-as it were family feeling of animation.
-
-The intrusion of Pierre’s nonmilitary figure in a white hat made an
-unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked askance at him with
-surprise and even alarm as they went past him. The senior artillery
-officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over to Pierre as if
-to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at him with curiosity.
-
-A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only just
-out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two guns
-entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.
-
-“Sir,” he said, “permit me to ask you to stand aside. You must not be
-here.”
-
-The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at Pierre.
-But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the white hat
-was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of the trench
-with a shy smile or, politely making way for the soldiers, paced up
-and down the battery under fire as calmly as if he were on a boulevard,
-their feeling of hostile distrust gradually began to change into a
-kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers feel for their dogs,
-cocks, goats, and in general for the animals that live with the
-regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre into their family, adopted him,
-gave him a nickname (“our gentleman”), and made kindly fun of him among
-themselves.
-
-A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he looked around
-with a smile as he brushed from his clothes some earth it had thrown up.
-
-“And how’s it you’re not afraid, sir, really now?” a red-faced,
-broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin that disclosed a set
-of sound, white teeth.
-
-“Are you afraid, then?” said Pierre.
-
-“What else do you expect?” answered the soldier. “She has no mercy, you
-know! When she comes spluttering down, out go your innards. One can’t
-help being afraid,” he said laughing.
-
-Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre.
-They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and the
-discovery that he did so delighted them.
-
-“It’s the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it’s wonderful!
-There’s a gentleman for you!”
-
-“To your places!” cried the young officer to the men gathered round
-Pierre.
-
-The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the first or
-second time and therefore treated both his superiors and the men with
-great precision and formality.
-
-The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing more
-intense over the whole field, especially to the left where Bagratión’s
-flèches were, but where Pierre was the smoke of the firing made it
-almost impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole
-attention was engrossed by watching the family circle—separated from all
-else—formed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious feeling of
-joyful animation produced by the sights and sounds of the battlefield
-was now replaced by another, especially since he had seen that soldier
-lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the slope of the trench, he
-observed the faces of those around him.
-
-By ten o’clock some twenty men had already been carried away from the
-battery; two guns were smashed and cannon balls fell more and more
-frequently on the battery and spent bullets buzzed and whistled around.
-But the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and merry voices
-and jokes were heard on all sides.
-
-“A live one!” shouted a man as a whistling shell approached.
-
-“Not this way! To the infantry!” added another with loud laughter,
-seeing the shell fly past and fall into the ranks of the supports.
-
-“Are you bowing to a friend, eh?” remarked another, chaffing a peasant
-who ducked low as a cannon ball flew over.
-
-Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench, looking out to see
-what was happening in front.
-
-“They’ve withdrawn the front line, it has retired,” said they, pointing
-over the earthwork.
-
-“Mind your own business,” an old sergeant shouted at them. “If they’ve
-retired it’s because there’s work for them to do farther back.”
-
-And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the shoulders, gave him a
-shove with his knee. This was followed by a burst of laughter.
-
-“To the fifth gun, wheel it up!” came shouts from one side.
-
-“Now then, all together, like bargees!” rose the merry voices of those
-who were moving the gun.
-
-“Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman’s hat off!” cried the red-faced
-humorist, showing his teeth chaffing Pierre. “Awkward baggage!” he added
-reproachfully to a cannon ball that struck a cannon wheel and a man’s
-leg.
-
-“Now then, you foxes!” said another, laughing at some militiamen who,
-stooping low, entered the battery to carry away the wounded man.
-
-“So this gruel isn’t to your taste? Oh, you crows! You’re scared!” they
-shouted at the militiamen who stood hesitating before the man whose leg
-had been torn off.
-
-“There, lads... oh, oh!” they mimicked the peasants, “they don’t like it
-at all!”
-
-Pierre noticed that after every ball that hit the redoubt, and after
-every loss, the liveliness increased more and more.
-
-As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly and
-rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in opposition to
-what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire growing more and
-more intense glowed in the faces of these men.
-
-Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not concerned to know
-what was happening there; he was entirely absorbed in watching this fire
-which burned ever more brightly and which he felt was flaming up in the
-same way in his own soul.
-
-At ten o’clock the infantry that had been among the bushes in front of
-the battery and along the Kámenka streamlet retreated. From the battery
-they could be seen running back past it carrying their wounded on
-their muskets. A general with his suite came to the battery, and after
-speaking to the colonel gave Pierre an angry look and went away again
-having ordered the infantry supports behind the battery to lie down,
-so as to be less exposed to fire. After this from amid the ranks of
-infantry to the right of the battery came the sound of a drum and shouts
-of command, and from the battery one saw how those ranks of infantry
-moved forward.
-
-Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly struck
-by a pale young officer who, letting his sword hang down, was walking
-backwards and kept glancing uneasily around.
-
-The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke but their
-long-drawn shout and rapid musketry firing could still be heard. A few
-minutes later crowds of wounded men and stretcher-bearers came back from
-that direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently in the
-battery. Several men were lying about who had not been removed. Around
-the cannon the men moved still more briskly and busily. No one any
-longer took notice of Pierre. Once or twice he was shouted at for being
-in the way. The senior officer moved with big, rapid strides from one
-gun to another with a frowning face. The young officer, with his face
-still more flushed, commanded the men more scrupulously than ever. The
-soldiers handed up the charges, turned, loaded, and did their business
-with strained smartness. They gave little jumps as they walked, as
-though they were on springs.
-
-The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every face the fire which
-Pierre had watched kindle burned up brightly. Pierre standing beside the
-commanding officer. The young officer, his hand to his shako, ran up to
-his superior.
-
-“I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds are left. Are
-we to continue firing?” he asked.
-
-“Grapeshot!” the senior shouted, without answering the question, looking
-over the wall of the trench.
-
-Suddenly something happened: the young officer gave a gasp and bending
-double sat down on the ground like a bird shot on the wing. Everything
-became strange, confused, and misty in Pierre’s eyes.
-
-One cannon ball after another whistled by and struck the earthwork, a
-soldier, or a gun. Pierre, who had not noticed these sounds before,
-now heard nothing else. On the right of the battery soldiers shouting
-“Hurrah!” were running not forwards but backwards, it seemed to Pierre.
-
-A cannon ball struck the very end of the earth work by which he was
-standing, crumbling down the earth; a black ball flashed before his eyes
-and at the same instant plumped into something. Some militiamen who were
-entering the battery ran back.
-
-“All with grapeshot!” shouted the officer.
-
-The sergeant ran up to the officer and in a frightened whisper informed
-him (as a butler at dinner informs his master that there is no more of
-some wine asked for) that there were no more charges.
-
-“The scoundrels! What are they doing?” shouted the officer, turning to
-Pierre.
-
-The officer’s face was red and perspiring and his eyes glittered under
-his frowning brow.
-
-“Run to the reserves and bring up the ammunition boxes!” he yelled,
-angrily avoiding Pierre with his eyes and speaking to his men.
-
-“I’ll go,” said Pierre.
-
-The officer, without answering him, strode across to the opposite side.
-
-“Don’t fire.... Wait!” he shouted.
-
-The man who had been ordered to go for ammunition stumbled against
-Pierre.
-
-“Eh, sir, this is no place for you,” said he, and ran down the slope.
-
-Pierre ran after him, avoiding the spot where the young officer was
-sitting.
-
-One cannon ball, another, and a third flew over him, falling in front,
-beside, and behind him. Pierre ran down the slope. “Where am I going?”
-he suddenly asked himself when he was already near the green ammunition
-wagons. He halted irresolutely, not knowing whether to return or go on.
-Suddenly a terrible concussion threw him backwards to the ground. At the
-same instant he was dazzled by a great flash of flame, and immediately a
-deafening roar, crackling, and whistling made his ears tingle.
-
-When he came to himself he was sitting on the ground leaning on his
-hands; the ammunition wagons he had been approaching no longer existed,
-only charred green boards and rags littered the scorched grass, and a
-horse, dangling fragments of its shaft behind it, galloped past, while
-another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground, uttering prolonged and
-piercing cries.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXII
-
-Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran back to the battery,
-as to the only refuge from the horrors that surrounded him.
-
-On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were men doing something
-there but that no shots were being fired from the battery. He had no
-time to realize who these men were. He saw the senior officer lying on
-the earth wall with his back turned as if he were examining something
-down below and that one of the soldiers he had noticed before was
-struggling forward shouting “Brothers!” and trying to free himself from
-some men who were holding him by the arm. He also saw something else
-that was strange.
-
-But he had not time to realize that the colonel had been killed, that
-the soldier shouting “Brothers!” was a prisoner, and that another man
-had been bayoneted in the back before his eyes, for hardly had he run
-into the redoubt before a thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man in a blue
-uniform rushed on him sword in hand, shouting something. Instinctively
-guarding against the shock—for they had been running together at full
-speed before they saw one another—Pierre put out his hands and seized
-the man (a French officer) by the shoulder with one hand and by the
-throat with the other. The officer, dropping his sword, seized Pierre by
-his collar.
-
-For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at one another’s
-unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at what they had done and
-what they were to do next. “Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him
-prisoner?” each was thinking. But the French officer was evidently more
-inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because Pierre’s strong
-hand, impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever tighter and
-tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something, when just above their
-heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled, and it seemed to Pierre
-that the French officer’s head had been torn off, so swiftly had he
-ducked it.
-
-Pierre too bent his head and let his hands fall. Without further thought
-as to who had taken whom prisoner, the Frenchman ran back to the battery
-and Pierre ran down the slope stumbling over the dead and wounded who,
-it seemed to him, caught at his feet. But before he reached the foot
-of the knoll he was met by a dense crowd of Russian soldiers who,
-stumbling, tripping up, and shouting, ran merrily and wildly toward
-the battery. (This was the attack for which Ermólov claimed the credit,
-declaring that only his courage and good luck made such a feat possible:
-it was the attack in which he was said to have thrown some St. George’s
-Crosses he had in his pocket into the battery for the first soldiers to
-take who got there.)
-
-The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our troops shouting
-“Hurrah!” pursued them so far beyond the battery that it was difficult
-to call them back.
-
-The prisoners were brought down from the battery and among them was
-a wounded French general, whom the officers surrounded. Crowds of
-wounded—some known to Pierre and some unknown—Russians and French,
-with faces distorted by suffering, walked, crawled, and were carried on
-stretchers from the battery. Pierre again went up onto the knoll where
-he had spent over an hour, and of that family circle which had received
-him as a member he did not find a single one. There were many dead whom
-he did not know, but some he recognized. The young officer still sat in
-the same way, bent double, in a pool of blood at the edge of the earth
-wall. The red-faced man was still twitching, but they did not carry him
-away.
-
-Pierre ran down the slope once more.
-
-“Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have
-done!” he thought, aimlessly going toward a crowd of stretcher bearers
-moving from the battlefield.
-
-But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high, and in front and
-especially to the left, near Semënovsk, something seemed to be seething
-in the smoke, and the roar of cannon and musketry did not diminish, but
-even increased to desperation like a man who, straining himself, shrieks
-with all his remaining strength.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIII
-
-The chief action of the battle of Borodinó was fought within the seven
-thousand feet between Borodinó and Bagratión’s flèches. Beyond that
-space there was, on the one side, a demonstration made by the Russians
-with Uvárov’s cavalry at midday, and on the other side, beyond Utítsa,
-Poniatowski’s collision with Túchkov; but these two were detached and
-feeble actions in comparison with what took place in the center of the
-battlefield. On the field between Borodinó and the flèches, beside the
-wood, the chief action of the day took place on an open space visible
-from both sides and was fought in the simplest and most artless way.
-
-The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from several hundred
-guns.
-
-Then when the whole field was covered with smoke, two divisions,
-Campan’s and Dessaix’s, advanced from the French right, while Murat’s
-troops advanced on Borodinó from their left.
-
-From the Shevárdino Redoubt where Napoleon was standing the flèches were
-two thirds of a mile away, and it was more than a mile as the crow flies
-to Borodinó, so that Napoleon could not see what was happening there,
-especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid the whole locality.
-The soldiers of Dessaix’s division advancing against the flèches could
-only be seen till they had entered the hollow that lay between them and
-the flèches. As soon as they had descended into that hollow, the smoke
-of the guns and musketry on the flèches grew so dense that it covered
-the whole approach on that side of it. Through the smoke glimpses could
-be caught of something black—probably men—and at times the glint of
-bayonets. But whether they were moving or stationary, whether they were
-French or Russian, could not be discovered from the Shevárdino Redoubt.
-
-The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck straight into
-Napoleon’s face as, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked at the
-flèches. The smoke spread out before them, and at times it looked as if
-the smoke were moving, at times as if the troops moved. Sometimes shouts
-were heard through the firing, but it was impossible to tell what was
-being done there.
-
-Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field glass, and in
-its small circlet saw smoke and men, sometimes his own and sometimes
-Russians, but when he looked again with the naked eye, he could not tell
-where what he had seen was.
-
-He descended the knoll and began walking up and down before it.
-
-Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and gazed intently at
-the battlefield.
-
-But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from where
-he was standing down below, or from the knoll above on which some of his
-generals had taken their stand, but even from the flèches themselves—in
-which by this time there were now Russian and now French soldiers,
-alternately or together, dead, wounded, alive, frightened, or
-maddened—even at those flèches themselves it was impossible to make out
-what was taking place. There for several hours amid incessant cannon and
-musketry fire, now Russians were seen alone, now Frenchmen alone, now
-infantry, and now cavalry: they appeared, fired, fell, collided, not
-knowing what to do with one another, screamed, and ran back again.
-
-From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from his
-marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with reports of the progress
-of the action, but all these reports were false, both because it was
-impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening at any given
-moment and because many of the adjutants did not go to the actual place
-of conflict but reported what they had heard from others; and also
-because while an adjutant was riding more than a mile to Napoleon
-circumstances changed and the news he brought was already becoming
-false. Thus an adjutant galloped up from Murat with tidings that
-Borodinó had been occupied and the bridge over the Kolochá was in the
-hands of the French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished the
-troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should form up
-on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given—almost
-as soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodinó—the bridge had been
-retaken by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at which Pierre
-had been present at the beginning of the battle.
-
-An adjutant galloped up from the flèches with a pale and frightened face
-and reported to Napoleon that their attack had been repulsed, Campan
-wounded, and Davout killed; yet at the very time the adjutant had been
-told that the French had been repulsed, the flèches had in fact been
-recaptured by other French troops, and Davout was alive and only
-slightly bruised. On the basis of these necessarily untrustworthy
-reports Napoleon gave his orders, which had either been executed before
-he gave them or could not be and were not executed.
-
-The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field of battle
-but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual fighting and only
-occasionally went within musket range, made their own arrangements
-without asking Napoleon and issued orders where and in what direction to
-fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry should run. But even
-their orders, like Napoleon’s, were seldom carried out, and then but
-partially. For the most part things happened contrary to their orders.
-Soldiers ordered to advance ran back on meeting grapeshot; soldiers
-ordered to remain where they were, suddenly, seeing Russians
-unexpectedly before them, sometimes rushed back and sometimes forward,
-and the cavalry dashed without orders in pursuit of the flying Russians.
-In this way two cavalry regiments galloped through the Semënovsk hollow
-and as soon as they reached the top of the incline turned round and
-galloped full speed back again. The infantry moved in the same way,
-sometimes running to quite other places than those they were ordered to
-go to. All orders as to where and when to move the guns, when to send
-infantry to shoot or horsemen to ride down the Russian infantry—all
-such orders were given by the officers on the spot nearest to the
-units concerned, without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much less
-Napoleon. They did not fear getting into trouble for not fulfilling
-orders or for acting on their own initiative, for in battle what is at
-stake is what is dearest to man—his own life—and it sometimes seems that
-safety lies in running back, sometimes in running forward; and these men
-who were right in the heat of the battle acted according to the mood
-of the moment. In reality, however, all these movements forward and
-backward did not improve or alter the position of the troops. All
-their rushing and galloping at one another did little harm, the harm of
-disablement and death was caused by the balls and bullets that flew over
-the fields on which these men were floundering about. As soon as they
-left the place where the balls and bullets were flying about, their
-superiors, located in the background, re-formed them and brought them
-under discipline and under the influence of that discipline led them
-back to the zone of fire, where under the influence of fear of death
-they lost their discipline and rushed about according to the chance
-promptings of the throng.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIV
-
-Napoleon’s generals—Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were near that region of
-fire and sometimes even entered it—repeatedly led into it huge masses of
-well-ordered troops. But contrary to what had always happened in their
-former battles, instead of the news they expected of the enemy’s flight,
-these orderly masses returned thence as disorganized and terrified mobs.
-The generals re-formed them, but their numbers constantly decreased.
-In the middle of the day Murat sent his adjutant to Napoleon to demand
-reinforcements.
-
-Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch, when Murat’s
-adjutant galloped up with an assurance that the Russians would be routed
-if His Majesty would let him have another division.
-
-“Reinforcements?” said Napoleon in a tone of stern surprise, looking at
-the adjutant—a handsome lad with long black curls arranged like Murat’s
-own—as though he did not understand his words.
-
-“Reinforcements!” thought Napoleon to himself. “How can they need
-reinforcements when they already have half the army directed against a
-weak, unentrenched Russian wing?”
-
-“Tell the King of Naples,” said he sternly, “that it is not noon yet,
-and I don’t yet see my chessboard clearly. Go!...”
-
-The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed deeply without
-removing his hand from his hat and galloped back to where men were being
-slaughtered.
-
-Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and Berthier began
-talking to them about matters unconnected with the battle.
-
-In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning to interest
-Napoleon, Berthier’s eyes turned to look at a general with a suite, who
-was galloping toward the knoll on a lathering horse. It was Belliard.
-Having dismounted he went up to the Emperor with rapid strides and in
-a loud voice began boldly demonstrating the necessity of sending
-reinforcements. He swore on his honor that the Russians were lost if the
-Emperor would give another division.
-
-Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to pace up and down
-without replying. Belliard began talking loudly and eagerly to the
-generals of the suite around him.
-
-“You are very fiery, Belliard,” said Napoleon, when he again came up to
-the general. “In the heat of a battle it is easy to make a mistake. Go
-and have another look and then come back to me.”
-
-Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from another part of the
-battlefield galloped up.
-
-“Now then, what do you want?” asked Napoleon in the tone of a man
-irritated at being continually disturbed.
-
-“Sire, the prince...” began the adjutant.
-
-“Asks for reinforcements?” said Napoleon with an angry gesture.
-
-The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to report, but the
-Emperor turned from him, took a couple of steps, stopped, came back, and
-called Berthier.
-
-“We must give reserves,” he said, moving his arms slightly apart.
-“Who do you think should be sent there?” he asked of Berthier (whom he
-subsequently termed “that gosling I have made an eagle”).
-
-“Send Claparède’s division, sire,” replied Berthier, who knew all the
-division’s regiments, and battalions by heart.
-
-Napoleon nodded assent.
-
-The adjutant galloped to Claparède’s division and a few minutes later
-the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll moved forward. Napoleon
-gazed silently in that direction.
-
-“No!” he suddenly said to Berthier. “I can’t send Claparède. Send
-Friant’s division.”
-
-Though there was no advantage in sending Friant’s division instead of
-Claparède’s, and even an obvious inconvenience and delay in stopping
-Claparède and sending Friant now, the order was carried out exactly.
-Napoleon did not notice that in regard to his army he was playing
-the part of a doctor who hinders by his medicines—a role he so justly
-understood and condemned.
-
-Friant’s division disappeared as the others had done into the smoke
-of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants continued to arrive at a
-gallop and as if by agreement all said the same thing. They all asked
-for reinforcements and all said that the Russians were holding their
-positions and maintaining a hellish fire under which the French army was
-melting away.
-
-Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.
-
-M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted since morning,
-came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest lunch to His
-Majesty.
-
-“I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?” said he.
-
-Napoleon silently shook his head in negation. Assuming the negation to
-refer only to the victory and not to the lunch, M. de Beausset ventured
-with respectful jocularity to remark that there is no reason for not
-having lunch when one can get it.
-
-“Go away...” exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and morosely, and turned aside.
-
-A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy beamed on M. de
-Beausset’s face and he glided away to the other generals.
-
-Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of an
-ever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging money about and always
-winning, suddenly just when he has calculated all the chances of the
-game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surely he
-loses.
-
-His troops were the same, his generals the same, the same preparations
-had been made, the same dispositions, and the same proclamation courte
-et énergique, he himself was still the same: he knew that and knew that
-he was now even more experienced and skillful than before. Even the
-enemy was the same as at Austerlitz and Friedland—yet the terrible
-stroke of his arm had supernaturally become impotent.
-
-All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned with success: the
-concentration of batteries on one point, an attack by reserves to break
-the enemy’s line, and a cavalry attack by “the men of iron,” all these
-methods had already been employed, yet not only was there no victory,
-but from all sides came the same news of generals killed and wounded,
-of reinforcements needed, of the impossibility of driving back the
-Russians, and of disorganization among his own troops.
-
-Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and uttered a
-few phrases, marshals and adjutants had come galloping up with
-congratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken, the
-corps of prisoners, bundles of enemy eagles and standards, cannon and
-stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the cavalry to gather
-in the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo, Arcola, Jena,
-Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now something strange was happening
-to his troops.
-
-Despite news of the capture of the flèches, Napoleon saw that this was
-not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened in his former
-battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt by all the men about
-him experienced in the art of war. All their faces looked dejected, and
-they all shunned one another’s eyes—only a de Beausset could fail to
-grasp the meaning of what was happening.
-
-But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the meaning of
-a battle not gained by the attacking side in eight hours, after all
-efforts had been expended. He knew that it was a lost battle and that
-the least accident might now—with the fight balanced on such a strained
-center—destroy him and his army.
-
-When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange Russian campaign in
-which not one battle had been won, and in which not a flag, or cannon,
-or army corps had been captured in two months, when he looked at the
-concealed depression on the faces around him and heard reports of the
-Russians still holding their ground—a terrible feeling like a nightmare
-took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidents that might destroy
-him occurred to his mind. The Russians might fall on his left wing,
-might break through his center, he himself might be killed by a stray
-cannon ball. All this was possible. In former battles he had only
-considered the possibilities of success, but now innumerable unlucky
-chances presented themselves, and he expected them all. Yes, it was like
-a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is coming to attack him,
-and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a terrible blow which he knows
-should annihilate him, but then feels that his arm drops powerless and
-limp like a rag, and the horror of unavoidable destruction seizes him in
-his helplessness.
-
-The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank of the French
-army aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat silently on a campstool
-below the knoll, with head bowed and elbows on his knees. Berthier
-approached and suggested that they should ride along the line to
-ascertain the position of affairs.
-
-“What? What do you say?” asked Napoleon. “Yes, tell them to bring me my
-horse.”
-
-He mounted and rode toward Semënovsk.
-
-Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the whole space through
-which Napoleon rode, horses and men were lying in pools of blood, singly
-or in heaps. Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals had ever before
-seen such horrors or so many slain in such a small area. The roar of
-guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the ear and gave
-a peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music does to tableaux
-vivants. Napoleon rode up the high ground at Semënovsk, and through the
-smoke saw ranks of men in uniforms of a color unfamiliar to him. They
-were Russians.
-
-The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semënovsk village and its
-knoll, and their guns boomed incessantly along their line and sent
-forth clouds of smoke. It was no longer a battle: it was a continuous
-slaughter which could be of no avail either to the French or the
-Russians. Napoleon stopped his horse and again fell into the reverie
-from which Berthier had aroused him. He could not stop what was going on
-before him and around him and was supposed to be directed by him and to
-depend on him, and from its lack of success this affair, for the first
-time, seemed to him unnecessary and horrible.
-
-One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured to offer to lead
-the Old Guard into action. Ney and Berthier, standing near Napoleon,
-exchanged looks and smiled contemptuously at this general’s senseless
-offer.
-
-Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long time.
-
-“At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have my Guard
-destroyed!” he said, and turning his horse rode back to Shevárdino.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXV
-
-On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him in the morning sat
-Kutúzov, his gray head hanging, his heavy body relaxed. He gave no
-orders, but only assented to or dissented from what others suggested.
-
-“Yes, yes, do that,” he replied to various proposals. “Yes, yes: go,
-dear boy, and have a look,” he would say to one or another of those
-about him; or, “No, don’t, we’d better wait!” He listened to the reports
-that were brought him and gave directions when his subordinates demanded
-that of him; but when listening to the reports it seemed as if he
-were not interested in the import of the words spoken, but rather in
-something else—in the expression of face and tone of voice of those who
-were reporting. By long years of military experience he knew, and with
-the wisdom of age understood, that it is impossible for one man to
-direct hundreds of thousands of others struggling with death, and he
-knew that the result of a battle is decided not by the orders of a
-commander in chief, nor the place where the troops are stationed, nor by
-the number of cannon or of slaughtered men, but by that intangible force
-called the spirit of the army, and he watched this force and guided it
-in as far as that was in his power.
-
-Kutúzov’s general expression was one of concentrated quiet attention,
-and his face wore a strained look as if he found it difficult to master
-the fatigue of his old and feeble body.
-
-At eleven o’clock they brought him news that the flèches captured by the
-French had been retaken, but that Prince Bagratión was wounded. Kutúzov
-groaned and swayed his head.
-
-“Ride over to Prince Peter Ivánovich and find out about it exactly,” he
-said to one of his adjutants, and then turned to the Duke of Württemberg
-who was standing behind him.
-
-“Will Your Highness please take command of the first army?”
-
-Soon after the duke’s departure—before he could possibly have reached
-Semënovsk—his adjutant came back from him and told Kutúzov that the duke
-asked for more troops.
-
-Kutúzov made a grimace and sent an order to Dokhtúrov to take over the
-command of the first army, and a request to the duke—whom he said he
-could not spare at such an important moment—to return to him. When
-they brought him news that Murat had been taken prisoner, and the staff
-officers congratulated him, Kutúzov smiled.
-
-“Wait a little, gentlemen,” said he. “The battle is won, and there is
-nothing extraordinary in the capture of Murat. Still, it is better to
-wait before we rejoice.”
-
-But he sent an adjutant to take the news round the army.
-
-When Scherbínin came galloping from the left flank with news that the
-French had captured the flèches and the village of Semënovsk, Kutúzov,
-guessing by the sounds of the battle and by Scherbínin’s looks that the
-news was bad, rose as if to stretch his legs and, taking Scherbínin’s
-arm, led him aside.
-
-“Go, my dear fellow,” he said to Ermólov, “and see whether something
-can’t be done.”
-
-Kutúzov was in Górki, near the center of the Russian position. The
-attack directed by Napoleon against our left flank had been several
-times repulsed. In the center the French had not got beyond Borodinó,
-and on their left flank Uvárov’s cavalry had put the French to flight.
-
-Toward three o’clock the French attacks ceased. On the faces of all
-who came from the field of battle, and of those who stood around him,
-Kutúzov noticed an expression of extreme tension. He was satisfied with
-the day’s success—a success exceeding his expectations, but the old
-man’s strength was failing him. Several times his head dropped low as if
-it were falling and he dozed off. Dinner was brought him.
-
-Adjutant General Wolzogen, the man who when riding past Prince Andrew
-had said, “the war should be extended widely,” and whom Bagratión so
-detested, rode up while Kutúzov was at dinner. Wolzogen had come from
-Barclay de Tolly to report on the progress of affairs on the left flank.
-The sagacious Barclay de Tolly, seeing crowds of wounded men running
-back and the disordered rear of the army, weighed all the circumstances,
-concluded that the battle was lost, and sent his favorite officer to the
-commander in chief with that news.
-
-Kutúzov was chewing a piece of roast chicken with difficulty and glanced
-at Wolzogen with eyes that brightened under their puckering lids.
-
-Wolzogen, nonchalantly stretching his legs, approached Kutúzov with a
-half-contemptuous smile on his lips, scarcely touching the peak of his
-cap.
-
-He treated his Serene Highness with a somewhat affected nonchalance
-intended to show that, as a highly trained military man, he left it to
-Russians to make an idol of this useless old man, but that he knew whom
-he was dealing with. “Der alte Herr” (as in their own set the Germans
-called Kutúzov) “is making himself very comfortable,” thought Wolzogen,
-and looking severely at the dishes in front of Kutúzov he began to
-report to “the old gentleman” the position of affairs on the left flank
-as Barclay had ordered him to and as he himself had seen and understood
-it.
-
-“All the points of our position are in the enemy’s hands and we cannot
-dislodge them for lack of troops, the men are running away and it is
-impossible to stop them,” he reported.
-
-Kutúzov ceased chewing and fixed an astonished gaze on Wolzogen, as
-if not understanding what was said to him. Wolzogen, noticing “the old
-gentleman’s” agitation, said with a smile:
-
-“I have not considered it right to conceal from your Serene Highness
-what I have seen. The troops are in complete disorder....”
-
-“You have seen? You have seen?...” Kutúzov shouted. Frowning and rising
-quickly, he went up to Wolzogen.
-
-“How... how dare you!...” he shouted, choking and making a threatening
-gesture with his trembling arms: “How dare you, sir, say that to me? You
-know nothing about it. Tell General Barclay from me that his information
-is incorrect and that the real course of the battle is better known to
-me, the commander in chief, than to him.”
-
-Wolzogen was about to make a rejoinder, but Kutúzov interrupted him.
-
-“The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated on the right
-flank. If you have seen amiss, sir, do not allow yourself to say what
-you don’t know! Be so good as to ride to General Barclay and inform
-him of my firm intention to attack the enemy tomorrow,” said Kutúzov
-sternly.
-
-All were silent, and the only sound audible was the heavy breathing of
-the panting old general.
-
-“They are repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God and our brave army!
-The enemy is beaten, and tomorrow we shall drive him from the sacred
-soil of Russia,” said Kutúzov crossing himself, and he suddenly sobbed
-as his eyes filled with tears.
-
-Wolzogen, shrugging his shoulders and curling his lips, stepped silently
-aside, marveling at “the old gentleman’s” conceited stupidity.
-
-“Ah, here he is, my hero!” said Kutúzov to a portly, handsome,
-dark-haired general who was just ascending the knoll.
-
-This was Raévski, who had spent the whole day at the most important part
-of the field of Borodinó.
-
-Raévski reported that the troops were firmly holding their ground and
-that the French no longer ventured to attack.
-
-After hearing him, Kutúzov said in French:
-
-“Then you do not think, like some others, that we must retreat?”
-
-“On the contrary, your Highness, in indecisive actions it is always
-the most stubborn who remain victors,” replied Raévski, “and in my
-opinion...”
-
-“Kaysárov!” Kutúzov called to his adjutant. “Sit down and write out
-the order of the day for tomorrow. And you,” he continued, addressing
-another, “ride along the line and announce that tomorrow we attack.”
-
-While Kutúzov was talking to Raévski and dictating the order of the day,
-Wolzogen returned from Barclay and said that General Barclay wished to
-have written confirmation of the order the field marshal had given.
-
-Kutúzov, without looking at Wolzogen, gave directions for the order to
-be written out which the former commander in chief, to avoid personal
-responsibility, very judiciously wished to receive.
-
-And by means of that mysterious indefinable bond which maintains
-throughout an army one and the same temper, known as “the spirit of
-the army,” and which constitutes the sinew of war, Kutúzov’s words, his
-order for a battle next day, immediately became known from one end of
-the army to the other.
-
-It was far from being the same words or the same order that reached the
-farthest links of that chain. The tales passing from mouth to mouth at
-different ends of the army did not even resemble what Kutúzov had said,
-but the sense of his words spread everywhere because what he said was
-not the outcome of cunning calculations, but of a feeling that lay in
-the commander in chief’s soul as in that of every Russian.
-
-And on learning that tomorrow they were to attack the enemy, and hearing
-from the highest quarters a confirmation of what they wanted to believe,
-the exhausted, wavering men felt comforted and inspirited.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXVI
-
-Prince Andrew’s regiment was among the reserves which till after one
-o’clock were stationed inactive behind Semënovsk, under heavy artillery
-fire. Toward two o’clock the regiment, having already lost more than
-two hundred men, was moved forward into a trampled oatfield in the gap
-between Semënovsk and the Knoll Battery, where thousands of men perished
-that day and on which an intense, concentrated fire from several hundred
-enemy guns was directed between one and two o’clock.
-
-Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot the regiment here
-lost another third of its men. From in front and especially from the
-right, in the unlifting smoke the guns boomed, and out of the mysterious
-domain of smoke that overlay the whole space in front, quick hissing
-cannon balls and slow whistling shells flew unceasingly. At times, as
-if to allow them a respite, a quarter of an hour passed during which
-the cannon balls and shells all flew overhead, but sometimes several men
-were torn from the regiment in a minute and the slain were continually
-being dragged away and the wounded carried off.
-
-With each fresh blow less and less chance of life remained for those not
-yet killed. The regiment stood in columns of battalion, three hundred
-paces apart, but nevertheless the men were always in one and the same
-mood. All alike were taciturn and morose. Talk was rarely heard in the
-ranks, and it ceased altogether every time the thud of a successful
-shot and the cry of “stretchers!” was heard. Most of the time, by their
-officers’ order, the men sat on the ground. One, having taken off his
-shako, carefully loosened the gathers of its lining and drew them tight
-again; another, rubbing some dry clay between his palms, polished
-his bayonet; another fingered the strap and pulled the buckle of his
-bandolier, while another smoothed and refolded his leg bands and put
-his boots on again. Some built little houses of the tufts in the plowed
-ground, or plaited baskets from the straw in the cornfield. All seemed
-fully absorbed in these pursuits. When men were killed or wounded, when
-rows of stretchers went past, when some troops retreated, and when great
-masses of the enemy came into view through the smoke, no one paid any
-attention to these things. But when our artillery or cavalry advanced or
-some of our infantry were seen to move forward, words of approval
-were heard on all sides. But the liveliest attention was attracted by
-occurrences quite apart from, and unconnected with, the battle. It was
-as if the minds of these morally exhausted men found relief in everyday,
-commonplace occurrences. A battery of artillery was passing in front of
-the regiment. The horse of an ammunition cart put its leg over a trace.
-“Hey, look at the trace horse!... Get her leg out! She’ll fall.... Ah,
-they don’t see it!” came identical shouts from the ranks all along the
-regiment. Another time, general attention was attracted by a small brown
-dog, coming heaven knows whence, which trotted in a preoccupied manner
-in front of the ranks with tail stiffly erect till suddenly a shell fell
-close by, when it yelped, tucked its tail between its legs, and darted
-aside. Yells and shrieks of laughter rose from the whole regiment. But
-such distractions lasted only a moment, and for eight hours the men had
-been inactive, without food, in constant fear of death, and their pale
-and gloomy faces grew ever paler and gloomier.
-
-Prince Andrew, pale and gloomy like everyone in the regiment, paced up
-and down from the border of one patch to another, at the edge of the
-meadow beside an oatfield, with head bowed and arms behind his back.
-There was nothing for him to do and no orders to be given. Everything
-went on of itself. The killed were dragged from the front, the wounded
-carried away, and the ranks closed up. If any soldiers ran to the
-rear they returned immediately and hastily. At first Prince Andrew,
-considering it his duty to rouse the courage of the men and to set them
-an example, walked about among the ranks, but he soon became convinced
-that this was unnecessary and that there was nothing he could teach
-them. All the powers of his soul, as of every soldier there, were
-unconsciously bent on avoiding the contemplation of the horrors of their
-situation. He walked along the meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the
-grass, and gazing at the dust that covered his boots; now he took big
-strides trying to keep to the footprints left on the meadow by the
-mowers, then he counted his steps, calculating how often he must walk
-from one strip to another to walk a mile, then he stripped the flowers
-from the wormwood that grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his
-palms, and smelled their pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing remained
-of the previous day’s thoughts. He thought of nothing. He listened with
-weary ears to the ever-recurring sounds, distinguishing the whistle
-of flying projectiles from the booming of the reports, glanced at the
-tiresomely familiar faces of the men of the first battalion, and
-waited. “Here it comes... this one is coming our way again!” he thought,
-listening to an approaching whistle in the hidden region of smoke. “One,
-another! Again! It has hit....” He stopped and looked at the ranks. “No,
-it has gone over. But this one has hit!” And again he started trying
-to reach the boundary strip in sixteen paces. A whizz and a thud! Five
-paces from him, a cannon ball tore up the dry earth and disappeared. A
-chill ran down his back. Again he glanced at the ranks. Probably many
-had been hit—a large crowd had gathered near the second battalion.
-
-“Adjutant!” he shouted. “Order them not to crowd together.”
-
-The adjutant, having obeyed this instruction, approached Prince Andrew.
-From the other side a battalion commander rode up.
-
-“Look out!” came a frightened cry from a soldier and, like a bird
-whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground, a shell dropped
-with little noise within two steps of Prince Andrew and close to the
-battalion commander’s horse. The horse first, regardless of whether it
-was right or wrong to show fear, snorted, reared almost throwing the
-major, and galloped aside. The horse’s terror infected the men.
-
-“Lie down!” cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on the ground.
-
-Prince Andrew hesitated. The smoking shell spun like a top between him
-and the prostrate adjutant, near a wormwood plant between the field and
-the meadow.
-
-“Can this be death?” thought Prince Andrew, looking with a quite new,
-envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of smoke
-that curled up from the rotating black ball. “I cannot, I do not wish to
-die. I love life—I love this grass, this earth, this air....” He thought
-this, and at the same time remembered that people were looking at him.
-
-“It’s shameful, sir!” he said to the adjutant. “What...”
-
-He did not finish speaking. At one and the same moment came the sound of
-an explosion, a whistle of splinters as from a breaking window frame,
-a suffocating smell of powder, and Prince Andrew started to one side,
-raising his arm, and fell on his chest. Several officers ran up to him.
-From the right side of his abdomen, blood was welling out making a large
-stain on the grass.
-
-The militiamen with stretchers who were called up stood behind the
-officers. Prince Andrew lay on his chest with his face in the grass,
-breathing heavily and noisily.
-
-“What are you waiting for? Come along!”
-
-The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders and legs, but he
-moaned piteously and, exchanging looks, they set him down again.
-
-“Pick him up, lift him, it’s all the same!” cried someone.
-
-They again took him by the shoulders and laid him on the stretcher.
-
-“Ah, God! My God! What is it? The stomach? That means death! My
-God!”—voices among the officers were heard saying.
-
-“It flew a hair’s breadth past my ear,” said the adjutant.
-
-The peasants, adjusting the stretcher to their shoulders, started
-hurriedly along the path they had trodden down, to the dressing station.
-
-“Keep in step! Ah... those peasants!” shouted an officer, seizing by
-their shoulders and checking the peasants, who were walking unevenly and
-jolting the stretcher.
-
-“Get into step, Fëdor... I say, Fëdor!” said the foremost peasant.
-
-“Now that’s right!” said the one behind joyfully, when he had got into
-step.
-
-“Your excellency! Eh, Prince!” said the trembling voice of Timókhin, who
-had run up and was looking down on the stretcher.
-
-Prince Andrew opened his eyes and looked up at the speaker from the
-stretcher into which his head had sunk deep and again his eyelids
-drooped.
-
-
-The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to the dressing station by the
-wood, where wagons were stationed. The dressing station consisted of
-three tents with flaps turned back, pitched at the edge of a birch wood.
-In the wood, wagons and horses were standing. The horses were eating
-oats from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down and pecked the
-grains that fell. Some crows, scenting blood, flew among the birch
-trees cawing impatiently. Around the tents, over more than five acres,
-bloodstained men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay. Around the wounded
-stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with dismal and attentive
-faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in vain to drive from the
-spot. Disregarding the officers’ orders, the soldiers stood leaning
-against their stretchers and gazing intently, as if trying to comprehend
-the difficult problem of what was taking place before them. From the
-tents came now loud angry cries and now plaintive groans. Occasionally
-dressers ran out to fetch water, or to point out those who were to be
-brought in next. The wounded men awaiting their turn outside the tents
-groaned, sighed, wept, screamed, swore, or asked for vodka. Some were
-delirious. Prince Andrew’s bearers, stepping over the wounded who had
-not yet been bandaged, took him, as a regimental commander, close up to
-one of the tents and there stopped, awaiting instructions. Prince Andrew
-opened his eyes and for a long time could not make out what was going
-on around him. He remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the
-whirling black ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life.
-Two steps from him, leaning against a branch and talking loudly and
-attracting general attention, stood a tall, handsome, black-haired
-noncommissioned officer with a bandaged head. He had been wounded in the
-head and leg by bullets. Around him, eagerly listening to his talk, a
-crowd of wounded and stretcher-bearers was gathered.
-
-“We kicked him out from there so that he chucked everything, we grabbed
-the King himself!” cried he, looking around him with eyes that glittered
-with fever. “If only reserves had come up just then, lads, there
-wouldn’t have been nothing left of him! I tell you surely....”
-
-Like all the others near the speaker, Prince Andrew looked at him with
-shining eyes and experienced a sense of comfort. “But isn’t it all the
-same now?” thought he. “And what will be there, and what has there been
-here? Why was I so reluctant to part with life? There was something in
-this life I did not and do not understand.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXVII
-
-One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron,
-holding a cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his small
-bloodstained hands, so as not to smear it. He raised his head and looked
-about him, but above the level of the wounded men. He evidently wanted a
-little respite. After turning his head from right to left for some time,
-he sighed and looked down.
-
-“All right, immediately,” he replied to a dresser who pointed Prince
-Andrew out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.
-
-Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting.
-
-“It seems that even in the next world only the gentry are to have a
-chance!” remarked one.
-
-Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that had only just been
-cleared and which a dresser was washing down. Prince Andrew could not
-make out distinctly what was in that tent. The pitiful groans from all
-sides and the torturing pain in his thigh, stomach, and back distracted
-him. All he saw about him merged into a general impression of naked,
-bleeding human bodies that seemed to fill the whole of the low tent, as
-a few weeks previously, on that hot August day, such bodies had filled
-the dirty pond beside the Smolénsk road. Yes, it was the same flesh,
-the same chair à canon, the sight of which had even then filled him with
-horror, as by a presentiment.
-
-There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were occupied, and
-on the third they placed Prince Andrew. For a little while he was left
-alone and involuntarily witnessed what was taking place on the other two
-tables. On the nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a Cossack, judging by
-the uniform thrown down beside him. Four soldiers were holding him, and
-a spectacled doctor was cutting into his muscular brown back.
-
-“Ooh, ooh, ooh!” grunted the Tartar, and suddenly lifting up his swarthy
-snub-nosed face with its high cheekbones, and baring his white teeth,
-he began to wriggle and twitch his body and utter piercing, ringing,
-and prolonged yells. On the other table, round which many people were
-crowding, a tall well-fed man lay on his back with his head thrown back.
-His curly hair, its color, and the shape of his head seemed strangely
-familiar to Prince Andrew. Several dressers were pressing on his chest
-to hold him down. One large, white, plump leg twitched rapidly all
-the time with a feverish tremor. The man was sobbing and choking
-convulsively. Two doctors—one of whom was pale and trembling—were
-silently doing something to this man’s other, gory leg. When he had
-finished with the Tartar, whom they covered with an overcoat, the
-spectacled doctor came up to Prince Andrew, wiping his hands.
-
-He glanced at Prince Andrew’s face and quickly turned away.
-
-“Undress him! What are you waiting for?” he cried angrily to the
-dressers.
-
-His very first, remotest recollections of childhood came back to Prince
-Andrew’s mind when the dresser with sleeves rolled up began hastily to
-undo the buttons of his clothes and undressed him. The doctor bent
-down over the wound, felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he made a sign to
-someone, and the torturing pain in his abdomen caused Prince Andrew to
-lose consciousness. When he came to himself the splintered portions of
-his thighbone had been extracted, the torn flesh cut away, and the
-wound bandaged. Water was being sprinkled on his face. As soon as Prince
-Andrew opened his eyes, the doctor bent over, kissed him silently on the
-lips, and hurried away.
-
-After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince Andrew enjoyed a
-blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All the
-best and happiest moments of his life—especially his earliest childhood,
-when he used to be undressed and put to bed, and when leaning over him
-his nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his head in the pillow,
-felt happy in the mere consciousness of life—returned to his memory, not
-merely as something past but as something present.
-
-The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man the shape of whose
-head seemed familiar to Prince Andrew: they were lifting him up and
-trying to quiet him.
-
-“Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!” his frightened moans could
-be heard, subdued by suffering and broken by sobs.
-
-Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted to weep. Whether because he
-was dying without glory, or because he was sorry to part with life,
-or because of those memories of a childhood that could not return, or
-because he was suffering and others were suffering and that man near him
-was groaning so piteously—he felt like weeping childlike, kindly, and
-almost happy tears.
-
-The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained with clotted blood
-and with the boot still on.
-
-“Oh! Oh, ooh!” he sobbed, like a woman.
-
-The doctor who had been standing beside him, preventing Prince Andrew
-from seeing his face, moved away.
-
-“My God! What is this? Why is he here?” said Prince Andrew to himself.
-
-In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had just been
-amputated, he recognized Anatole Kurágin. Men were supporting him in
-their arms and offering him a glass of water, but his trembling, swollen
-lips could not grasp its rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully. “Yes, it is
-he! Yes, that man is somehow closely and painfully connected with me,”
-thought Prince Andrew, not yet clearly grasping what he saw before him.
-“What is the connection of that man with my childhood and life?” he
-asked himself without finding an answer. And suddenly a new unexpected
-memory from that realm of pure and loving childhood presented itself to
-him. He remembered Natásha as he had seen her for the first time at the
-ball in 1810, with her slender neck and arms and with a frightened happy
-face ready for rapture, and love and tenderness for her, stronger
-and more vivid than ever, awoke in his soul. He now remembered the
-connection that existed between himself and this man who was dimly
-gazing at him through tears that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered
-everything, and ecstatic pity and love for that man overflowed his happy
-heart.
-
-Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender loving
-tears for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and their errors.
-
-“Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love us and for those
-who hate us, love of our enemies; yes, that love which God preached on
-earth and which Princess Mary taught me and I did not understand—that is
-what made me sorry to part with life, that is what remained for me had I
-lived. But now it is too late. I know it!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXVIII
-
-The terrible spectacle of the battlefield covered with dead and wounded,
-together with the heaviness of his head and the news that some twenty
-generals he knew personally had been killed or wounded, and the
-consciousness of the impotence of his once mighty arm, produced an
-unexpected impression on Napoleon who usually liked to look at the
-killed and wounded, thereby, he considered, testing his strength of
-mind. This day the horrible appearance of the battlefield overcame
-that strength of mind which he thought constituted his merit and his
-greatness. He rode hurriedly from the battlefield and returned to the
-Shevárdino knoll, where he sat on his campstool, his sallow face
-swollen and heavy, his eyes dim, his nose red, and his voice hoarse,
-involuntarily listening, with downcast eyes, to the sounds of firing.
-With painful dejection he awaited the end of this action, in which he
-regarded himself as a participant and which he was unable to arrest.
-A personal, human feeling for a brief moment got the better of the
-artificial phantasm of life he had served so long. He felt in his own
-person the sufferings and death he had witnessed on the battlefield.
-The heaviness of his head and chest reminded him of the possibility
-of suffering and death for himself. At that moment he did not desire
-Moscow, or victory, or glory (what need had he for any more glory?). The
-one thing he wished for was rest, tranquillity, and freedom. But when he
-had been on the Semënovsk heights the artillery commander had proposed
-to him to bring several batteries of artillery up to those heights to
-strengthen the fire on the Russian troops crowded in front of Knyazkóvo.
-Napoleon had assented and had given orders that news should be brought
-to him of the effect those batteries produced.
-
-An adjutant came now to inform him that the fire of two hundred guns
-had been concentrated on the Russians, as he had ordered, but that they
-still held their ground.
-
-“Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they hold on,” said the
-adjutant.
-
-“They want more!...” said Napoleon in a hoarse voice.
-
-“Sire?” asked the adjutant who had not heard the remark.
-
-“They want more!” croaked Napoleon frowning. “Let them have it!”
-
-Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire, and for
-which he gave the order only because he thought it was expected of him,
-was being done. And he fell back into that artificial realm of imaginary
-greatness, and again—as a horse walking a treadmill thinks it is doing
-something for itself—he submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy,
-and inhuman role predestined for him.
-
-And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and conscience
-darkened of this man on whom the responsibility for what was happening
-lay more than on all the others who took part in it. Never to the end
-of his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the
-significance of his actions which were too contrary to goodness and
-truth, too remote from everything human, for him ever to be able to
-grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, belauded as they
-were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth, goodness, and
-all humanity.
-
-Not only on that day, as he rode over the battlefield strewn with men
-killed and maimed (by his will as he believed), did he reckon as he
-looked at them how many Russians there were for each Frenchman and,
-deceiving himself, find reason for rejoicing in the calculation that
-there were five Russians for every Frenchman. Not on that day alone
-did he write in a letter to Paris that “the battle field was superb,”
-because fifty thousand corpses lay there, but even on the island of St.
-Helena in the peaceful solitude where he said he intended to devote his
-leisure to an account of the great deeds he had done, he wrote:
-
-The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern times:
-it was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the tranquillity and
-security of all; it was purely pacific and conservative.
-
-It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties and the
-beginning of security. A new horizon and new labors were opening out,
-full of well-being and prosperity for all. The European system was
-already founded; all that remained was to organize it.
-
-Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility everywhere, I
-too should have had my Congress and my Holy Alliance. Those ideas were
-stolen from me. In that reunion of great sovereigns we should have
-discussed our interests like one family, and have rendered account to
-the peoples as clerk to master.
-
-Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but one people, and
-anyone who traveled anywhere would have found himself always in the
-common fatherland. I should have demanded the freedom of all navigable
-rivers for everybody, that the seas should be common to all, and that
-the great standing armies should be reduced henceforth to mere guards
-for the sovereigns.
-
-On returning to France, to the bosom of the great, strong, magnificent,
-peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I should have proclaimed
-her frontiers immutable; all future wars purely defensive, all
-aggrandizement antinational. I should have associated my son in the
-Empire; my dictatorship would have been finished, and his constitutional
-reign would have begun.
-
-Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the envy
-of the nations!
-
-My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company
-with the Empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to
-leisurely visiting, with our own horses and like a true country couple,
-every corner of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing wrongs,
-and scattering public buildings and benefactions on all sides and
-everywhere.
-
-Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of executioner
-of the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his actions had been the
-peoples’ welfare and that he could control the fate of millions and by
-the employment of power confer benefactions.
-
-“Of four hundred thousand who crossed the Vistula,” he wrote further
-of the Russian war, “half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles,
-Bavarians, Württembergers, Mecklenburgers, Spaniards, Italians, and
-Neapolitans. The Imperial army, strictly speaking, was one third
-composed of Dutch, Belgians, men from the borders of the Rhine,
-Piedmontese, Swiss, Genevese, Tuscans, Romans, inhabitants of the
-Thirty-second Military Division, of Bremen, of Hamburg, and so on: it
-included scarcely a hundred and forty thousand who spoke French. The
-Russian expedition actually cost France less than fifty thousand men;
-the Russian army in its retreat from Vílna to Moscow lost in the various
-battles four times more men than the French army; the burning of Moscow
-cost the lives of a hundred thousand Russians who died of cold and want
-in the woods; finally, in its march from Moscow to the Oder the Russian
-army also suffered from the severity of the season; so that by the time
-it reached Vílna it numbered only fifty thousand, and at Kálisch less
-than eighteen thousand.”
-
-He imagined that the war with Russia came about by his will, and the
-horrors that occurred did not stagger his soul. He boldly took the
-whole responsibility for what happened, and his darkened mind found
-justification in the belief that among the hundreds of thousands who
-perished there were fewer Frenchmen than Hessians and Bavarians.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIX
-
-Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse postures and
-various uniforms on the fields and meadows belonging to the Davýdov
-family and to the crown serfs—those fields and meadows where for
-hundreds of years the peasants of Borodinó, Górki, Shevárdino, and
-Semënovsk had reaped their harvests and pastured their cattle. At the
-dressing stations the grass and earth were soaked with blood for a space
-of some three acres around. Crowds of men of various arms, wounded and
-unwounded, with frightened faces, dragged themselves back to Mozháysk
-from the one army and back to Valúevo from the other. Other crowds,
-exhausted and hungry, went forward led by their officers. Others held
-their ground and continued to fire.
-
-Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with the glitter of
-bayonets and cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there now spread a
-mist of damp and smoke and a strange acid smell of saltpeter and blood.
-Clouds gathered and drops of rain began to fall on the dead and wounded,
-on the frightened, exhausted, and hesitating men, as if to say: “Enough,
-men! Enough! Cease... bethink yourselves! What are you doing?”
-
-To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food and rest,
-it began equally to appear doubtful whether they should continue to
-slaughter one another; all the faces expressed hesitation, and the
-question arose in every soul: “For what, for whom, must I kill and be
-killed?... You may go and kill whom you please, but I don’t want to do
-so any more!” By evening this thought had ripened in every soul. At any
-moment these men might have been seized with horror at what they were
-doing and might have thrown up everything and run away anywhere.
-
-But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all the horror of
-what they were doing, though they would have been glad to leave off,
-some incomprehensible, mysterious power continued to control them, and
-they still brought up the charges, loaded, aimed, and applied the match,
-though only one artilleryman survived out of every three, and though
-they stumbled and panted with fatigue, perspiring and stained with blood
-and powder. The cannon balls flew just as swiftly and cruelly from both
-sides, crushing human bodies, and that terrible work which was not done
-by the will of a man but at the will of Him who governs men and worlds
-continued.
-
-Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian army would have
-said that, if only the French made one more slight effort, it would
-disappear; and anyone looking at the rear of the French army would have
-said that the Russians need only make one more slight effort and the
-French would be destroyed. But neither the French nor the Russians made
-that effort, and the flame of battle burned slowly out.
-
-The Russians did not make that effort because they were not attacking
-the French. At the beginning of the battle they stood blocking the
-way to Moscow and they still did so at the end of the battle as at the
-beginning. But even had the aim of the Russians been to drive the French
-from their positions, they could not have made this last effort, for all
-the Russian troops had been broken up, there was no part of the Russian
-army that had not suffered in the battle, and though still holding their
-positions they had lost ONE HALF of their army.
-
-The French, with the memory of all their former victories during
-fifteen years, with the assurance of Napoleon’s invincibility, with the
-consciousness that they had captured part of the battlefield and had
-lost only a quarter of their men and still had their Guards intact,
-twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that effort. The French
-who had attacked the Russian army in order to drive it from its position
-ought to have made that effort, for as long as the Russians continued to
-block the road to Moscow as before, the aim of the French had not been
-attained and all their efforts and losses were in vain. But the French
-did not make that effort. Some historians say that Napoleon need only
-have used his Old Guards, who were intact, and the battle would have
-been won. To speak of what would have happened had Napoleon sent his
-Guards is like talking of what would happen if autumn became spring. It
-could not be. Napoleon did not give his Guards, not because he did not
-want to, but because it could not be done. All the generals, officers,
-and soldiers of the French army knew it could not be done, because the
-flagging spirit of the troops would not permit it.
-
-It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feeling
-of the mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals and
-soldiers of his army whether they had taken part in the battle or not,
-after all their experience of previous battles—when after one tenth of
-such efforts the enemy had fled—experienced a similar feeling of terror
-before an enemy who, after losing HALF his men, stood as threateningly
-at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The moral force of the
-attacking French army was exhausted. Not that sort of victory which is
-defined by the capture of pieces of material fastened to sticks, called
-standards, and of the ground on which the troops had stood and were
-standing, but a moral victory that convinces the enemy of the moral
-superiority of his opponent and of his own impotence was gained by the
-Russians at Borodinó. The French invaders, like an infuriated animal
-that has in its onslaught received a mortal wound, felt that they were
-perishing, but could not stop, any more than the Russian army, weaker
-by one half, could help swerving. By impetus gained, the French army was
-still able to roll forward to Moscow, but there, without further effort
-on the part of the Russians, it had to perish, bleeding from the mortal
-wound it had received at Borodinó. The direct consequence of the battle
-of Borodinó was Napoleon’s senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat
-along the old Smolénsk road, the destruction of the invading army of
-five hundred thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on
-which at Borodinó for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger
-spirit had been laid.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK ELEVEN: 1812
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human mind.
-Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man only when he
-examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but at the
-same time, a large proportion of human error comes from the arbitrary
-division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements. There is a
-well-known, so-called sophism of the ancients consisting in this, that
-Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise he was following, in spite
-of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast as the tortoise. By
-the time Achilles has covered the distance that separated him from the
-tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of that distance ahead
-of him: when Achilles has covered that tenth, the tortoise has covered
-another one hundredth, and so on forever. This problem seemed to
-the ancients insoluble. The absurd answer (that Achilles could never
-overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that motion was arbitrarily
-divided into discontinuous elements, whereas the motion both of Achilles
-and of the tortoise was continuous.
-
-By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion we only approach a
-solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only when we have admitted
-the conception of the infinitely small, and the resulting geometrical
-progression with a common ratio of one tenth, and have found the sum of
-this progression to infinity, do we reach a solution of the problem.
-
-A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the art of dealing with
-the infinitely small can now yield solutions in other more complex
-problems of motion which used to appear insoluble.
-
-This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when dealing
-with problems of motion admits the conception of the infinitely small,
-and so conforms to the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity)
-and thereby corrects the inevitable error which the human mind cannot
-avoid when it deals with separate elements of motion instead of
-examining continuous motion.
-
-In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing happens.
-The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable arbitrary
-human wills, is continuous.
-
-To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of
-history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting from the sum of all
-those human wills, man’s mind postulates arbitrary and disconnected
-units. The first method of history is to take an arbitrarily selected
-series of continuous events and examine it apart from others, though
-there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event always
-flows uninterruptedly from another.
-
-The second method is to consider the actions of some one man—a king or a
-commander—as equivalent to the sum of many individual wills; whereas the
-sum of individual wills is never expressed by the activity of a single
-historic personage.
-
-Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to truth continually
-takes smaller and smaller units for examination. But however small the
-units it takes, we feel that to take any unit disconnected from others,
-or to assume a beginning of any phenomenon, or to say that the will of
-many men is expressed by the actions of any one historic personage, is
-in itself false.
-
-It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust any deductions
-drawn from history. It is merely necessary to select some larger or
-smaller unit as the subject of observation—as criticism has every
-right to do, seeing that whatever unit history observes must always be
-arbitrarily selected.
-
-Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the
-differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and
-attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of
-these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.
-
-The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe present an
-extraordinary movement of millions of people. Men leave their customary
-pursuits, hasten from one side of Europe to the other, plunder and
-slaughter one another, triumph and are plunged in despair, and for some
-years the whole course of life is altered and presents an intensive
-movement which first increases and then slackens. What was the cause of
-this movement, by what laws was it governed? asks the mind of man.
-
-The historians, replying to this question, lay before us the sayings and
-doings of a few dozen men in a building in the city of Paris, calling
-these sayings and doings “the Revolution”; then they give a detailed
-biography of Napoleon and of certain people favorable or hostile to him;
-tell of the influence some of these people had on others, and say: that
-is why this movement took place and those are its laws.
-
-But the mind of man not only refuses to believe this explanation, but
-plainly says that this method of explanation is fallacious, because in
-it a weaker phenomenon is taken as the cause of a stronger. The sum of
-human wills produced the Revolution and Napoleon, and only the sum of
-those wills first tolerated and then destroyed them.
-
-“But every time there have been conquests there have been conquerors;
-every time there has been a revolution in any state there have been
-great men,” says history. And, indeed, human reason replies: every time
-conquerors appear there have been wars, but this does not prove that the
-conquerors caused the wars and that it is possible to find the laws of
-a war in the personal activity of a single man. Whenever I look at my
-watch and its hands point to ten, I hear the bells of the neighboring
-church; but because the bells begin to ring when the hands of the clock
-reach ten, I have no right to assume that the movement of the bells is
-caused by the position of the hands of the watch.
-
-Whenever I see the movement of a locomotive I hear the whistle and see
-the valves opening and wheels turning; but I have no right to conclude
-that the whistling and the turning of wheels are the cause of the
-movement of the engine.
-
-The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the oaks
-are budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when the oak
-is budding. But though I do not know what causes the cold winds to blow
-when the oak buds unfold, I cannot agree with the peasants that the
-unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold wind, for the
-force of the wind is beyond the influence of the buds. I see only a
-coincidence of occurrences such as happens with all the phenomena of
-life, and I see that however much and however carefully I observe the
-hands of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the engine, and the
-oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells ringing, the engine
-moving, or of the winds of spring. To that I must entirely change my
-point of view and study the laws of the movement of steam, of the
-bells, and of the wind. History must do the same. And attempts in this
-direction have already been made.
-
-To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of
-our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and
-study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are
-moved. No one can say in how far it is possible for man to advance
-in this way toward an understanding of the laws of history; but it is
-evident that only along that path does the possibility of discovering
-the laws of history lie, and that as yet not a millionth part as much
-mental effort has been applied in this direction by historians as has
-been devoted to describing the actions of various kings, commanders,
-and ministers and propounding the historians’ own reflections concerning
-these actions.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia. The Russian
-army and people avoided a collision till Smolénsk was reached, and again
-from Smolénsk to Borodinó. The French army pushed on to Moscow, its
-goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim, just as the
-velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches the earth. Behind
-it were seven hundred miles of hunger-stricken, hostile country; ahead
-were a few dozen miles separating it from its goal. Every soldier in
-Napoleon’s army felt this and the invasion moved on by its own momentum.
-
-The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit of hatred
-of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army increased and
-consolidated. At Borodinó a collision took place. Neither army was
-broken up, but the Russian army retreated immediately after the
-collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding with another
-having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability the ball
-of invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled on for some
-distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its force.
-
-The Russians retreated eighty miles—to beyond Moscow—and the French
-reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For five weeks after that
-there was not a single battle. The French did not move. As a bleeding,
-mortally wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained inert in Moscow
-for five weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh reason, fled back:
-they made a dash for the Kalúga road, and (after a victory—for at
-Málo-Yaroslávets the field of conflict again remained theirs) without
-undertaking a single serious battle, they fled still more rapidly back
-to Smolénsk, beyond Smolénsk, beyond the Berëzina, beyond Vílna, and
-farther still.
-
-On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutúzov and the whole
-Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodinó was a victory.
-Kutúzov reported so to the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare for a
-fresh conflict to finish the enemy and did this not to deceive anyone,
-but because he knew that the enemy was beaten, as everyone who had taken
-part in the battle knew it.
-
-But all that evening and next day reports came in one after another
-of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army, and a fresh battle
-proved physically impossible.
-
-It was impossible to give battle before information had been collected,
-the wounded gathered in, the supplies of ammunition replenished, the
-slain reckoned up, new officers appointed to replace those who had been
-killed, and before the men had had food and sleep. And meanwhile, the
-very next morning after the battle, the French army advanced of itself
-upon the Russians, carried forward by the force of its own momentum now
-seemingly increased in inverse proportion to the square of the distance
-from its aim. Kutúzov’s wish was to attack next day, and the whole
-army desired to do so. But to make an attack the wish to do so is not
-sufficient, there must also be a possibility of doing it, and that
-possibility did not exist. It was impossible not to retreat a day’s
-march, and then in the same way it was impossible not to retreat another
-and a third day’s march, and at last, on the first of September when
-the army drew near Moscow—despite the strength of the feeling that had
-arisen in all ranks—the force of circumstances compelled it to retire
-beyond Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last, day’s march, and
-abandoned Moscow to the enemy.
-
-For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles are
-made by generals—as anyone of us sitting over a map in his study may
-imagine how he would have arranged things in this or that battle—the
-questions present themselves: Why did Kutúzov during the retreat not do
-this or that? Why did he not take up a position before reaching Filí?
-Why did he not retire at once by the Kalúga road, abandoning Moscow? and
-so on. People accustomed to think in that way forget, or do not know,
-the inevitable conditions which always limit the activities of any
-commander in chief. The activity of a commander in chief does not at all
-resemble the activity we imagine to ourselves when we sit at ease in
-our studies examining some campaign on the map, with a certain number of
-troops on this and that side in a certain known locality, and begin our
-plans from some given moment. A commander in chief is never dealing with
-the beginning of any event—the position from which we always contemplate
-it. The commander in chief is always in the midst of a series of
-shifting events and so he never can at any moment consider the whole
-import of an event that is occurring. Moment by moment the event is
-imperceptibly shaping itself, and at every moment of this continuous,
-uninterrupted shaping of events the commander in chief is in the
-midst of a most complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies,
-authorities, projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is
-continually obliged to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him,
-which constantly conflict with one another.
-
-Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that Kutúzov should
-have moved his army to the Kalúga road long before reaching Filí, and
-that somebody actually submitted such a proposal to him. But a commander
-in chief, especially at a difficult moment, has always before him not
-one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all these proposals, based
-on strategics and tactics, contradict each other.
-
-A commander in chief’s business, it would seem, is simply to choose one
-of these projects. But even that he cannot do. Events and time do not
-wait. For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested to him to
-cross to the Kalúga road, but just then an adjutant gallops up from
-Milorádovich asking whether he is to engage the French or retire. An
-order must be given him at once, that instant. And the order to retreat
-carries us past the turn to the Kalúga road. And after the adjutant
-comes the commissary general asking where the stores are to be taken,
-and the chief of the hospitals asks where the wounded are to go, and a
-courier from Petersburg brings a letter from the sovereign which does
-not admit of the possibility of abandoning Moscow, and the commander in
-chief’s rival, the man who is undermining him (and there are always
-not merely one but several such), presents a new project diametrically
-opposed to that of turning to the Kalúga road, and the commander in
-chief himself needs sleep and refreshment to maintain his energy and
-a respectable general who has been overlooked in the distribution of
-rewards comes to complain, and the inhabitants of the district pray to
-be defended, and an officer sent to inspect the locality comes in and
-gives a report quite contrary to what was said by the officer
-previously sent; and a spy, a prisoner, and a general who has been
-on reconnaissance, all describe the position of the enemy’s army
-differently. People accustomed to misunderstand or to forget these
-inevitable conditions of a commander in chief’s actions describe to
-us, for instance, the position of the army at Filí and assume that the
-commander in chief could, on the first of September, quite freely decide
-whether to abandon Moscow or defend it; whereas, with the Russian army
-less than four miles from Moscow, no such question existed. When had
-that question been settled? At Drissa and at Smolénsk and most
-palpably of all on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevárdino and on
-the twenty-sixth at Borodinó, and each day and hour and minute of the
-retreat from Borodinó to Filí.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-When Ermólov, having been sent by Kutúzov to inspect the position, told
-the field marshal that it was impossible to fight there before Moscow
-and that they must retreat, Kutúzov looked at him in silence.
-
-“Give me your hand,” said he and, turning it over so as to feel the
-pulse, added: “You are not well, my dear fellow. Think what you are
-saying!”
-
-Kutúzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating beyond Moscow
-without a battle.
-
-On the Poklónny Hill, four miles from the Dorogomílov gate of Moscow,
-Kutúzov got out of his carriage and sat down on a bench by the roadside.
-A great crowd of generals gathered round him, and Count Rostopchín, who
-had come out from Moscow, joined them. This brilliant company separated
-into several groups who all discussed the advantages and disadvantages
-of the position, the state of the army, the plans suggested, the
-situation of Moscow, and military questions generally. Though they had
-not been summoned for the purpose, and though it was not so called, they
-all felt that this was really a council of war. The conversations all
-dealt with public questions. If anyone gave or asked for personal
-news, it was done in a whisper and they immediately reverted to general
-matters. No jokes, or laughter, or smiles even, were seen among all
-these men. They evidently all made an effort to hold themselves at the
-height the situation demanded. And all these groups, while talking
-among themselves, tried to keep near the commander in chief (whose
-bench formed the center of the gathering) and to speak so that he might
-overhear them. The commander in chief listened to what was being said
-and sometimes asked them to repeat their remarks, but did not himself
-take part in the conversations or express any opinion. After hearing
-what was being said by one or other of these groups he generally turned
-away with an air of disappointment, as though they were not speaking of
-anything he wished to hear. Some discussed the position that had been
-chosen, criticizing not the position itself so much as the mental
-capacity of those who had chosen it. Others argued that a mistake had
-been made earlier and that a battle should have been fought two days
-before. Others again spoke of the battle of Salamanca, which was
-described by Crosart, a newly arrived Frenchman in a Spanish uniform.
-(This Frenchman and one of the German princes serving with the Russian
-army were discussing the siege of Saragossa and considering the
-possibility of defending Moscow in a similar manner.) Count Rostopchín
-was telling a fourth group that he was prepared to die with the city
-train bands under the walls of the capital, but that he still could not
-help regretting having been left in ignorance of what was happening, and
-that had he known it sooner things would have been different.... A
-fifth group, displaying the profundity of their strategic perceptions,
-discussed the direction the troops would now have to take. A sixth group
-was talking absolute nonsense. Kutúzov’s expression grew more and more
-preoccupied and gloomy. From all this talk he saw only one thing: that
-to defend Moscow was a physical impossibility in the full meaning of
-those words, that is to say, so utterly impossible that if any senseless
-commander were to give orders to fight, confusion would result but the
-battle would still not take place. It would not take place because the
-commanders not merely all recognized the position to be impossible, but
-in their conversations were only discussing what would happen after its
-inevitable abandonment. How could the commanders lead their troops to
-a field of battle they considered impossible to hold? The lower-grade
-officers and even the soldiers (who too reason) also considered the
-position impossible and therefore could not go to fight, fully convinced
-as they were of defeat. If Bennigsen insisted on the position being
-defended and others still discussed it, the question was no longer
-important in itself but only as a pretext for disputes and intrigue.
-This Kutúzov knew well.
-
-Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly displayed his Russian
-patriotism (Kutúzov could not listen to this without wincing) by
-insisting that Moscow must be defended. His aim was as clear as daylight
-to Kutúzov: if the defense failed, to throw the blame on Kutúzov who had
-brought the army as far as the Sparrow Hills without giving battle; if
-it succeeded, to claim the success as his own; or if battle were not
-given, to clear himself of the crime of abandoning Moscow. But this
-intrigue did not now occupy the old man’s mind. One terrible question
-absorbed him and to that question he heard no reply from anyone. The
-question for him now was: “Have I really allowed Napoleon to reach
-Moscow, and when did I do so? When was it decided? Can it have been
-yesterday when I ordered Plátov to retreat, or was it the evening
-before, when I had a nap and told Bennigsen to issue orders? Or was it
-earlier still?... When, when was this terrible affair decided? Moscow
-must be abandoned. The army must retreat and the order to do so must
-be given.” To give that terrible order seemed to him equivalent to
-resigning the command of the army. And not only did he love power to
-which he was accustomed (the honours awarded to Prince Prozoróvski,
-under whom he had served in Turkey, galled him), but he was convinced
-that he was destined to save Russia and that that was why, against
-the Emperor’s wish and by the will of the people, he had been chosen
-commander in chief. He was convinced that he alone could maintain
-command of the army in these difficult circumstances, and that in all
-the world he alone could encounter the invincible Napoleon without fear,
-and he was horrified at the thought of the order he had to issue. But
-something had to be decided, and these conversations around him which
-were assuming too free a character must be stopped.
-
-He called the most important generals to him.
-
-“My head, be it good or bad, must depend on itself,” said he, rising
-from the bench, and he rode to Filí where his carriages were waiting.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-The Council of War began to assemble at two in the afternoon in the
-better and roomier part of Andrew Savostyánov’s hut. The men, women, and
-children of the large peasant family crowded into the back room across
-the passage. Only Malásha, Andrew’s six-year-old granddaughter whom
-his Serene Highness had petted and to whom he had given a lump of sugar
-while drinking his tea, remained on the top of the brick oven in the
-larger room. Malásha looked down from the oven with shy delight at the
-faces, uniforms, and decorations of the generals, who one after another
-came into the room and sat down on the broad benches in the corner
-under the icons. “Granddad” himself, as Malásha in her own mind called
-Kutúzov, sat apart in a dark corner behind the oven. He sat, sunk deep
-in a folding armchair, and continually cleared his throat and pulled at
-the collar of his coat which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed
-to pinch his neck. Those who entered went up one by one to the field
-marshal; he pressed the hands of some and nodded to others. His adjutant
-Kaysárov was about to draw back the curtain of the window facing
-Kutúzov, but the latter moved his hand angrily and Kaysárov understood
-that his Serene Highness did not wish his face to be seen.
-
-Round the peasant’s deal table, on which lay maps, plans, pencils, and
-papers, so many people gathered that the orderlies brought in another
-bench and put it beside the table. Ermólov, Kaysárov, and Toll, who had
-just arrived, sat down on this bench. In the foremost place, immediately
-under the icons, sat Barclay de Tolly, his high forehead merging into
-his bald crown. He had a St. George’s Cross round his neck and looked
-pale and ill. He had been feverish for two days and was now shivering
-and in pain. Beside him sat Uvárov, who with rapid gesticulations was
-giving him some information, speaking in low tones as they all did.
-Chubby little Dokhtúrov was listening attentively with eyebrows
-raised and arms folded on his stomach. On the other side sat Count
-Ostermann-Tolstóy, seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts. His broad
-head with its bold features and glittering eyes was resting on his hand.
-Raévski, twitching forward the black hair on his temples as was his
-habit, glanced now at Kutúzov and now at the door with a look of
-impatience. Konovnítsyn’s firm, handsome, and kindly face was lit up by
-a tender, sly smile. His glance met Malásha’s, and the expression of his
-eyes caused the little girl to smile.
-
-They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the pretext of inspecting
-the position was finishing his savory dinner. They waited for him from
-four till six o’clock and did not begin their deliberations all that
-time but talked in low tones of other matters.
-
-Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutúzov leave his corner and
-draw toward the table, but not near enough for the candles that had been
-placed there to light up his face.
-
-Bennigsen opened the council with the question: “Are we to abandon
-Russia’s ancient and sacred capital without a struggle, or are we to
-defend it?” A prolonged and general silence followed. There was a frown
-on every face and only Kutúzov’s angry grunts and occasional cough
-broke the silence. All eyes were gazing at him. Malásha too looked at
-“Granddad.” She was nearest to him and saw how his face puckered; he
-seemed about to cry, but this did not last long.
-
-“Russia’s ancient and sacred capital!” he suddenly said, repeating
-Bennigsen’s words in an angry voice and thereby drawing attention to the
-false note in them. “Allow me to tell you, your excellency, that that
-question has no meaning for a Russian.” (He lurched his heavy body
-forward.) “Such a question cannot be put; it is senseless! The question
-I have asked these gentlemen to meet to discuss is a military one.
-The question is that of saving Russia. Is it better to give up Moscow
-without a battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the army as well
-as Moscow? That is the question on which I want your opinion,” and he
-sank back in his chair.
-
-The discussion began. Bennigsen did not yet consider his game lost.
-Admitting the view of Barclay and others that a defensive battle at
-Filí was impossible, but imbued with Russian patriotism and the love
-of Moscow, he proposed to move troops from the right to the left flank
-during the night and attack the French right flank the following day.
-Opinions were divided, and arguments were advanced for and against that
-project. Ermólov, Dokhtúrov, and Raévski agreed with Bennigsen. Whether
-feeling it necessary to make a sacrifice before abandoning the capital
-or guided by other, personal considerations, these generals seemed not
-to understand that this council could not alter the inevitable course
-of events and that Moscow was in effect already abandoned. The other
-generals, however, understood it and, leaving aside the question of
-Moscow, spoke of the direction the army should take in its retreat.
-Malásha, who kept her eyes fixed on what was going on before her,
-understood the meaning of the council differently. It seemed to her that
-it was only a personal struggle between “Granddad” and “Long-coat” as
-she termed Bennigsen. She saw that they grew spiteful when they spoke to
-one another, and in her heart she sided with “Granddad.” In the midst of
-the conversation she noticed “Granddad” give Bennigsen a quick, subtle
-glance, and then to her joys she saw that “Granddad” said something to
-“Long-coat” which settled him. Bennigsen suddenly reddened and paced
-angrily up and down the room. What so affected him was Kutúzov’s calm
-and quiet comment on the advantage or disadvantage of Bennigsen’s
-proposal to move troops by night from the right to the left flank to
-attack the French right wing.
-
-“Gentlemen,” said Kutúzov, “I cannot approve of the count’s plan. Moving
-troops in close proximity to an enemy is always dangerous, and military
-history supports that view. For instance...” Kutúzov seemed to reflect,
-searching for an example, then with a clear, naïve look at Bennigsen he
-added: “Oh yes; take the battle of Friedland, which I think the count
-well remembers, and which was... not fully successful, only because our
-troops were rearranged too near the enemy....”
-
-There followed a momentary pause, which seemed very long to them all.
-
-The discussion recommenced, but pauses frequently occurred and they all
-felt that there was no more to be said.
-
-During one of these pauses Kutúzov heaved a deep sigh as if preparing to
-speak. They all looked at him.
-
-“Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the broken
-crockery,” said he, and rising slowly he moved to the table. “Gentlemen,
-I have heard your views. Some of you will not agree with me. But I,” he
-paused, “by the authority entrusted to me by my Sovereign and country,
-order a retreat.”
-
-After that the generals began to disperse with the solemnity and
-circumspect silence of people who are leaving, after a funeral.
-
-Some of the generals, in low tones and in a strain very different from
-the way they had spoken during the council, communicated something to
-their commander in chief.
-
-Malásha, who had long been expected for supper, climbed carefully
-backwards down from the oven, her bare little feet catching at its
-projections, and slipping between the legs of the generals she darted
-out of the room.
-
-When he had dismissed the generals Kutúzov sat a long time with his
-elbows on the table, thinking always of the same terrible question:
-“When, when did the abandonment of Moscow become inevitable? When was
-that done which settled the matter? And who was to blame for it?”
-
-“I did not expect this,” said he to his adjutant Schneider when the
-latter came in late that night. “I did not expect this! I did not think
-this would happen.”
-
-“You should take some rest, your Serene Highness,” replied Schneider.
-
-“But no! They shall eat horseflesh yet, like the Turks!” exclaimed
-Kutúzov without replying, striking the table with his podgy fist. “They
-shall too, if only...”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-At that very time, in circumstances even more important than retreating
-without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning of Moscow,
-Rostopchín, who is usually represented as being the instigator of that
-event, acted in an altogether different manner from Kutúzov.
-
-After the battle of Borodinó the abandonment and burning of Moscow was
-as inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow without fighting.
-
-Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the
-feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.
-
-The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all the towns
-and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolénsk, without the
-participation of Count Rostopchín and his broadsheets. The people
-awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become excited or tear
-anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling within it the strength to
-find what it should do at that most difficult moment. And as soon as the
-enemy drew near the wealthy classes went away abandoning their property,
-while the poorer remained and burned and destroyed what was left.
-
-The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so was and
-is present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness of this,
-and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present in Russian
-Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow already in July
-and at the beginning of August showed that they expected this. Those who
-went away, taking what they could and abandoning their houses and half
-their belongings, did so from the latent patriotism which expresses
-itself not by phrases or by giving one’s children to save the fatherland
-and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively, simply, organically,
-and therefore in the way that always produces the most powerful results.
-
-“It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running
-away from Moscow,” they were told. In his broadsheets Rostopchín
-impressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed
-to be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowing
-it had to be done. Why did they go? It is impossible to suppose that
-Rostopchín had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon had
-committed in conquered countries. The first people to go away were the
-rich educated people who knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin had
-remained intact and that during Napoleon’s occupation the inhabitants
-had spent their time pleasantly in the company of the charming Frenchmen
-whom the Russians, and especially the Russian ladies, then liked so
-much.
-
-They went away because for Russians there could be no question as to
-whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It was
-out of the question to be under French rule, it would be the worst thing
-that could happen. They went away even before the battle of Borodinó and
-still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchín’s calls to defend Moscow
-or the announcement of his intention to take the wonder-working icon of
-the Iberian Mother of God and go to fight, or of the balloons that were
-to destroy the French, and despite all the nonsense Rostopchín wrote in
-his broadsheets. They knew that it was for the army to fight, and that
-if it could not succeed it would not do to take young ladies and house
-serfs to the Three Hills quarter of Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that
-they must go away, sorry as they were to abandon their property
-to destruction. They went away without thinking of the tremendous
-significance of that immense and wealthy city being given over to
-destruction, for a great city with wooden buildings was certain when
-abandoned by its inhabitants to be burned. They went away each on his
-own account, and yet it was only in consequence of their going away
-that the momentous event was accomplished that will always remain the
-greatest glory of the Russian people. The lady who, afraid of being
-stopped by Count Rostopchín’s orders, had already in June moved with her
-Negroes and her women jesters from Moscow to her Sarátov estate, with
-a vague consciousness that she was not Bonaparte’s servant, was really,
-simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia. But
-Count Rostopchín, who now taunted those who left Moscow and now had the
-government offices removed; now distributed quite useless weapons to
-the drunken rabble; now had processions displaying the icons, and now
-forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relics of saints; now
-seized all the private carts in Moscow and on one hundred and thirty-six
-of them removed the balloon that was being constructed by Leppich; now
-hinted that he would burn Moscow and related how he had set fire to his
-own house; now wrote a proclamation to the French solemnly upbraiding
-them for having destroyed his Orphanage; now claimed the glory of
-having hinted that he would burn Moscow and now repudiated the deed;
-now ordered the people to catch all spies and bring them to him, and now
-reproached them for doing so; now expelled all the French residents from
-Moscow, and now allowed Madame Aubert-Chalmé (the center of the whole
-French colony in Moscow) to remain, but ordered the venerable old
-postmaster Klyucharëv to be arrested and exiled for no particular
-offense; now assembled the people at the Three Hills to fight the French
-and now, to get rid of them, handed over to them a man to be killed
-and himself drove away by a back gate; now declared that he would
-not survive the fall of Moscow, and now wrote French verses in albums
-concerning his share in the affair—this man did not understand the
-meaning of what was happening but merely wanted to do something himself
-that would astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic
-feat; and like a child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable
-event—the abandonment and burning of Moscow—and tried with his puny hand
-now to speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore him
-along with it.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-Hélène, having returned with the court from Vílna to Petersburg, found
-herself in a difficult position.
-
-In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of a grandee who
-occupied one of the highest posts in the Empire. In Vílna she had formed
-an intimacy with a young foreign prince. When she returned to Petersburg
-both the magnate and the prince were there, and both claimed their
-rights. Hélène was faced by a new problem—how to preserve her intimacy
-with both without offending either.
-
-What would have seemed difficult or even impossible to another woman did
-not cause the least embarrassment to Countess Bezúkhova, who evidently
-deserved her reputation of being a very clever woman. Had she attempted
-concealment, or tried to extricate herself from her awkward position
-by cunning, she would have spoiled her case by acknowledging herself
-guilty. But Hélène, like a really great man who can do whatever
-he pleases, at once assumed her own position to be correct, as she
-sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone else was to blame.
-
-The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to reproach her, she
-lifted her beautiful head and, half turning to him, said firmly: “That’s
-just like a man—selfish and cruel! I expected nothing else. A woman
-sacrifices herself for you, she suffers, and this is her reward! What
-right have you, monseigneur, to demand an account of my attachments and
-friendships? He is a man who has been more than a father to me!” The
-prince was about to say something, but Hélène interrupted him.
-
-“Well, yes,” said she, “it may be that he has other sentiments for me
-than those of a father, but that is not a reason for me to shut my door
-on him. I am not a man, that I should repay kindness with ingratitude!
-Know, monseigneur, that in all that relates to my intimate feelings I
-render account only to God and to my conscience,” she concluded, laying
-her hand on her beautiful, fully expanded bosom and looking up to
-heaven.
-
-“But for heaven’s sake listen to me!”
-
-“Marry me, and I will be your slave!”
-
-“But that’s impossible.”
-
-“You won’t deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you...” said Hélène,
-beginning to cry.
-
-The prince tried to comfort her, but Hélène, as if quite distraught,
-said through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying,
-that there were precedents (there were up to that time very few, but
-she mentioned Napoleon and some other exalted personages), that she had
-never been her husband’s wife, and that she had been sacrificed.
-
-“But the law, religion...” said the prince, already yielding.
-
-“The law, religion... What have they been invented for if they can’t
-arrange that?” said Hélène.
-
-The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not occurred to him,
-and he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the Society of Jesus,
-with whom he was on intimate terms.
-
-A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which Hélène gave at
-her country house on the Stone Island, the charming Monsieur de Jobert,
-a man no longer young, with snow white hair and brilliant black eyes,
-a Jesuit à robe courte * was presented to her, and in the garden by the
-light of the illuminations and to the sound of music talked to her for a
-long time of the love of God, of Christ, of the Sacred Heart, and of the
-consolations the one true Catholic religion affords in this world and
-the next. Hélène was touched, and more than once tears rose to her eyes
-and to those of Monsieur de Jobert and their voices trembled. A dance,
-for which her partner came to seek her, put an end to her discourse with
-her future directeur de conscience, but the next evening Monsieur de
-Jobert came to see Hélène when she was alone, and after that often came
-again.
-
- * Lay member of the Society of Jesus.
-
-One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic church, where she knelt
-down before the altar to which she was led. The enchanting, middle-aged
-Frenchman laid his hands on her head and, as she herself afterward
-described it, she felt something like a fresh breeze wafted into her
-soul. It was explained to her that this was la grâce.
-
-After that a long-frocked abbé was brought to her. She confessed to
-him, and he absolved her from her sins. Next day she received a box
-containing the Sacred Host, which was left at her house for her to
-partake of. A few days later Hélène learned with pleasure that she had
-now been admitted to the true Catholic Church and that in a few days the
-Pope himself would hear of her and would send her a certain document.
-
-All that was done around her and to her at this time, all the attention
-devoted to her by so many clever men and expressed in such pleasant,
-refined ways, and the state of dove-like purity she was now in (she wore
-only white dresses and white ribbons all that time) gave her pleasure,
-but her pleasure did not cause her for a moment to forget her aim. And
-as it always happens in contests of cunning that a stupid person gets
-the better of cleverer ones, Hélène—having realized that the main object
-of all these words and all this trouble was, after converting her to
-Catholicism, to obtain money from her for Jesuit institutions (as to
-which she received indications)—before parting with her money insisted
-that the various operations necessary to free her from her husband
-should be performed. In her view the aim of every religion was merely
-to preserve certain proprieties while affording satisfaction to
-human desires. And with this aim, in one of her talks with her Father
-Confessor, she insisted on an answer to the question, in how far was she
-bound by her marriage?
-
-They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the drawing room.
-The scent of flowers came in at the window. Hélène was wearing a white
-dress, transparent over her shoulders and bosom. The abbé, a well-fed
-man with a plump, clean-shaven chin, a pleasant firm mouth, and white
-hands meekly folded on his knees, sat close to Hélène and, with a
-subtle smile on his lips and a peaceful look of delight at her beauty,
-occasionally glanced at her face as he explained his opinion on the
-subject. Hélène with an uneasy smile looked at his curly hair and his
-plump, clean-shaven, blackish cheeks and every moment expected the
-conversation to take a fresh turn. But the abbé, though he evidently
-enjoyed the beauty of his companion, was absorbed in his mastery of the
-matter.
-
-The course of the Father Confessor’s arguments ran as follows: “Ignorant
-of the import of what you were undertaking, you made a vow of conjugal
-fidelity to a man who on his part, by entering the married state without
-faith in the religious significance of marriage, committed an act of
-sacrilege. That marriage lacked the dual significance it should have
-had. Yet in spite of this your vow was binding. You swerved from it.
-What did you commit by so acting? A venial, or a mortal, sin? A venial
-sin, for you acted without evil intention. If now you married again
-with the object of bearing children, your sin might be forgiven. But the
-question is again a twofold one: firstly...”
-
-But suddenly Hélène, who was getting bored, said with one of her
-bewitching smiles: “But I think that having espoused the true religion I
-cannot be bound by what a false religion laid upon me.”
-
-The director of her conscience was astounded at having the case
-presented to him thus with the simplicity of Columbus’ egg. He was
-delighted at the unexpected rapidity of his pupil’s progress, but could
-not abandon the edifice of argument he had laboriously constructed.
-
-“Let us understand one another, Countess,” said he with a smile, and
-began refuting his spiritual daughter’s arguments.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-Hélène understood that the question was very simple and easy from
-the ecclesiastical point of view, and that her directors were making
-difficulties only because they were apprehensive as to how the matter
-would be regarded by the secular authorities.
-
-So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the opinion of society.
-She provoked the jealousy of the elderly magnate and told him what she
-had told her other suitor; that is, she put the matter so that the only
-way for him to obtain a right over her was to marry her. The elderly
-magnate was at first as much taken aback by this suggestion of marriage
-with a woman whose husband was alive, as the younger man had been, but
-Hélène’s imperturbable conviction that it was as simple and natural as
-marrying a maiden had its effect on him too. Had Hélène herself shown
-the least sign of hesitation, shame, or secrecy, her cause would
-certainly have been lost; but not only did she show no signs of secrecy
-or shame, on the contrary, with good-natured naïveté she told her
-intimate friends (and these were all Petersburg) that both the prince
-and the magnate had proposed to her and that she loved both and was
-afraid of grieving either.
-
-A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that Hélène wanted to
-be divorced from her husband (had such a report spread many would have
-opposed so illegal an intention) but simply that the unfortunate and
-interesting Hélène was in doubt which of the two men she should marry.
-The question was no longer whether this was possible, but only which was
-the better match and how the matter would be regarded at court. There
-were, it is true, some rigid individuals unable to rise to the height of
-such a question, who saw in the project a desecration of the sacrament
-of marriage, but there were not many such and they remained silent,
-while the majority were interested in Hélène’s good fortune and in the
-question which match would be the more advantageous. Whether it was
-right or wrong to remarry while one had a husband living they did not
-discuss, for that question had evidently been settled by people “wiser
-than you or me,” as they said, and to doubt the correctness of that
-decision would be to risk exposing one’s stupidity and incapacity to
-live in society.
-
-Only Márya Dmítrievna Akhrosímova, who had come to Petersburg that
-summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself plainly to express
-an opinion contrary to the general one. Meeting Hélène at a ball she
-stopped her in the middle of the room and, amid general silence, said
-in her gruff voice: “So wives of living men have started marrying
-again! Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been
-forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in all the
-brothels,” and with these words Márya Dmítrievna, turning up her wide
-sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly round,
-moved across the room.
-
-Though people were afraid of Márya Dmítrievna she was regarded in
-Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had said they only noticed,
-and repeated in a whisper, the one coarse word she had used, supposing
-the whole sting of her remark to lie in that word.
-
-Prince Vasíli, who of late very often forgot what he had said and
-repeated one and the same thing a hundred times, remarked to his
-daughter whenever he chanced to see her:
-
-“Hélène, I have a word to say to you,” and he would lead her
-aside, drawing her hand downward. “I have heard of certain projects
-concerning... you know. Well my dear child, you know how your father’s
-heart rejoices to know that you... You have suffered so much.... But, my
-dear child, consult only your own heart. That is all I have to say,” and
-concealing his unvarying emotion he would press his cheek against his
-daughter’s and move away.
-
-Bilíbin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever man,
-and who was one of the disinterested friends so brilliant a woman as
-Hélène always has—men friends who can never change into lovers—once gave
-her his view of the matter at a small and intimate gathering.
-
-“Listen, Bilíbin,” said Hélène (she always called friends of that sort
-by their surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve with her white,
-beringed fingers. “Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought to do.
-Which of the two?”
-
-Bilíbin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with a
-smile on his lips.
-
-“You are not taking me unawares, you know,” said he. “As a true friend,
-I have thought and thought again about your affair. You see, if you
-marry the prince”—he meant the younger man—and he crooked one finger,
-“you forever lose the chance of marrying the other, and you will
-displease the court besides. (You know there is some kind of
-connection.) But if you marry the old count you will make his last days
-happy, and as widow of the Grand... the prince would no longer be making
-a mésalliance by marrying you,” and Bilíbin smoothed out his forehead.
-
-“That’s a true friend!” said Hélène beaming, and again touching
-Bilíbin’s sleeve. “But I love them, you know, and don’t want to distress
-either of them. I would give my life for the happiness of them both.”
-
-Bilíbin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he could
-help in that difficulty.
-
-“Une maîtresse-femme! * That’s what is called putting things squarely.
-She would like to be married to all three at the same time,” thought he.
-
- * A masterly woman.
-
-“But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?” Bilíbin asked,
-his reputation being so well established that he did not fear to ask so
-naïve a question. “Will he agree?”
-
-“Oh, he loves me so!” said Hélène, who for some reason imagined that
-Pierre too loved her. “He will do anything for me.”
-
-Bilíbin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.
-
-“Even divorce you?” said he.
-
-Hélène laughed.
-
-Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed
-marriage was Hélène’s mother, Princess Kurágina. She was continually
-tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned
-a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to the
-idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of divorce
-and remarriage during a husband’s lifetime, and the priest told her that
-it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a text in the Gospel
-which (as it seemed to him) plainly forbids remarriage while the husband
-is alive.
-
-Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable, she
-drove to her daughter’s early one morning so as to find her alone.
-
-Having listened to her mother’s objections, Hélène smiled blandly and
-ironically.
-
-“But it says plainly: ‘Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced...’”
-said the old princess.
-
-“Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de bêtises. Vous ne comprenez rien. Dans ma
-position j’ai des devoirs,” * said Hélène changing from Russian, in
-which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite clear,
-into French which suited it better.
-
- * “Oh, Mamma, don’t talk nonsense! You don’t understand
- anything. In my position I have obligations.”
-
-
-“But, my dear....”
-
-“Oh, Mamma, how is it you don’t understand that the Holy Father, who has
-the right to grant dispensations...”
-
-Just then the lady companion who lived with Hélène came in to announce
-that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.
-
-“Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse contre
-lui, parce qu’il m’a manqué parole.” *
-
- * “No, tell him I don’t wish to see him, I am furious with
- him for not keeping his word to me.”
-
-
-“Comtesse, à tout péché miséricorde,” * said a fair-haired young man
-with a long face and nose, as he entered the room.
-
- * “Countess, there is mercy for every sin.”
-
-
-The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who had
-entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter and
-sidled out of the room.
-
-“Yes, she is right,” thought the old princess, all her convictions
-dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. “She is right, but how
-is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so
-simple,” she thought as she got into her carriage.
-
-
-By the beginning of August Hélène’s affairs were clearly defined and
-she wrote a letter to her husband—who, as she imagined, loved her very
-much—informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her having
-embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all the
-formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to him by
-the bearer of the letter.
-
-And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful
-keeping—Your friend Hélène.
-
-This letter was brought to Pierre’s house when he was on the field of
-Borodinó.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-Toward the end of the battle of Borodinó, Pierre, having run down
-from Raévski’s battery a second time, made his way through a gully to
-Knyazkóvo with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station, and
-seeing blood and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still entangled in
-the crowds of soldiers.
-
-The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away quickly
-from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that day and return
-to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a room in his own
-bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of life would he
-be able to understand himself and all he had seen and felt. But such
-ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.
-
-Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along which he
-was going, still on all sides there was what there had been on the field
-of battle. There were still the same suffering, exhausted, and sometimes
-strangely indifferent faces, the same blood, the same soldiers’
-overcoats, the same sounds of firing which, though distant now, still
-aroused terror, and besides this there were the foul air and the dust.
-
-Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozháysk road, Pierre sat down
-by the roadside.
-
-Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay leaning on
-his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved past him in
-the darkness. He was continually imagining that a cannon ball was flying
-toward him with a terrific whizz, and then he shuddered and sat up. He
-had no idea how long he had been there. In the middle of the night three
-soldiers, having brought some firewood, settled down near him and began
-lighting a fire.
-
-The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got the fire to burn
-and placed an iron pot on it into which they broke some dried bread and
-put a little dripping. The pleasant odor of greasy viands mingled with
-the smell of smoke. Pierre sat up and sighed. The three soldiers were
-eating and talking among themselves, taking no notice of him.
-
-“And who may you be?” one of them suddenly asked Pierre, evidently
-meaning what Pierre himself had in mind, namely: “If you want to eat
-we’ll give you some food, only let us know whether you are an honest
-man.”
-
-“I, I...” said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his social
-position as much as possible so as to be nearer to the soldiers and
-better understood by them. “By rights I am a militia officer, but my men
-are not here. I came to the battle and have lost them.”
-
-“There now!” said one of the soldiers.
-
-Another shook his head.
-
-“Would you like a little mash?” the first soldier asked, and handed
-Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean.
-
-Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as they called
-the food in the cauldron, and he thought it more delicious than any food
-he had ever tasted. As he sat bending greedily over it, helping himself
-to large spoonfuls and chewing one after another, his face was lit up by
-the fire and the soldiers looked at him in silence.
-
-“Where have you to go to? Tell us!” said one of them.
-
-“To Mozháysk.”
-
-“You’re a gentleman, aren’t you?”
-
-“Yes.”
-
-“And what’s your name?”
-
-“Peter Kirílych.”
-
-“Well then, Peter Kirílych, come along with us, we’ll take you there.”
-
-In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozháysk.
-
-By the time they got near Mozháysk and began ascending the steep hill
-into the town, the cocks were already crowing. Pierre went on with the
-soldiers, quite forgetting that his inn was at the bottom of the hill
-and that he had already passed it. He would not soon have remembered
-this, such was his state of forgetfulness, had he not halfway up the
-hill stumbled upon his groom, who had been to look for him in the
-town and was returning to the inn. The groom recognized Pierre in the
-darkness by his white hat.
-
-“Your excellency!” he said. “Why, we were beginning to despair! How is
-it you are on foot? And where are you going, please?”
-
-“Oh, yes!” said Pierre.
-
-The soldiers stopped.
-
-“So you’ve found your folk?” said one of them. “Well, good-by, Peter
-Kirílych—isn’t it?”
-
-“Good-by, Peter Kirílych!” Pierre heard the other voices repeat.
-
-“Good-by!” he said and turned with his groom toward the inn.
-
-“I ought to give them something!” he thought, and felt in his pocket.
-“No, better not!” said another, inner voice.
-
-There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all occupied.
-Pierre went out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all, lay
-down in his carriage.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt himself
-falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness of reality,
-he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of projectiles, groans
-and cries, and smelled blood and powder, and a feeling of horror and
-dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he opened his eyes and
-lifted his head from under his cloak. All was tranquil in the yard. Only
-someone’s orderly passed through the gateway, splashing through the mud,
-and talked to the innkeeper. Above Pierre’s head some pigeons, disturbed
-by the movement he had made in sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof
-of the penthouse. The whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful
-smell of stable yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He could see
-the clear starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.
-
-“Thank God, there is no more of that!” he thought, covering up his head
-again. “Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I yielded
-to it! But they... they were steady and calm all the time, to the
-end...” thought he.
-
-They, in Pierre’s mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the
-battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before
-the icon. They, those strange men he had not previously known, stood out
-clearly and sharply from everyone else.
-
-“To be a soldier, just a soldier!” thought Pierre as he fell asleep,
-“to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them what
-they are. But how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden of my
-outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could have run
-away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been sent to serve
-as a soldier after the duel with Dólokhov.” And the memory of the dinner
-at the English Club when he had challenged Dólokhov flashed through
-Pierre’s mind, and then he remembered his benefactor at Torzhók. And now
-a picture of a solemn meeting of the lodge presented itself to his mind.
-It was taking place at the English Club and someone near and dear to him
-sat at the end of the table. “Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor.
-But he died!” thought Pierre. “Yes, he died, and I did not know he was
-alive. How sorry I am that he died, and how glad I am that he is alive
-again!” On one side of the table sat Anatole, Dólokhov, Nesvítski,
-Denísov, and others like them (in his dream the category to which these
-men belonged was as clearly defined in his mind as the category of
-those he termed they), and he heard those people, Anatole and Dólokhov,
-shouting and singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his
-benefactor was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words
-was as weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the battlefield, but
-pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor
-was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite
-distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the
-possibility of being what they were. And they with their simple, kind,
-firm faces surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they were
-kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know him. Wishing to
-speak and to attract their attention, he got up, but at that moment his
-legs grew cold and bare.
-
-He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his cloak
-had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his cloak Pierre
-opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs, posts, and yard, but
-now they were all bluish, lit up, and glittering with frost or dew.
-
-“It is dawn,” thought Pierre. “But that’s not what I want. I want to
-hear and understand my benefactor’s words.” Again he covered himself up
-with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was there.
-There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts that
-someone was uttering or that he himself was formulating.
-
-Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that
-someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of that
-day had evoked them. He had never, it seemed to him, been able to think
-and express his thoughts like that when awake.
-
-“To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man’s freedom to
-the law of God,” the voice had said. “Simplicity is submission to the
-will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they are simple. They do
-not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but the unspoken is golden.
-Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not
-fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know
-his limitations, would not know himself. The hardest thing (Pierre went
-on thinking, or hearing, in his dream) is to be able in your soul to
-unite the meaning of all. To unite all?” he asked himself. “No, not
-to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts
-together is what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must harness
-them!” he repeated to himself with inward rapture, feeling that these
-words and they alone expressed what he wanted to say and solved the
-question that tormented him.
-
-“Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness.”
-
-“Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your excellency!”
-some voice was repeating. “We must harness, it is time to harness....”
-
-It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The sun shone
-straight into Pierre’s face. He glanced at the dirty innyard in the
-middle of which soldiers were watering their lean horses at the pump
-while carts were passing out of the gate. Pierre turned away with
-repugnance, and closing his eyes quickly fell back on the carriage seat.
-“No, I don’t want that, I don’t want to see and understand that. I want
-to understand what was revealing itself to me in my dream. One second
-more and I should have understood it all! But what am I to do? Harness,
-but how can I harness everything?” and Pierre felt with horror that the
-meaning of all he had seen and thought in the dream had been destroyed.
-
-The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre that an officer
-had come with news that the French were already near Mozháysk and that
-our men were leaving it.
-
-Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him, went on
-foot through the town.
-
-The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand wounded behind
-them. There were wounded in the yards, at the windows of the houses, and
-the streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts that
-were to take some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and blows could
-be heard. Pierre offered the use of his carriage, which had overtaken
-him, to a wounded general he knew, and drove with him to Moscow. On the
-way Pierre was told of the death of his brother-in-law Anatole and of
-that of Prince Andrew.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-On the thirtieth of August Pierre reached Moscow. Close to the gates of
-the city he was met by Count Rostopchín’s adjutant.
-
-“We have been looking for you everywhere,” said the adjutant. “The count
-wants to see you particularly. He asks you to come to him at once on a
-very important matter.”
-
-Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to see the Moscow
-commander in chief.
-
-Count Rostopchín had only that morning returned to town from his summer
-villa at Sokólniki. The anteroom and reception room of his house
-were full of officials who had been summoned or had come for orders.
-Vasílchikov and Plátov had already seen the count and explained to him
-that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it would have to be
-surrendered. Though this news was being concealed from the inhabitants,
-the officials—the heads of the various government departments—knew that
-Moscow would soon be in the enemy’s hands, just as Count Rostopchín
-himself knew it, and to escape personal responsibility they had all
-come to the governor to ask how they were to deal with their various
-departments.
-
-As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier from the army came
-out of Rostopchín’s private room.
-
-In answer to questions with which he was greeted, the courier made a
-despairing gesture with his hand and passed through the room.
-
-While waiting in the reception room Pierre with weary eyes watched the
-various officials, old and young, military and civilian, who were there.
-They all seemed dissatisfied and uneasy. Pierre went up to a group of
-men, one of whom he knew. After greeting Pierre they continued their
-conversation.
-
-“If they’re sent out and brought back again later on it will do no harm,
-but as things are now one can’t answer for anything.”
-
-“But you see what he writes...” said another, pointing to a printed
-sheet he held in his hand.
-
-“That’s another matter. That’s necessary for the people,” said the
-first.
-
-“What is it?” asked Pierre.
-
-“Oh, it’s a fresh broadsheet.”
-
-Pierre took it and began reading.
-
-His Serene Highness has passed through Mozháysk in order to join up with
-the troops moving toward him and has taken up a strong position where
-the enemy will not soon attack him. Forty-eight guns with ammunition
-have been sent him from here, and his Serene Highness says he will
-defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is even ready to fight in
-the streets. Do not be upset, brothers, that the law courts are closed;
-things have to be put in order, and we will deal with villains in our
-own way! When the time comes I shall want both town and peasant lads and
-will raise the cry a day or two beforehand, but they are not wanted yet
-so I hold my peace. An ax will be useful, a hunting spear not bad, but a
-three-pronged fork will be best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a
-sheaf of rye. Tomorrow after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of
-the Mother of God to the wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we will
-have some water blessed. That will help them to get well quicker. I,
-too, am well now: one of my eyes was sore but now I am on the lookout
-with both.
-
-“But military men have told me that it is impossible to fight in the
-town,” said Pierre, “and that the position...”
-
-“Well, of course! That’s what we were saying,” replied the first
-speaker.
-
-“And what does he mean by ‘One of my eyes was sore but now I am on the
-lookout with both’?” asked Pierre.
-
-“The count had a sty,” replied the adjutant smiling, “and was very much
-upset when I told him people had come to ask what was the matter with
-him. By the by, Count,” he added suddenly, addressing Pierre with a
-smile, “we heard that you have family troubles and that the countess,
-your wife...”
-
-“I have heard nothing,” Pierre replied unconcernedly. “But what have you
-heard?”
-
-“Oh, well, you know people often invent things. I only say what I
-heard.”
-
-“But what did you hear?”
-
-“Well, they say,” continued the adjutant with the same smile, “that
-the countess, your wife, is preparing to go abroad. I expect it’s
-nonsense....”
-
-“Possibly,” remarked Pierre, looking about him absent-mindedly. “And who
-is that?” he asked, indicating a short old man in a clean blue peasant
-overcoat, with a big snow-white beard and eyebrows and a ruddy face.
-
-“He? That’s a tradesman, that is to say, he’s the restaurant
-keeper, Vereshchágin. Perhaps you have heard of that affair with the
-proclamation.”
-
-“Oh, so that is Vereshchágin!” said Pierre, looking at the firm, calm
-face of the old man and seeking any indication of his being a traitor.
-
-“That’s not he himself, that’s the father of the fellow who wrote the
-proclamation,” said the adjutant. “The young man is in prison and I
-expect it will go hard with him.”
-
-An old gentleman wearing a star and another official, a German wearing a
-cross round his neck, approached the speaker.
-
-“It’s a complicated story, you know,” said the adjutant. “That
-proclamation appeared about two months ago. The count was informed of
-it. He gave orders to investigate the matter. Gabriel Ivánovich
-here made the inquiries. The proclamation had passed through exactly
-sixty-three hands. He asked one, ‘From whom did you get it?’ ‘From
-so-and-so.’ He went to the next one. ‘From whom did you get it?’ and so
-on till he reached Vereshchágin, a half educated tradesman, you know, ‘a
-pet of a trader,’” said the adjutant smiling. “They asked him, ‘Who gave
-it you?’ And the point is that we knew whom he had it from. He could
-only have had it from the Postmaster. But evidently they had come to
-some understanding. He replied: ‘From no one; I made it up myself.’
-They threatened and questioned him, but he stuck to that: ‘I made it
-up myself.’ And so it was reported to the count, who sent for the man.
-‘From whom did you get the proclamation?’ ‘I wrote it myself.’ Well, you
-know the count,” said the adjutant cheerfully, with a smile of pride,
-“he flared up dreadfully—and just think of the fellow’s audacity, lying,
-and obstinacy!”
-
-“And the count wanted him to say it was from Klyucharëv? I understand!”
-said Pierre.
-
-“Not at all,” rejoined the adjutant in dismay. “Klyucharëv had his own
-sins to answer for without that and that is why he has been banished.
-But the point is that the count was much annoyed. ‘How could you have
-written it yourself?’ said he, and he took up the Hamburg Gazette that
-was lying on the table. ‘Here it is! You did not write it yourself but
-translated it, and translated it abominably, because you don’t even know
-French, you fool.’ And what do you think? ‘No,’ said he, ‘I have not
-read any papers, I made it up myself.’ ‘If that’s so, you’re a traitor
-and I’ll have you tried, and you’ll be hanged! Say from whom you had
-it.’ ‘I have seen no papers, I made it up myself.’ And that was the end
-of it. The count had the father fetched, but the fellow stuck to it.
-He was sent for trial and condemned to hard labor, I believe. Now the
-father has come to intercede for him. But he’s a good-for-nothing lad!
-You know that sort of tradesman’s son, a dandy and lady-killer. He
-attended some lectures somewhere and imagines that the devil is no match
-for him. That’s the sort of fellow he is. His father keeps a cookshop
-here by the Stone Bridge, and you know there was a large icon of God
-Almighty painted with a scepter in one hand and an orb in the other.
-Well, he took that icon home with him for a few days and what did he do?
-He found some scoundrel of a painter...”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-In the middle of this fresh tale Pierre was summoned to the commander in
-chief.
-
-When he entered the private room Count Rostopchín, puckering his face,
-was rubbing his forehead and eyes with his hand. A short man was saying
-something, but when Pierre entered he stopped speaking and went out.
-
-“Ah, how do you do, great warrior?” said Rostopchín as soon as the short
-man had left the room. “We have heard of your prowess. But that’s not
-the point. Between ourselves, mon cher, do you belong to the Masons?” he
-went on severely, as though there were something wrong about it which
-he nevertheless intended to pardon. Pierre remained silent. “I am well
-informed, my friend, but I am aware that there are Masons and I hope
-that you are not one of those who on pretense of saving mankind wish to
-ruin Russia.”
-
-“Yes, I am a Mason,” Pierre replied.
-
-“There, you see, mon cher! I expect you know that Messrs. Speránski and
-Magnítski have been deported to their proper place. Mr. Klyucharëv has
-been treated in the same way, and so have others who on the plea of
-building up the temple of Solomon have tried to destroy the temple of
-their fatherland. You can understand that there are reasons for this and
-that I could not have exiled the Postmaster had he not been a harmful
-person. It has now come to my knowledge that you lent him your carriage
-for his removal from town, and that you have even accepted papers from
-him for safe custody. I like you and don’t wish you any harm and—as
-you are only half my age—I advise you, as a father would, to cease
-all communication with men of that stamp and to leave here as soon as
-possible.”
-
-“But what did Klyucharëv do wrong, Count?” asked Pierre.
-
-“That is for me to know, but not for you to ask,” shouted Rostopchín.
-
-“If he is accused of circulating Napoleon’s proclamation it is not
-proved that he did so,” said Pierre without looking at Rostopchín, “and
-Vereshchágin...”
-
-“There we are!” Rostopchín shouted at Pierre louder than before,
-frowning suddenly. “Vereshchágin is a renegade and a traitor who will
-be punished as he deserves,” said he with the vindictive heat with which
-people speak when recalling an insult. “But I did not summon you to
-discuss my actions, but to give you advice—or an order if you prefer it.
-I beg you to leave the town and break off all communication with such
-men as Klyucharëv. And I will knock the nonsense out of anybody”—but
-probably realizing that he was shouting at Bezúkhov who so far was not
-guilty of anything, he added, taking Pierre’s hand in a friendly manner,
-“We are on the eve of a public disaster and I haven’t time to be polite
-to everybody who has business with me. My head is sometimes in a whirl.
-Well, mon cher, what are you doing personally?”
-
-“Why, nothing,” answered Pierre without raising his eyes or changing the
-thoughtful expression of his face.
-
-The count frowned.
-
-“A word of friendly advice, mon cher. Be off as soon as you can, that’s
-all I have to tell you. Happy he who has ears to hear. Good-by, my dear
-fellow. Oh, by the by!” he shouted through the doorway after Pierre,
-“is it true that the countess has fallen into the clutches of the holy
-fathers of the Society of Jesus?”
-
-Pierre did not answer and left Rostopchín’s room more sullen and angry
-than he had ever before shown himself.
-
-When he reached home it was already getting dark. Some eight people had
-come to see him that evening: the secretary of a committee, the colonel
-of his battalion, his steward, his major-domo, and various petitioners.
-They all had business with Pierre and wanted decisions from him. Pierre
-did not understand and was not interested in any of these questions and
-only answered them in order to get rid of these people. When left alone
-at last he opened and read his wife’s letter.
-
-“They, the soldiers at the battery, Prince Andrew killed... that old
-man... Simplicity is submission to God. Suffering is necessary... the
-meaning of all... one must harness... my wife is getting married... One
-must forget and understand...” And going to his bed he threw himself on
-it without undressing and immediately fell asleep.
-
-When he awoke next morning the major-domo came to inform him that a
-special messenger, a police officer, had come from Count Rostopchín to
-know whether Count Bezúkhov had left or was leaving the town.
-
-A dozen persons who had business with Pierre were awaiting him in the
-drawing room. Pierre dressed hurriedly and, instead of going to see
-them, went to the back porch and out through the gate.
-
-From that time till the end of the destruction of Moscow no one of
-Bezúkhov’s household, despite all the search they made, saw Pierre again
-or knew where he was.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-The Rostóvs remained in Moscow till the first of September, that is,
-till the eve of the enemy’s entry into the city.
-
-After Pétya had joined Obolénski’s regiment of Cossacks and left for
-Bélaya Tsérkov where that regiment was forming, the countess was seized
-with terror. The thought that both her sons were at the war, had both
-gone from under her wing, that today or tomorrow either or both of them
-might be killed like the three sons of one of her acquaintances, struck
-her that summer for the first time with cruel clearness. She tried to
-get Nicholas back and wished to go herself to join Pétya, or to get
-him an appointment somewhere in Petersburg, but neither of these proved
-possible. Pétya could not return unless his regiment did so or unless
-he was transferred to another regiment on active service. Nicholas was
-somewhere with the army and had not sent a word since his last letter,
-in which he had given a detailed account of his meeting with Princess
-Mary. The countess did not sleep at night, or when she did fall asleep
-dreamed that she saw her sons lying dead. After many consultations and
-conversations, the count at last devised means to tranquillize her. He
-got Pétya transferred from Obolénski’s regiment to Bezúkhov’s, which was
-in training near Moscow. Though Pétya would remain in the service, this
-transfer would give the countess the consolation of seeing at least one
-of her sons under her wing, and she hoped to arrange matters for her
-Pétya so as not to let him go again, but always get him appointed to
-places where he could not possibly take part in a battle. As long as
-Nicholas alone was in danger the countess imagined that she loved her
-first-born more than all her other children and even reproached herself
-for it; but when her youngest: the scapegrace who had been bad at
-lessons, was always breaking things in the house and making himself a
-nuisance to everybody, that snub-nosed Pétya with his merry black eyes
-and fresh rosy cheeks where soft down was just beginning to show—when
-he was thrown amid those big, dreadful, cruel men who were fighting
-somewhere about something and apparently finding pleasure in it—then
-his mother thought she loved him more, much more, than all her other
-children. The nearer the time came for Pétya to return, the more uneasy
-grew the countess. She began to think she would never live to see such
-happiness. The presence of Sónya, of her beloved Natásha, or even of
-her husband irritated her. “What do I want with them? I want no one but
-Pétya,” she thought.
-
-At the end of August the Rostóvs received another letter from Nicholas.
-He wrote from the province of Vorónezh where he had been sent to procure
-remounts, but that letter did not set the countess at ease. Knowing that
-one son was out of danger she became the more anxious about Pétya.
-
-Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the Rostóvs’ acquaintances
-had left Moscow, and though everybody tried to persuade the countess to
-get away as quickly as possible, she would not hear of leaving before
-her treasure, her adored Pétya, returned. On the twenty-eighth of August
-he arrived. The passionate tenderness with which his mother received him
-did not please the sixteen-year-old officer. Though she concealed from
-him her intention of keeping him under her wing, Pétya guessed her
-designs, and instinctively fearing that he might give way to emotion
-when with her—might “become womanish” as he termed it to himself—he
-treated her coldly, avoided her, and during his stay in Moscow attached
-himself exclusively to Natásha for whom he had always had a particularly
-brotherly tenderness, almost lover-like.
-
-Owing to the count’s customary carelessness nothing was ready for their
-departure by the twenty-eighth of August and the carts that were to
-come from their Ryazán and Moscow estates to remove their household
-belongings did not arrive till the thirtieth.
-
-From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow was in a bustle
-and commotion. Every day thousands of men wounded at Borodinó were
-brought in by the Dorogomílov gate and taken to various parts of Moscow,
-and thousands of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their possessions
-out by the other gates. In spite of Rostopchín’s broadsheets, or because
-of them or independently of them, the strangest and most contradictory
-rumors were current in the town. Some said that no one was to be allowed
-to leave the city, others on the contrary said that all the icons had
-been taken out of the churches and everybody was to be ordered to leave.
-Some said there had been another battle after Borodinó at which the
-French had been routed, while others on the contrary reported that the
-Russian army had been destroyed. Some talked about the Moscow militia
-which, preceded by the clergy, would go to the Three Hills; others
-whispered that Augustin had been forbidden to leave, that traitors had
-been seized, that the peasants were rioting and robbing people on their
-way from Moscow, and so on. But all this was only talk; in reality
-(though the Council of Filí, at which it was decided to abandon Moscow,
-had not yet been held) both those who went away and those who remained
-behind felt, though they did not show it, that Moscow would certainly
-be abandoned, and that they ought to get away as quickly as possible and
-save their belongings. It was felt that everything would suddenly break
-up and change, but up to the first of September nothing had done so.
-As a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die
-immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is
-awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life,
-though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the
-conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would
-be completely upset.
-
-During the three days preceding the occupation of Moscow the whole
-Rostóv family was absorbed in various activities. The head of the
-family, Count Ilyá Rostóv, continually drove about the city collecting
-the current rumors from all sides and gave superficial and hasty orders
-at home about the preparations for their departure.
-
-The countess watched the things being packed, was dissatisfied with
-everything, was constantly in pursuit of Pétya who was always running
-away from her, and was jealous of Natásha with whom he spent all his
-time. Sónya alone directed the practical side of matters by getting
-things packed. But of late Sónya had been particularly sad and silent.
-Nicholas’ letter in which he mentioned Princess Mary had elicited, in
-her presence, joyous comments from the countess, who saw an intervention
-of Providence in this meeting of the princess and Nicholas.
-
-“I was never pleased at Bolkónski’s engagement to Natásha,” said the
-countess, “but I always wanted Nicholas to marry the princess, and had a
-presentiment that it would happen. What a good thing it would be!”
-
-Sónya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of retrieving
-the Rostóvs’ affairs was by Nicholas marrying a rich woman, and that the
-princess was a good match. It was very bitter for her. But despite
-her grief, or perhaps just because of it, she took on herself all the
-difficult work of directing the storing and packing of their things and
-was busy for whole days. The count and countess turned to her when they
-had any orders to give. Pétya and Natásha on the contrary, far from
-helping their parents, were generally a nuisance and a hindrance to
-everyone. Almost all day long the house resounded with their running
-feet, their cries, and their spontaneous laughter. They laughed and were
-gay not because there was any reason to laugh, but because gaiety and
-mirth were in their hearts and so everything that happened was a cause
-for gaiety and laughter to them. Pétya was in high spirits because
-having left home a boy he had returned (as everybody told him) a fine
-young man, because he was at home, because he had left Bélaya Tsérkov
-where there was no hope of soon taking part in a battle and had come to
-Moscow where there was to be fighting in a few days, and chiefly because
-Natásha, whose lead he always followed, was in high spirits. Natásha was
-gay because she had been sad too long and now nothing reminded her of
-the cause of her sadness, and because she was feeling well. She was also
-happy because she had someone to adore her: the adoration of others was
-a lubricant the wheels of her machine needed to make them run freely—and
-Pétya adored her. Above all, they were gay because there was a war near
-Moscow, there would be fighting at the town gates, arms were being
-given out, everybody was escaping—going away somewhere, and in general
-something extraordinary was happening, and that is always exciting,
-especially to the young.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-On Saturday, the thirty-first of August, everything in the Rostóvs’
-house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the furniture was
-being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been
-taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and
-ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house serfs carrying out
-the things were treading heavily on the parquet floors. The yard was
-crowded with peasant carts, some loaded high and already corded up,
-others still empty.
-
-The voices and footsteps of the many servants and of the peasants who
-had come with the carts resounded as they shouted to one another in
-the yard and in the house. The count had been out since morning. The
-countess had a headache brought on by all the noise and turmoil and was
-lying down in the new sitting room with a vinegar compress on her head.
-Pétya was not at home, he had gone to visit a friend with whom he meant
-to obtain a transfer from the militia to the active army. Sónya was in
-the ballroom looking after the packing of the glass and china. Natásha
-was sitting on the floor of her dismantled room with dresses, ribbons,
-and scarves strewn all about her, gazing fixedly at the floor and
-holding in her hands the old ball dress (already out of fashion) which
-she had worn at her first Petersburg ball.
-
-Natásha was ashamed of doing nothing when everyone else was so busy, and
-several times that morning had tried to set to work, but her heart was
-not in it, and she could not and did not know how to do anything except
-with all her heart and all her might. For a while she had stood beside
-Sónya while the china was being packed and tried to help, but soon gave
-it up and went to her room to pack her own things. At first she found it
-amusing to give away dresses and ribbons to the maids, but when that was
-done and what was left had still to be packed, she found it dull.
-
-“Dunyásha, you pack! You will, won’t you, dear?” And when Dunyásha
-willingly promised to do it all for her, Natásha sat down on the floor,
-took her old ball dress, and fell into a reverie quite unrelated to what
-ought to have occupied her thoughts now. She was roused from her reverie
-by the talk of the maids in the next room (which was theirs) and by the
-sound of their hurried footsteps going to the back porch. Natásha got
-up and looked out of the window. An enormously long row of carts full of
-wounded men had stopped in the street.
-
-The housekeeper, the old nurse, the cooks, coachmen, maids, footmen,
-postilions, and scullions stood at the gate, staring at the wounded.
-
-Natásha, throwing a clean pocket handkerchief over her hair and holding
-an end of it in each hand, went out into the street.
-
-The former housekeeper, old Mávra Kuzmínichna, had stepped out of the
-crowd by the gate, gone up to a cart with a hood constructed of bast
-mats, and was speaking to a pale young officer who lay inside.
-Natásha moved a few steps forward and stopped shyly, still holding her
-handkerchief, and listened to what the housekeeper was saying.
-
-“Then you have nobody in Moscow?” she was saying. “You would be more
-comfortable somewhere in a house... in ours, for instance... the family
-are leaving.”
-
-“I don’t know if it would be allowed,” replied the officer in a weak
-voice. “Here is our commanding officer... ask him,” and he pointed to a
-stout major who was walking back along the street past the row of carts.
-
-Natásha glanced with frightened eyes at the face of the wounded officer
-and at once went to meet the major.
-
-“May the wounded men stay in our house?” she asked.
-
-The major raised his hand to his cap with a smile.
-
-“Which one do you want, Ma’am’selle?” said he, screwing up his eyes and
-smiling.
-
-Natásha quietly repeated her question, and her face and whole
-manner were so serious, though she was still holding the ends of her
-handkerchief, that the major ceased smiling and after some reflection—as
-if considering in how far the thing was possible—replied in the
-affirmative.
-
-“Oh yes, why not? They may,” he said.
-
-With a slight inclination of her head, Natásha stepped back quickly to
-Mávra Kuzmínichna, who stood talking compassionately to the officer.
-
-“They may. He says they may!” whispered Natásha.
-
-The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the Rostóvs’ yard,
-and dozens of carts with wounded men began at the invitation of the
-townsfolk to turn into the yards and to draw up at the entrances of the
-houses in Povarskáya Street. Natásha was evidently pleased to be dealing
-with new people outside the ordinary routine of her life. She and Mávra
-Kuzmínichna tried to get as many of the wounded as possible into their
-yard.
-
-“Your Papa must be told, though,” said Mávra Kuzmínichna.
-
-“Never mind, never mind, what does it matter? For one day we can move
-into the drawing room. They can have all our half of the house.”
-
-“There now, young lady, you do take things into your head! Even if we
-put them into the wing, the men’s room, or the nurse’s room, we must ask
-permission.”
-
-“Well, I’ll ask.”
-
-Natásha ran into the house and went on tiptoe through the half-open door
-into the sitting room, where there was a smell of vinegar and Hoffman’s
-drops.
-
-“Are you asleep, Mamma?”
-
-“Oh, what sleep—?” said the countess, waking up just as she was dropping
-into a doze.
-
-“Mamma darling!” said Natásha, kneeling by her mother and bringing her
-face close to her mother’s, “I am sorry, forgive me, I’ll never do it
-again; I woke you up! Mávra Kuzmínichna has sent me: they have brought
-some wounded here—officers. Will you let them come? They have nowhere to
-go. I knew you’d let them come!” she said quickly all in one breath.
-
-“What officers? Whom have they brought? I don’t understand anything
-about it,” said the countess.
-
-Natásha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly.
-
-“I knew you’d give permission... so I’ll tell them,” and, having kissed
-her mother, Natásha got up and went to the door.
-
-In the hall she met her father, who had returned with bad news.
-
-“We’ve stayed too long!” said the count with involuntary vexation. “The
-Club is closed and the police are leaving.”
-
-“Papa, is it all right—I’ve invited some of the wounded into the house?”
-said Natásha.
-
-“Of course it is,” he answered absently. “That’s not the point. I beg
-you not to indulge in trifles now, but to help to pack, and tomorrow we
-must go, go, go!...”
-
-And the count gave a similar order to the major-domo and the servants.
-
-At dinner Pétya having returned home told them the news he had heard.
-He said the people had been getting arms in the Krémlin, and that though
-Rostopchín’s broadsheet had said that he would sound a call two or three
-days in advance, the order had certainly already been given for everyone
-to go armed to the Three Hills tomorrow, and that there would be a big
-battle there.
-
-The countess looked with timid horror at her son’s eager, excited face
-as he said this. She realized that if she said a word about his not
-going to the battle (she knew he enjoyed the thought of the impending
-engagement) he would say something about men, honor, and the
-fatherland—something senseless, masculine, and obstinate which there
-would be no contradicting, and her plans would be spoiled; and so,
-hoping to arrange to leave before then and take Pétya with her as their
-protector and defender, she did not answer him, but after dinner called
-the count aside and implored him with tears to take her away quickly,
-that very night if possible. With a woman’s involuntary loving cunning
-she, who till then had not shown any alarm, said that she would die of
-fright if they did not leave that very night. Without any pretense she
-was now afraid of everything.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her daughter, increased the
-countess’ fears still more by telling what she had seen at a spirit
-dealer’s in Myasnítski Street. When returning by that street she had
-been unable to pass because of a drunken crowd rioting in front of
-the shop. She had taken a cab and driven home by a side street and the
-cabman had told her that the people were breaking open the barrels at
-the drink store, having received orders to do so.
-
-After dinner the whole Rostóv household set to work with enthusiastic
-haste packing their belongings and preparing for their departure. The
-old count, suddenly setting to work, kept passing from the yard to the
-house and back again, shouting confused instructions to the hurrying
-people, and flurrying them still more. Pétya directed things in the
-yard. Sónya, owing to the count’s contradictory orders, lost her head
-and did not know what to do. The servants ran noisily about the house
-and yard, shouting and disputing. Natásha, with the ardor characteristic
-of all she did suddenly set to work too. At first her intervention in
-the business of packing was received skeptically. Everybody expected
-some prank from her and did not wish to obey her; but she resolutely
-and passionately demanded obedience, grew angry and nearly cried because
-they did not heed her, and at last succeeded in making them believe her.
-Her first exploit, which cost her immense effort and established her
-authority, was the packing of the carpets. The count had valuable
-Gobelin tapestries and Persian carpets in the house. When Natásha set
-to work two cases were standing open in the ballroom, one almost full
-up with crockery, the other with carpets. There was also much china
-standing on the tables, and still more was being brought in from the
-storeroom. A third case was needed and servants had gone to fetch it.
-
-“Sónya, wait a bit—we’ll pack everything into these,” said Natásha.
-
-“You can’t, Miss, we have tried to,” said the butler’s assistant.
-
-“No, wait a minute, please.”
-
-And Natásha began rapidly taking out of the case dishes and plates
-wrapped in paper.
-
-“The dishes must go in here among the carpets,” said she.
-
-“Why, it’s a mercy if we can get the carpets alone into three cases,”
-said the butler’s assistant.
-
-“Oh, wait, please!” And Natásha began rapidly and deftly sorting out the
-things. “These aren’t needed,” said she, putting aside some plates
-of Kiev ware. “These—yes, these must go among the carpets,” she said,
-referring to the Saxony china dishes.
-
-“Don’t, Natásha! Leave it alone! We’ll get it all packed,” urged Sónya
-reproachfully.
-
-“What a young lady she is!” remarked the major-domo.
-
-But Natásha would not give in. She turned everything out and began
-quickly repacking, deciding that the inferior Russian carpets and
-unnecessary crockery should not be taken at all. When everything had
-been taken out of the cases, they recommenced packing, and it turned
-out that when the cheaper things not worth taking had nearly all been
-rejected, the valuable ones really did all go into the two cases. Only
-the lid of the case containing the carpets would not shut down. A few
-more things might have been taken out, but Natásha insisted on having
-her own way. She packed, repacked, pressed, made the butler’s assistant
-and Pétya—whom she had drawn into the business of packing—press on the
-lid, and made desperate efforts herself.
-
-“That’s enough, Natásha,” said Sónya. “I see you were right, but just
-take out the top one.”
-
-“I won’t!” cried Natásha, with one hand holding back the hair that hung
-over her perspiring face, while with the other she pressed down the
-carpets. “Now press, Pétya! Press, Vasílich, press hard!” she cried.
-
-The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natásha, clapping her hands,
-screamed with delight and tears fell from her eyes. But this only
-lasted a moment. She at once set to work afresh and they now trusted her
-completely. The count was not angry even when they told him that Natásha
-had countermanded an order of his, and the servants now came to her
-to ask whether a cart was sufficiently loaded, and whether it might
-be corded up. Thanks to Natásha’s directions the work now went on
-expeditiously, unnecessary things were left, and the most valuable
-packed as compactly as possible.
-
-But hard as they all worked till quite late that night, they could not
-get everything packed. The countess had fallen asleep and the count,
-having put off their departure till next morning, went to bed.
-
-Sónya and Natásha slept in the sitting room without undressing.
-
-That night another wounded man was driven down the Povarskáya, and Mávra
-Kuzmínichna, who was standing at the gate, had him brought into the
-Rostóvs’ yard. Mávra Kuzmínichna concluded that he was a very important
-man. He was being conveyed in a calèche with a raised hood, and was
-quite covered by an apron. On the box beside the driver sat a venerable
-old attendant. A doctor and two soldiers followed the carriage in a
-cart.
-
-“Please come in here. The masters are going away and the whole house
-will be empty,” said the old woman to the old attendant.
-
-“Well, perhaps,” said he with a sigh. “We don’t expect to get him home
-alive! We have a house of our own in Moscow, but it’s a long way from
-here, and there’s nobody living in it.”
-
-“Do us the honor to come in, there’s plenty of everything in the
-master’s house. Come in,” said Mávra Kuzmínichna. “Is he very ill?” she
-asked.
-
-The attendant made a hopeless gesture.
-
-“We don’t expect to get him home! We must ask the doctor.”
-
-And the old servant got down from the box and went up to the cart.
-
-“All right!” said the doctor.
-
-The old servant returned to the calèche, looked into it, shook his
-head disconsolately, told the driver to turn into the yard, and stopped
-beside Mávra Kuzmínichna.
-
-“O, Lord Jesus Christ!” she murmured.
-
-She invited them to take the wounded man into the house.
-
-“The masters won’t object...” she said.
-
-But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so they took him
-into the wing and put him in the room that had been Madame Schoss’.
-
-This wounded man was Prince Andrew Bolkónski.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-Moscow’s last day had come. It was a clear bright autumn day, a Sunday.
-The church bells everywhere were ringing for service, just as usual on
-Sundays. Nobody seemed yet to realize what awaited the city.
-
-Only two things indicated the social condition of Moscow—the rabble,
-that is the poor people, and the price of commodities. An enormous crowd
-of factory hands, house serfs, and peasants, with whom some officials,
-seminarists, and gentry were mingled, had gone early that morning to
-the Three Hills. Having waited there for Rostopchín who did not turn
-up, they became convinced that Moscow would be surrendered, and then
-dispersed all about the town to the public houses and cookshops. Prices
-too that day indicated the state of affairs. The price of weapons, of
-gold, of carts and horses, kept rising, but the value of paper money and
-city articles kept falling, so that by midday there were instances of
-carters removing valuable goods, such as cloth, and receiving in payment
-a half of what they carted, while peasant horses were fetching five
-hundred rubles each, and furniture, mirrors, and bronzes were being
-given away for nothing.
-
-In the Rostóvs’ staid old-fashioned house the dissolution of former
-conditions of life was but little noticeable. As to the serfs the only
-indication was that three out of their huge retinue disappeared
-during the night, but nothing was stolen; and as to the value of their
-possessions, the thirty peasant carts that had come in from their
-estates and which many people envied proved to be extremely valuable and
-they were offered enormous sums of money for them. Not only were huge
-sums offered for the horses and carts, but on the previous evening and
-early in the morning of the first of September, orderlies and servants
-sent by wounded officers came to the Rostóvs’ and wounded men dragged
-themselves there from the Rostóvs’ and from neighboring houses where
-they were accommodated, entreating the servants to try to get them
-a lift out of Moscow. The major-domo to whom these entreaties were
-addressed, though he was sorry for the wounded, resolutely refused,
-saying that he dare not even mention the matter to the count. Pity these
-wounded men as one might, it was evident that if they were given one
-cart there would be no reason to refuse another, or all the carts and
-one’s own carriages as well. Thirty carts could not save all the wounded
-and in the general catastrophe one could not disregard oneself and one’s
-own family. So thought the major-domo on his master’s behalf.
-
-On waking up that morning Count Ilyá Rostóv left his bedroom softly, so
-as not to wake the countess who had fallen asleep only toward morning,
-and came out to the porch in his lilac silk dressing gown. In the yard
-stood the carts ready corded. The carriages were at the front porch.
-The major-domo stood at the porch talking to an elderly orderly and to
-a pale young officer with a bandaged arm. On seeing the count the
-major-domo made a significant and stern gesture to them both to go away.
-
-“Well, Vasílich, is everything ready?” asked the count, and stroking his
-bald head he looked good-naturedly at the officer and the orderly and
-nodded to them. (He liked to see new faces.)
-
-“We can harness at once, your excellency.”
-
-“Well, that’s right. As soon as the countess wakes we’ll be off, God
-willing! What is it, gentlemen?” he added, turning to the officer. “Are
-you staying in my house?”
-
-The officer came nearer and suddenly his face flushed crimson.
-
-“Count, be so good as to allow me... for God’s sake, to get into some
-corner of one of your carts! I have nothing here with me.... I shall be
-all right on a loaded cart....”
-
-Before the officer had finished speaking the orderly made the same
-request on behalf of his master.
-
-“Oh, yes, yes, yes!” said the count hastily. “I shall be very pleased,
-very pleased. Vasílich, you’ll see to it. Just unload one or two carts.
-Well, what of it... do what’s necessary...” said the count, muttering
-some indefinite order.
-
-But at the same moment an expression of warm gratitude on the officer’s
-face had already sealed the order. The count looked around him. In the
-yard, at the gates, at the window of the wings, wounded officers and
-their orderlies were to be seen. They were all looking at the count and
-moving toward the porch.
-
-“Please step into the gallery, your excellency,” said the major-domo.
-“What are your orders about the pictures?”
-
-The count went into the house with him, repeating his order not to
-refuse the wounded who asked for a lift.
-
-“Well, never mind, some of the things can be unloaded,” he added in a
-soft, confidential voice, as though afraid of being overheard.
-
-At nine o’clock the countess woke up, and Matrëna Timoféevna, who had
-been her lady’s maid before her marriage and now performed a sort of
-chief gendarme’s duty for her, came to say that Madame Schoss was much
-offended and the young ladies’ summer dresses could not be left behind.
-On inquiry, the countess learned that Madame Schoss was offended because
-her trunk had been taken down from its cart, and all the loads were
-being uncorded and the luggage taken out of the carts to make room for
-wounded men whom the count in the simplicity of his heart had ordered
-that they should take with them. The countess sent for her husband.
-
-“What is this, my dear? I hear that the luggage is being unloaded.”
-
-“You know, love, I wanted to tell you... Countess dear... an officer
-came to me to ask for a few carts for the wounded. After all, ours are
-things that can be bought but think what being left behind means to
-them!... Really now, in our own yard—we asked them in ourselves and
-there are officers among them.... You know, I think, my dear... let them
-be taken... where’s the hurry?”
-
-The count spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money matters.
-The countess was accustomed to this tone as a precursor of news of
-something detrimental to the children’s interests, such as the building
-of a new gallery or conservatory, the inauguration of a private theater
-or an orchestra. She was accustomed always to oppose anything announced
-in that timid tone and considered it her duty to do so.
-
-She assumed her dolefully submissive manner and said to her husband:
-“Listen to me, Count, you have managed matters so that we are getting
-nothing for the house, and now you wish to throw away all our—all the
-children’s property! You said yourself that we have a hundred thousand
-rubles’ worth of things in the house. I don’t consent, my dear, I don’t!
-Do as you please! It’s the government’s business to look after the
-wounded; they know that. Look at the Lopukhíns opposite, they cleared
-out everything two days ago. That’s what other people do. It’s only
-we who are such fools. If you have no pity on me, have some for the
-children.”
-
-Flourishing his arms in despair the count left the room without
-replying.
-
-“Papa, what are you doing that for?” asked Natásha, who had followed him
-into her mother’s room.
-
-“Nothing! What business is it of yours?” muttered the count angrily.
-
-“But I heard,” said Natásha. “Why does Mamma object?”
-
-“What business is it of yours?” cried the count.
-
-Natásha stepped up to the window and pondered.
-
-“Papa! Here’s Berg coming to see us,” said she, looking out of the
-window.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-Berg, the Rostóvs’ son-in-law, was already a colonel wearing the orders
-of Vladímir and Anna, and he still filled the quiet and agreeable post
-of assistant to the head of the staff of the assistant commander of the
-first division of the Second Army.
-
-On the first of September he had come to Moscow from the army.
-
-He had nothing to do in Moscow, but he had noticed that everyone in the
-army was asking for leave to visit Moscow and had something to do there.
-So he considered it necessary to ask for leave of absence for family and
-domestic reasons.
-
-Berg drove up to his father-in-law’s house in his spruce little trap
-with a pair of sleek roans, exactly like those of a certain prince. He
-looked attentively at the carts in the yard and while going up to the
-porch took out a clean pocket handkerchief and tied a knot in it.
-
-From the anteroom Berg ran with smooth though impatient steps into the
-drawing room, where he embraced the count, kissed the hands of Natásha
-and Sónya, and hastened to inquire after “Mamma’s” health.
-
-“Health, at a time like this?” said the count. “Come, tell us the news!
-Is the army retreating or will there be another battle?”
-
-“God Almighty alone can decide the fate of our fatherland, Papa,” said
-Berg. “The army is burning with a spirit of heroism and the leaders, so
-to say, have now assembled in council. No one knows what is coming. But
-in general I can tell you, Papa, that such a heroic spirit, the truly
-antique valor of the Russian army, which they—which it” (he corrected
-himself) “has shown or displayed in the battle of the twenty-sixth—there
-are no words worthy to do it justice! I tell you, Papa” (he smote
-himself on the breast as a general he had heard speaking had done, but
-Berg did it a trifle late for he should have struck his breast at the
-words “Russian army”), “I tell you frankly that we, the commanders, far
-from having to urge the men on or anything of that kind, could hardly
-restrain those... those... yes, those exploits of antique valor,” he
-went on rapidly. “General Barclay de Tolly risked his life everywhere at
-the head of the troops, I can assure you. Our corps was stationed on a
-hillside. You can imagine!”
-
-And Berg related all that he remembered of the various tales he had
-heard those days. Natásha watched him with an intent gaze that confused
-him, as if she were trying to find in his face the answer to some
-question.
-
-“Altogether such heroism as was displayed by the Russian warriors
-cannot be imagined or adequately praised!” said Berg, glancing round
-at Natásha, and as if anxious to conciliate her, replying to her intent
-look with a smile. “‘Russia is not in Moscow, she lives in the hearts of
-her sons!’ Isn’t it so, Papa?” said he.
-
-Just then the countess came in from the sitting room with a weary and
-dissatisfied expression. Berg hurriedly jumped up, kissed her hand,
-asked about her health, and, swaying his head from side to side to
-express sympathy, remained standing beside her.
-
-“Yes, Mamma, I tell you sincerely that these are hard and sad times for
-every Russian. But why are you so anxious? You have still time to get
-away....”
-
-“I can’t think what the servants are about,” said the countess, turning
-to her husband. “I have just been told that nothing is ready yet.
-Somebody after all must see to things. One misses Mítenka at such times.
-There won’t be any end to it.”
-
-The count was about to say something, but evidently restrained himself.
-He got up from his chair and went to the door.
-
-At that moment Berg drew out his handkerchief as if to blow his nose
-and, seeing the knot in it, pondered, shaking his head sadly and
-significantly.
-
-“And I have a great favor to ask of you, Papa,” said he.
-
-“Hm...” said the count, and stopped.
-
-“I was driving past Yusúpov’s house just now,” said Berg with a laugh,
-“when the steward, a man I know, ran out and asked me whether I wouldn’t
-buy something. I went in out of curiosity, you know, and there is a
-small chiffonier and a dressing table. You know how dear Véra wanted a
-chiffonier like that and how we had a dispute about it.” (At the mention
-of the chiffonier and dressing table Berg involuntarily changed his tone
-to one of pleasure at his admirable domestic arrangements.) “And it’s
-such a beauty! It pulls out and has a secret English drawer, you know!
-And dear Véra has long wanted one. I wish to give her a surprise, you
-see. I saw so many of those peasant carts in your yard. Please let me
-have one, I will pay the man well, and...”
-
-The count frowned and coughed.
-
-“Ask the countess, I don’t give orders.”
-
-“If it’s inconvenient, please don’t,” said Berg. “Only I so wanted it,
-for dear Véra’s sake.”
-
-“Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil, the devil...”
-cried the old count. “My head’s in a whirl!”
-
-And he left the room. The countess began to cry.
-
-“Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!” said Berg.
-
-Natásha left the room with her father and, as if finding it difficult to
-reach some decision, first followed him and then ran downstairs.
-
-Pétya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the servants
-who were to leave Moscow. The loaded carts were still standing in the
-yard. Two of them had been uncorded and a wounded officer was climbing
-into one of them helped by an orderly.
-
-“Do you know what it’s about?” Pétya asked Natásha.
-
-She understood that he meant what were their parents quarreling about.
-She did not answer.
-
-“It’s because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the wounded,” said
-Pétya. “Vasílich told me. I consider...”
-
-“I consider,” Natásha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry face to
-Pétya, “I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so... I don’t know what.
-Are we despicable Germans?”
-
-Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of weakening and
-letting the force of her anger run to waste, she turned and rushed
-headlong up the stairs.
-
-Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with the respectful
-attention of a relative. The count, pipe in hand, was pacing up and down
-the room, when Natásha, her face distorted by anger, burst in like a
-tempest and approached her mother with rapid steps.
-
-“It’s horrid! It’s abominable!” she screamed. “You can’t possibly have
-ordered it!”
-
-Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The count
-stood still at the window and listened.
-
-“Mamma, it’s impossible: see what is going on in the yard!” she cried.
-“They will be left!...”
-
-“What’s the matter with you? Who are ‘they’? What do you want?”
-
-“Why, the wounded! It’s impossible, Mamma. It’s monstrous!... No, Mamma
-darling, it’s not the thing. Please forgive me, darling.... Mamma, what
-does it matter what we take away? Only look what is going on in the
-yard... Mamma!... It’s impossible!”
-
-The count stood by the window and listened without turning round.
-Suddenly he sniffed and put his face closer to the window.
-
-The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full of shame for her
-mother, saw her agitation, and understood why her husband did not turn
-to look at her now, and she glanced round quite disconcerted.
-
-“Oh, do as you like! Am I hindering anyone?” she said, not surrendering
-at once.
-
-“Mamma, darling, forgive me!”
-
-But the countess pushed her daughter away and went up to her husband.
-
-“My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don’t understand about
-it,” said she, dropping her eyes shamefacedly.
-
-“The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen,” muttered the count through
-tears of joy, and he embraced his wife who was glad to hide her look of
-shame on his breast.
-
-“Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?...” asked Natásha. “We will still
-take all the most necessary things.”
-
-The count nodded affirmatively, and Natásha, at the rapid pace at which
-she used to run when playing at tag, ran through the ballroom to the
-anteroom and downstairs into the yard.
-
-The servants gathered round Natásha, but could not believe the strange
-order she brought them until the count himself, in his wife’s name,
-confirmed the order to give up all the carts to the wounded and take the
-trunks to the storerooms. When they understood that order the servants
-set to work at this new task with pleasure and zeal. It no longer seemed
-strange to them but on the contrary it seemed the only thing that could
-be done, just as a quarter of an hour before it had not seemed strange
-to anyone that the wounded should be left behind and the goods carted
-away but that had seemed the only thing to do.
-
-The whole household, as if to atone for not having done it sooner, set
-eagerly to work at the new task of placing the wounded in the carts. The
-wounded dragged themselves out of their rooms and stood with pale but
-happy faces round the carts. The news that carts were to be had spread
-to the neighboring houses, from which wounded men began to come into the
-Rostóvs’ yard. Many of the wounded asked them not to unload the carts
-but only to let them sit on the top of the things. But the work of
-unloading, once started, could not be arrested. It seemed not to matter
-whether all or only half the things were left behind. Cases full of
-china, bronzes, pictures, and mirrors that had been so carefully
-packed the night before now lay about the yard, and still they went on
-searching for and finding possibilities of unloading this or that and
-letting the wounded have another and yet another cart.
-
-“We can take four more men,” said the steward. “They can have my trap,
-or else what is to become of them?”
-
-“Let them have my wardrobe cart,” said the countess. “Dunyásha can go
-with me in the carriage.”
-
-They unloaded the wardrobe cart and sent it to take wounded men from a
-house two doors off. The whole household, servants included, was bright
-and animated. Natásha was in a state of rapturous excitement such as she
-had not known for a long time.
-
-“What could we fasten this onto?” asked the servants, trying to fix a
-trunk on the narrow footboard behind a carriage. “We must keep at least
-one cart.”
-
-“What’s in it?” asked Natásha.
-
-“The count’s books.”
-
-“Leave it, Vasílich will put it away. It’s not wanted.”
-
-The phaeton was full of people and there was a doubt as to where Count
-Peter could sit.
-
-“On the box. You’ll sit on the box, won’t you, Pétya?” cried Natásha.
-
-Sónya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her efforts was quite
-different from Natásha’s. She was putting away the things that had to
-be left behind and making a list of them as the countess wished, and she
-tried to get as much taken away with them as possible.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-Before two o’clock in the afternoon the Rostóvs’ four carriages, packed
-full and with the horses harnessed, stood at the front door. One by one
-the carts with the wounded had moved out of the yard.
-
-The calèche in which Prince Andrew was being taken attracted Sónya’s
-attention as it passed the front porch. With the help of a maid she was
-arranging a seat for the countess in the huge high coach that stood at
-the entrance.
-
-“Whose calèche is that?” she inquired, leaning out of the carriage
-window.
-
-“Why, didn’t you know, Miss?” replied the maid. “The wounded prince: he
-spent the night in our house and is going with us.”
-
-“But who is it? What’s his name?”
-
-“It’s our intended that was—Prince Bolkónski himself! They say he is
-dying,” replied the maid with a sigh.
-
-Sónya jumped out of the coach and ran to the countess. The countess,
-tired out and already dressed in shawl and bonnet for her journey,
-was pacing up and down the drawing room, waiting for the household to
-assemble for the usual silent prayer with closed doors before starting.
-Natásha was not in the room.
-
-“Mamma,” said Sónya, “Prince Andrew is here, mortally wounded. He is
-going with us.”
-
-The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing Sónya’s arm, glanced
-around.
-
-“Natásha?” she murmured.
-
-At that moment this news had only one significance for both of them.
-They knew their Natásha, and alarm as to what would happen if she heard
-this news stifled all sympathy for the man they both liked.
-
-“Natásha does not know yet, but he is going with us,” said Sónya.
-
-“You say he is dying?”
-
-Sónya nodded.
-
-The countess put her arms around Sónya and began to cry.
-
-“The ways of God are past finding out!” she thought, feeling that the
-Almighty Hand, hitherto unseen, was becoming manifest in all that was
-now taking place.
-
-“Well, Mamma? Everything is ready. What’s the matter?” asked Natásha, as
-with animated face she ran into the room.
-
-“Nothing,” answered the countess. “If everything is ready let us start.”
-
-And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her agitated face. Sónya
-embraced Natásha and kissed her.
-
-Natásha looked at her inquiringly.
-
-“What is it? What has happened?”
-
-“Nothing... No...”
-
-“Is it something very bad for me? What is it?” persisted Natásha with
-her quick intuition.
-
-Sónya sighed and made no reply. The count, Pétya, Madame Schoss, Mávra
-Kuzmínichna, and Vasílich came into the drawing room and, having closed
-the doors, they all sat down and remained for some moments silently
-seated without looking at one another.
-
-The count was the first to rise, and with a loud sigh crossed himself
-before the icon. All the others did the same. Then the count embraced
-Mávra Kuzmínichna and Vasílich, who were to remain in Moscow, and while
-they caught at his hand and kissed his shoulder he patted their backs
-lightly with some vaguely affectionate and comforting words. The
-countess went into the oratory and there Sónya found her on her knees
-before the icons that had been left here and there hanging on the wall.
-(The most precious ones, with which some family tradition was connected,
-were being taken with them.)
-
-In the porch and in the yard the men whom Pétya had armed with swords
-and daggers, with trousers tucked inside their high boots and with belts
-and girdles tightened, were taking leave of those remaining behind.
-
-As is always the case at a departure, much had been forgotten or put in
-the wrong place, and for a long time two menservants stood one on
-each side of the open door and the carriage steps waiting to help the
-countess in, while maids rushed with cushions and bundles from the house
-to the carriages, the calèche, the phaeton, and back again.
-
-“They always will forget everything!” said the countess. “Don’t you know
-I can’t sit like that?”
-
-And Dunyásha, with clenched teeth, without replying but with an
-aggrieved look on her face, hastily got into the coach to rearrange the
-seat.
-
-“Oh, those servants!” said the count, swaying his head.
-
-Efím, the old coachman, who was the only one the countess trusted to
-drive her, sat perched up high on the box and did not so much as glance
-round at what was going on behind him. From thirty years’ experience
-he knew it would be some time yet before the order, “Be off, in God’s
-name!” would be given him: and he knew that even when it was said
-he would be stopped once or twice more while they sent back to fetch
-something that had been forgotten, and even after that he would again
-be stopped and the countess herself would lean out of the window and beg
-him for the love of heaven to drive carefully down the hill. He knew
-all this and therefore waited calmly for what would happen, with more
-patience than the horses, especially the near one, the chestnut Falcon,
-who was pawing the ground and champing his bit. At last all were
-seated, the carriage steps were folded and pulled up, the door was shut,
-somebody was sent for a traveling case, and the countess leaned out
-and said what she had to say. Then Efím deliberately doffed his hat and
-began crossing himself. The postilion and all the other servants did the
-same. “Off, in God’s name!” said Efím, putting on his hat. “Start!” The
-postilion started the horses, the off pole horse tugged at his collar,
-the high springs creaked, and the body of the coach swayed. The footman
-sprang onto the box of the moving coach which jolted as it passed out
-of the yard onto the uneven roadway; the other vehicles jolted in
-their turn, and the procession of carriages moved up the street. In the
-carriages, the calèche, and the phaeton, all crossed themselves as they
-passed the church opposite the house. Those who were to remain in Moscow
-walked on either side of the vehicles seeing the travelers off.
-
-Rarely had Natásha experienced so joyful a feeling as now, sitting in
-the carriage beside the countess and gazing at the slowly receding
-walls of forsaken, agitated Moscow. Occasionally she leaned out of the
-carriage window and looked back and then forward at the long train of
-wounded in front of them. Almost at the head of the line she could see
-the raised hood of Prince Andrew’s calèche. She did not know who was
-in it, but each time she looked at the procession her eyes sought that
-calèche. She knew it was right in front.
-
-In Kúdrino, from the Nikítski, Présnya, and Podnovínsk Streets came
-several other trains of vehicles similar to the Rostóvs’, and as they
-passed along the Sadóvaya Street the carriages and carts formed two rows
-abreast.
-
-As they were going round the Súkharev water tower Natásha, who was
-inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing the people driving or walking
-past, suddenly cried out in joyful surprise:
-
-“Dear me! Mamma, Sónya, look, it’s he!”
-
-“Who? Who?”
-
-“Look! Yes, on my word, it’s Bezúkhov!” said Natásha, putting her head
-out of the carriage and staring at a tall, stout man in a coachman’s
-long coat, who from his manner of walking and moving was evidently
-a gentleman in disguise, and who was passing under the arch of the
-Súkharev tower accompanied by a small, sallow-faced, beardless old man
-in a frieze coat.
-
-“Yes, it really is Bezúkhov in a coachman’s coat, with a queer-looking
-old boy. Really,” said Natásha, “look, look!”
-
-“No, it’s not he. How can you talk such nonsense?”
-
-“Mamma,” screamed Natásha, “I’ll stake my head it’s he! I assure you!
-Stop, stop!” she cried to the coachman.
-
-But the coachman could not stop, for from the Meshchánski Street came
-more carts and carriages, and the Rostóvs were being shouted at to move
-on and not block the way.
-
-In fact, however, though now much farther off than before, the Rostóvs
-all saw Pierre—or someone extraordinarily like him—in a coachman’s coat,
-going down the street with head bent and a serious face beside a small,
-beardless old man who looked like a footman. That old man noticed a
-face thrust out of the carriage window gazing at them, and respectfully
-touching Pierre’s elbow said something to him and pointed to the
-carriage. Pierre, evidently engrossed in thought, could not at first
-understand him. At length when he had understood and looked in the
-direction the old man indicated, he recognized Natásha, and following
-his first impulse stepped instantly and rapidly toward the coach. But
-having taken a dozen steps he seemed to remember something and stopped.
-
-Natásha’s face, leaning out of the window, beamed with quizzical
-kindliness.
-
-“Peter Kirílovich, come here! We have recognized you! This is
-wonderful!” she cried, holding out her hand to him. “What are you doing?
-Why are you like this?”
-
-Pierre took her outstretched hand and kissed it awkwardly as he walked
-along beside her while the coach still moved on.
-
-“What is the matter, Count?” asked the countess in a surprised and
-commiserating tone.
-
-“What? What? Why? Don’t ask me,” said Pierre, and looked round at
-Natásha whose radiant, happy expression—of which he was conscious
-without looking at her—filled him with enchantment.
-
-“Are you remaining in Moscow, then?”
-
-Pierre hesitated.
-
-“In Moscow?” he said in a questioning tone. “Yes, in Moscow. Good-by!”
-
-“Ah, if only I were a man! I’d certainly stay with you. How splendid!”
-said Natásha. “Mamma, if you’ll let me, I’ll stay!”
-
-Pierre glanced absently at Natásha and was about to say something, but
-the countess interrupted him.
-
-“You were at the battle, we heard.”
-
-“Yes, I was,” Pierre answered. “There will be another battle
-tomorrow...” he began, but Natásha interrupted him.
-
-“But what is the matter with you, Count? You are not like yourself....”
-
-“Oh, don’t ask me, don’t ask me! I don’t know myself. Tomorrow... But
-no! Good-by, good-by!” he muttered. “It’s an awful time!” and dropping
-behind the carriage he stepped onto the pavement.
-
-Natásha continued to lean out of the window for a long time, beaming at
-him with her kindly, slightly quizzical, happy smile.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-For the last two days, ever since leaving home, Pierre had been living
-in the empty house of his deceased benefactor, Bazdéev. This is how it
-happened.
-
-When he woke up on the morning after his return to Moscow and his
-interview with Count Rostopchín, he could not for some time make out
-where he was and what was expected of him. When he was informed that
-among others awaiting him in his reception room there was a Frenchman
-who had brought a letter from his wife, the Countess Hélène, he felt
-suddenly overcome by that sense of confusion and hopelessness to which
-he was apt to succumb. He felt that everything was now at an end, all
-was in confusion and crumbling to pieces, that nobody was right or
-wrong, the future held nothing, and there was no escape from this
-position. Smiling unnaturally and muttering to himself, he first sat
-down on the sofa in an attitude of despair, then rose, went to the door
-of the reception room and peeped through the crack, returned flourishing
-his arms, and took up a book. His major-domo came in a second time to
-say that the Frenchman who had brought the letter from the countess
-was very anxious to see him if only for a minute, and that someone from
-Bazdéev’s widow had called to ask Pierre to take charge of her husband’s
-books, as she herself was leaving for the country.
-
-“Oh, yes, in a minute; wait... or no! No, of course... go and say I will
-come directly,” Pierre replied to the major-domo.
-
-But as soon as the man had left the room Pierre took up his hat which
-was lying on the table and went out of his study by the other door.
-There was no one in the passage. He went along the whole length of this
-passage to the stairs and, frowning and rubbing his forehead with
-both hands, went down as far as the first landing. The hall porter was
-standing at the front door. From the landing where Pierre stood there
-was a second staircase leading to the back entrance. He went down that
-staircase and out into the yard. No one had seen him. But there were
-some carriages waiting, and as soon as Pierre stepped out of the gate
-the coachmen and the yard porter noticed him and raised their caps to
-him. When he felt he was being looked at he behaved like an ostrich
-which hides its head in a bush in order not to be seen: he hung his head
-and quickening his pace went down the street.
-
-Of all the affairs awaiting Pierre that day the sorting of Joseph
-Bazdéev’s books and papers appeared to him the most necessary.
-
-He hired the first cab he met and told the driver to go to the
-Patriarch’s Ponds, where the widow Bazdéev’s house was.
-
-Continually turning round to look at the rows of loaded carts that were
-making their way from all sides out of Moscow, and balancing his bulky
-body so as not to slip out of the ramshackle old vehicle, Pierre,
-experiencing the joyful feeling of a boy escaping from school, began to
-talk to his driver.
-
-The man told him that arms were being distributed today at the Krémlin
-and that tomorrow everyone would be sent out beyond the Three Hills
-gates and a great battle would be fought there.
-
-Having reached the Patriarch’s Ponds Pierre found the Bazdéevs’ house,
-where he had not been for a long time past. He went up to the gate.
-Gerásim, that sallow beardless old man Pierre had seen at Torzhók five
-years before with Joseph Bazdéev, came out in answer to his knock.
-
-“At home?” asked Pierre.
-
-“Owing to the present state of things Sophia Danílovna has gone to the
-Torzhók estate with the children, your excellency.”
-
-“I will come in all the same, I have to look through the books,” said
-Pierre.
-
-“Be so good as to step in. Makár Alexéevich, the brother of my late
-master—may the kingdom of heaven be his—has remained here, but he is in
-a weak state as you know,” said the old servant.
-
-Pierre knew that Makár Alexéevich was Joseph Bazdéev’s half-insane
-brother and a hard drinker.
-
-“Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in...” said Pierre and entered the house.
-
-A tall, bald-headed old man with a red nose, wearing a dressing gown and
-with galoshes on his bare feet, stood in the anteroom. On seeing Pierre
-he muttered something angrily and went away along the passage.
-
-“He was a very clever man but has now grown quite feeble, as your honor
-sees,” said Gerásim. “Will you step into the study?” Pierre nodded. “As
-it was sealed up so it has remained, but Sophia Danílovna gave orders
-that if anyone should come from you they were to have the books.”
-
-Pierre went into that gloomy study which he had entered with such
-trepidation in his benefactor’s lifetime. The room, dusty and untouched
-since the death of Joseph Bazdéev was now even gloomier.
-
-Gerásim opened one of the shutters and left the room on tiptoe. Pierre
-went round the study, approached the cupboard in which the manuscripts
-were kept, and took out what had once been one of the most important,
-the holy of holies of the order. This was the authentic Scotch Acts
-with Bazdéev’s notes and explanations. He sat down at the dusty writing
-table, and, having laid the manuscripts before him, opened them out,
-closed them, finally pushed them away, and resting his head on his hand
-sank into meditation.
-
-Gerásim looked cautiously into the study several times and saw Pierre
-always sitting in the same attitude.
-
-More than two hours passed and Gerásim took the liberty of making a
-slight noise at the door to attract his attention, but Pierre did not
-hear him.
-
-“Is the cabman to be discharged, your honor?”
-
-“Oh yes!” said Pierre, rousing himself and rising hurriedly. “Look
-here,” he added, taking Gerásim by a button of his coat and looking down
-at the old man with moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, “I say, do you
-know that there is going to be a battle tomorrow?”
-
-“We heard so,” replied the man.
-
-“I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what I ask you.”
-
-“Yes, your excellency,” replied Gerásim. “Will you have something to
-eat?”
-
-“No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes and a pistol,”
-said Pierre, unexpectedly blushing.
-
-“Yes, your excellency,” said Gerásim after thinking for a moment.
-
-All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor’s study,
-and Gerásim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to another and
-talking to himself. And he spent the night on a bed made up for him
-there.
-
-Gerásim, being a servant who in his time had seen many strange things,
-accepted Pierre’s taking up his residence in the house without surprise,
-and seemed pleased to have someone to wait on. That same evening—without
-even asking himself what they were wanted for—he procured a coachman’s
-coat and cap for Pierre, and promised to get him the pistol next day.
-Makár Alexéevich came twice that evening shuffling along in his galoshes
-as far as the door and stopped and looked ingratiatingly at Pierre. But
-as soon as Pierre turned toward him he wrapped his dressing gown around
-him with a shamefaced and angry look and hurried away. It was when
-Pierre (wearing the coachman’s coat which Gerásim had procured for him
-and had disinfected by steam) was on his way with the old man to buy the
-pistol at the Súkharev market that he met the Rostóvs.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-Kutúzov’s order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazán road was issued
-at night on the first of September.
-
-The first troops started at once, and during the night they marched
-slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those nearing
-the town at the Dorogomílov bridge saw ahead of them masses of soldiers
-crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the opposite side
-and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless masses of troops were
-bearing down on them from behind, and an unreasoning hurry and alarm
-overcame them. They all rushed forward to the bridge, onto it, and
-to the fords and the boats. Kutúzov himself had driven round by side
-streets to the other side of Moscow.
-
-By ten o’clock in the morning of the second of September, only the rear
-guard remained in the Dorogomílov suburb, where they had ample room. The
-main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.
-
-At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September,
-Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklónny Hill looking at
-the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August
-to the second of September, that is from the battle of Borodinó to the
-entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating,
-memorable week, there had been the extraordinary autumn weather that
-always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat
-than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear
-atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and
-refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights
-are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and
-delight us continually by falling from the sky.
-
-At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather still
-held.
-
-The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the Poklónny
-Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens, and her
-churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her cupolas
-glittering like stars in the sunlight.
-
-The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as
-he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious and
-uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that has
-no knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with the full force
-of its own life. By the indefinite signs which, even at a distance,
-distinguish a living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the Poklónny
-Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as it were, the
-breathing of that great and beautiful body.
-
-Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every
-foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the
-mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.
-
-“Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables églises, Moscou la sainte. La
-voilà donc enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il était temps,” * said he, and
-dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before him, and
-summoned Lelorgne d’Ideville, the interpreter.
-
- * “That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy
- Moscow! Here it is then at last, that famous city. It was
- high time.”
-
-
-“A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has lost her honor,”
-thought he (he had said so to Túchkov at Smolénsk). From that point of
-view he gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen before. It seemed
-strange to him that his long-felt wish, which had seemed unattainable,
-had at last been realized. In the clear morning light he gazed now at
-the city and now at the plan, considering its details, and the assurance
-of possessing it agitated and awed him.
-
-“But could it be otherwise?” he thought. “Here is this capital at my
-feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what is he thinking? A strange,
-beautiful, and majestic city; and a strange and majestic moment! In what
-light must I appear to them!” thought he, thinking of his troops.
-“Here she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men,” he reflected,
-glancing at those near him and at the troops who were approaching and
-forming up. “One word from me, one movement of my hand, and that ancient
-capital of the Tsars would perish. But my clemency is always ready to
-descend upon the vanquished. I must be magnanimous and truly great. But
-no, it can’t be true that I am in Moscow,” he suddenly thought.
-“Yet here she is lying at my feet, with her golden domes and crosses
-scintillating and twinkling in the sunshine. But I shall spare her. On
-the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great
-words of justice and mercy.... It is just this which Alexander will
-feel most painfully, I know him.” (It seemed to Napoleon that the chief
-import of what was taking place lay in the personal struggle between
-himself and Alexander.) “From the height of the Krémlin—yes, there
-is the Krémlin, yes—I will give them just laws; I will teach them the
-meaning of true civilization, I will make generations of boyars remember
-their conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not,
-and do not, desire war, that I have waged war only against the false
-policy of their court; that I love and respect Alexander and that in
-Moscow I will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and of my people.
-I do not wish to utilize the fortunes of war to humiliate an honored
-monarch. ‘Boyars,’ I will say to them, ‘I do not desire war, I desire
-the peace and welfare of all my subjects.’ However, I know their
-presence will inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do:
-clearly, impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in
-Moscow? Yes, there she lies.”
-
-“Qu’on m’amène les boyars,” * said he to his suite.
-
- * “Bring the boyars to me.”
-
-
-A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to fetch the
-boyars.
-
-Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again standing in the
-same place on the Poklónny Hill awaiting the deputation. His speech to
-the boyars had already taken definite shape in his imagination. That
-speech was full of dignity and greatness as Napoleon understood it.
-
-He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended to
-adopt toward Moscow. In his imagination he appointed days for assemblies
-at the palace of the Tsars, at which Russian notables and his own would
-mingle. He mentally appointed a governor, one who would win the
-hearts of the people. Having learned that there were many charitable
-institutions in Moscow he mentally decided that he would shower favors
-on them all. He thought that, as in Africa he had to put on a burnoose
-and sit in a mosque, so in Moscow he must be beneficent like the Tsars.
-And in order finally to touch the hearts of the Russians—and being like
-all Frenchmen unable to imagine anything sentimental without a reference
-to ma chère, ma tendre, ma pauvre mère * —he decided that he would
-place an inscription on all these establishments in large letters:
-“This establishment is dedicated to my dear mother.” Or no, it should
-be simply: Maison de ma Mère, *(2) he concluded. “But am I really in
-Moscow? Yes, here it lies before me, but why is the deputation from the
-city so long in appearing?” he wondered.
-
- * “My dear, my tender, my poor mother.”
-
- * (2) “House of my Mother.”
-
-
-Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried on in whispers
-among his generals and marshals at the rear of his suite. Those sent to
-fetch the deputation had returned with the news that Moscow was empty,
-that everyone had left it. The faces of those who were not conferring
-together were pale and perturbed. They were not alarmed by the fact
-that Moscow had been abandoned by its inhabitants (grave as that fact
-seemed), but by the question how to tell the Emperor—without putting
-him in the terrible position of appearing ridiculous—that he had been
-awaiting the boyars so long in vain: that there were drunken mobs left
-in Moscow but no one else. Some said that a deputation of some sort must
-be scraped together, others disputed that opinion and maintained that
-the Emperor should first be carefully and skillfully prepared, and then
-told the truth.
-
-“He will have to be told, all the same,” said some gentlemen of the
-suite. “But, gentlemen...”
-
-The position was the more awkward because the Emperor, meditating upon
-his magnanimous plans, was pacing patiently up and down before the
-outspread map, occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow from under
-his lifted hand with a bright and proud smile.
-
-“But it’s impossible...” declared the gentlemen of the suite, shrugging
-their shoulders but not venturing to utter the implied word—le
-ridicule....
-
-At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his actor’s instinct
-suggesting to him that the sublime moment having been too long drawn out
-was beginning to lose its sublimity, gave a sign with his hand. A single
-report of a signaling gun followed, and the troops, who were already
-spread out on different sides of Moscow, moved into the city through the
-Tver, Kalúga, and Dorogomílov gates. Faster and faster, vying with
-one another, they moved at the double or at a trot, vanishing amid the
-clouds of dust they raised and making the air ring with a deafening roar
-of mingling shouts.
-
-Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon rode with them as far as
-the Dorogomílov gate, but there again stopped and, dismounting from his
-horse, paced for a long time by the Kámmer-Kollézski rampart, awaiting
-the deputation.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a
-fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was empty.
-It was empty in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty.
-
-In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial glance it
-seems as much alive as other hives.
-
-The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams of the midday
-sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance it smells of
-honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same way. But one
-has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no longer any
-life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the smell and the sound
-that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the beekeeper’s tap on the
-wall of the sick hive, instead of the former instant unanimous
-humming of tens of thousands of bees with their abdomens threateningly
-compressed, and producing by the rapid vibration of their wings an
-aerial living sound, the only reply is a disconnected buzzing from
-different parts of the deserted hive. From the alighting board, instead
-of the former spirituous fragrant smell of honey and venom, and the warm
-whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor of emptiness and decay mingling
-with the smell of honey. There are no longer sentinels sounding the
-alarm with their abdomens raised, and ready to die in defense of the
-hive. There is no longer the measured quiet sound of throbbing activity,
-like the sound of boiling water, but diverse discordant sounds of
-disorder. In and out of the hive long black robber bees smeared with
-honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do not sting, but crawl away from
-danger. Formerly only bees laden with honey flew into the hive, and they
-flew out empty; now they fly out laden. The beekeeper opens the lower
-part of the hive and peers in. Instead of black, glossy bees—tamed by
-toil, clinging to one another’s legs and drawing out the wax, with a
-ceaseless hum of labor—that used to hang in long clusters down to the
-floor of the hive, drowsy shriveled bees crawl about separately in
-various directions on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a
-neatly glued floor, swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings,
-there is a floor littered with bits of wax, excrement, dying bees
-scarcely moving their legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared
-away.
-
-The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the super.
-Instead of serried rows of bees sealing up every gap in the combs and
-keeping the brood warm, he sees the skillful complex structures of the
-combs, but no longer in their former state of purity. All is neglected
-and foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and stealthily prowling about
-the combs, and the short home bees, shriveled and listless as if they
-were old, creep slowly about without trying to hinder the robbers,
-having lost all motive and all sense of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps,
-and butterflies knock awkwardly against the walls of the hive in their
-flight. Here and there among the cells containing dead brood and honey
-an angry buzzing can sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of
-bees, by force of habit and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with
-efforts beyond their strength laboriously drag away a dead bee or
-bumblebee without knowing why they do it. In another corner two old bees
-are languidly fighting, or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another,
-without themselves knowing whether they do it with friendly or hostile
-intent. In a third place a crowd of bees, crushing one another, attack
-some victim and fight and smother it, and the victim, enfeebled or
-killed, drops from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap
-of corpses. The keeper opens the two center partitions to examine
-the brood cells. In place of the former close dark circles formed by
-thousands of bees sitting back to back and guarding the high mystery
-of generation, he sees hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of
-bees. They have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary they
-had guarded and which is now no more. They reek of decay and death. Only
-a few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the enemy’s
-hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are dead and fall
-as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper closes the hive, chalks a mark
-on it, and when he has time tears out its contents and burns it clean.
-
-So in the same way Moscow was empty when Napoleon, weary, uneasy, and
-morose, paced up and down in front of the Kámmer-Kollézski rampart,
-awaiting what to his mind was a necessary, if but formal, observance of
-the proprieties—a deputation.
-
-In various corners of Moscow there still remained a few people aimlessly
-moving about, following their old habits and hardly aware of what they
-were doing.
-
-When with due circumspection Napoleon was informed that Moscow was
-empty, he looked angrily at his informant, turned away, and silently
-continued to walk to and fro.
-
-“My carriage!” he said.
-
-He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and drove into the
-suburb. “Moscow deserted!” he said to himself. “What an incredible
-event!”
-
-He did not drive into the town, but put up at an inn in the Dorogomílov
-suburb.
-
-The coup de théâtre had not come off.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-The Russian troops were passing through Moscow from two o’clock at night
-till two in the afternoon and bore away with them the wounded and the
-last of the inhabitants who were leaving.
-
-The greatest crush during the movement of the troops took place at the
-Stone, Moskvá, and Yaúza bridges.
-
-While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing around the
-Krémlin, were thronging the Moskvá and the Stone bridges, a great many
-soldiers, taking advantage of the stoppage and congestion, turned back
-from the bridges and slipped stealthily and silently past the church of
-Vasíli the Beatified and under the Borovítski gate, back up the hill
-to the Red Square where some instinct told them they could easily take
-things not belonging to them. Crowds of the kind seen at cheap sales
-filled all the passages and alleys of the Bazaar. But there were no
-dealers with voices of ingratiating affability inviting customers to
-enter; there were no hawkers, nor the usual motley crowd of female
-purchasers—but only soldiers, in uniforms and overcoats though without
-muskets, entering the Bazaar empty-handed and silently making their way
-out through its passages with bundles. Tradesmen and their assistants
-(of whom there were but few) moved about among the soldiers quite
-bewildered. They unlocked their shops and locked them up again, and
-themselves carried goods away with the help of their assistants. On the
-square in front of the Bazaar were drummers beating the muster call.
-But the roll of the drums did not make the looting soldiers run in the
-direction of the drum as formerly, but made them, on the contrary, run
-farther away. Among the soldiers in the shops and passages some men were
-to be seen in gray coats, with closely shaven heads. Two officers, one
-with a scarf over his uniform and mounted on a lean, dark-gray horse,
-the other in an overcoat and on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyínka
-Street, talking. A third officer galloped up to them.
-
-“The general orders them all to be driven out at once, without fail.
-This is outrageous! Half the men have dispersed.”
-
-“Where are you off to?... Where?...” he shouted to three infantrymen
-without muskets who, holding up the skirts of their overcoats, were
-slipping past him into the Bazaar passage. “Stop, you rascals!”
-
-“But how are you going to stop them?” replied another officer. “There is
-no getting them together. The army should push on before the rest bolt,
-that’s all!”
-
-“How can one push on? They are stuck there, wedged on the bridge, and
-don’t move. Shouldn’t we put a cordon round to prevent the rest from
-running away?”
-
-“Come, go in there and drive them out!” shouted the senior officer.
-
-The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a drummer, and went with
-him into the arcade. Some soldiers started running away in a group. A
-shopkeeper with red pimples on his cheeks near the nose, and a calm,
-persistent, calculating expression on his plump face, hurriedly and
-ostentatiously approached the officer, swinging his arms.
-
-“Your honor!” said he. “Be so good as to protect us! We won’t grudge
-trifles, you are welcome to anything—we shall be delighted! Pray!...
-I’ll fetch a piece of cloth at once for such an honorable gentleman,
-or even two pieces with pleasure. For we feel how it is; but what’s all
-this—sheer robbery! If you please, could not guards be placed if only to
-let us close the shop....”
-
-Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer.
-
-“Eh, what twaddle!” said one of them, a thin, stern-looking man. “When
-one’s head is gone one doesn’t weep for one’s hair! Take what any of you
-like!” And flourishing his arm energetically he turned sideways to the
-officer.
-
-“It’s all very well for you, Iván Sidórych, to talk,” said the first
-tradesman angrily. “Please step inside, your honor!”
-
-“Talk indeed!” cried the thin one. “In my three shops here I have a
-hundred thousand rubles’ worth of goods. Can they be saved when the army
-has gone? Eh, what people! ‘Against God’s might our hands can’t fight.’”
-
-“Come inside, your honor!” repeated the tradesman, bowing.
-
-The officer stood perplexed and his face showed indecision.
-
-“It’s not my business!” he exclaimed, and strode on quickly down one of
-the passages.
-
-From one open shop came the sound of blows and vituperation, and just
-as the officer came up to it a man in a gray coat with a shaven head was
-flung out violently.
-
-This man, bent double, rushed past the tradesman and the officer. The
-officer pounced on the soldiers who were in the shops, but at that
-moment fearful screams reached them from the huge crowd on the Moskvá
-bridge and the officer ran out into the square.
-
-“What is it? What is it?” he asked, but his comrade was already
-galloping off past Vasíli the Beatified in the direction from which the
-screams came.
-
-The officer mounted his horse and rode after him. When he reached the
-bridge he saw two unlimbered guns, the infantry crossing the bridge,
-several overturned carts, and frightened and laughing faces among the
-troops. Beside the cannon a cart was standing to which two horses were
-harnessed. Four borzois with collars were pressing close to the wheels.
-The cart was loaded high, and at the very top, beside a child’s chair
-with its legs in the air, sat a peasant woman uttering piercing and
-desperate shrieks. He was told by his fellow officers that the screams
-of the crowd and the shrieks of the woman were due to the fact that
-General Ermólov, coming up to the crowd and learning that soldiers were
-dispersing among the shops while crowds of civilians blocked the bridge,
-had ordered two guns to be unlimbered and made a show of firing at the
-bridge. The crowd, crushing one another, upsetting carts, and shouting
-and squeezing desperately, had cleared off the bridge and the troops
-were now moving forward.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII
-
-Meanwhile, the city itself was deserted. There was hardly anyone in the
-streets. The gates and shops were all closed, only here and there round
-the taverns solitary shouts or drunken songs could be heard. Nobody
-drove through the streets and footsteps were rarely heard. The
-Povarskáya was quite still and deserted. The huge courtyard of the
-Rostóvs’ house was littered with wisps of hay and with dung from the
-horses, and not a soul was to be seen there. In the great drawing
-room of the house, which had been left with all it contained, were
-two people. They were the yard porter Ignát, and the page boy Míshka,
-Vasílich’s grandson who had stayed in Moscow with his grandfather.
-Míshka had opened the clavichord and was strumming on it with
-one finger. The yard porter, his arms akimbo, stood smiling with
-satisfaction before the large mirror.
-
-“Isn’t it fine, eh, Uncle Ignát?” said the boy, suddenly beginning to
-strike the keyboard with both hands.
-
-“Only fancy!” answered Ignát, surprised at the broadening grin on his
-face in the mirror.
-
-“Impudence! Impudence!” they heard behind them the voice of Mávra
-Kuzmínichna who had entered silently. “How he’s grinning, the fat mug!
-Is that what you’re here for? Nothing’s cleared away down there and
-Vasílich is worn out. Just you wait a bit!”
-
-Ignát left off smiling, adjusted his belt, and went out of the room with
-meekly downcast eyes.
-
-“Aunt, I did it gently,” said the boy.
-
-“I’ll give you something gently, you monkey you!” cried Mávra
-Kuzmínichna, raising her arm threateningly. “Go and get the samovar to
-boil for your grandfather.”
-
-Mávra Kuzmínichna flicked the dust off the clavichord and closed it, and
-with a deep sigh left the drawing room and locked its main door.
-
-Going out into the yard she paused to consider where she should go
-next—to drink tea in the servants’ wing with Vasílich, or into the
-storeroom to put away what still lay about.
-
-She heard the sound of quick footsteps in the quiet street. Someone
-stopped at the gate, and the latch rattled as someone tried to open it.
-Mávra Kuzmínichna went to the gate.
-
-“Who do you want?”
-
-“The count—Count Ilyá Andréevich Rostóv.”
-
-“And who are you?”
-
-“An officer, I have to see him,” came the reply in a pleasant, well-bred
-Russian voice.
-
-Mávra Kuzmínichna opened the gate and an officer of eighteen, with the
-round face of a Rostóv, entered the yard.
-
-“They have gone away, sir. Went away yesterday at vespertime,” said
-Mávra Kuzmínichna cordially.
-
-The young officer standing in the gateway, as if hesitating whether to
-enter or not, clicked his tongue.
-
-“Ah, how annoying!” he muttered. “I should have come yesterday.... Ah,
-what a pity.”
-
-Meanwhile, Mávra Kuzmínichna was attentively and sympathetically
-examining the familiar Rostóv features of the young man’s face, his
-tattered coat and trodden-down boots.
-
-“What did you want to see the count for?” she asked.
-
-“Oh well... it can’t be helped!” said he in a tone of vexation and
-placed his hand on the gate as if to leave.
-
-He again paused in indecision.
-
-“You see,” he suddenly said, “I am a kinsman of the count’s and he has
-been very kind to me. As you see” (he glanced with an amused air and
-good-natured smile at his coat and boots) “my things are worn out and I
-have no money, so I was going to ask the count...”
-
-Mávra Kuzmínichna did not let him finish.
-
-“Just wait a minute, sir. One little moment,” said she.
-
-And as soon as the officer let go of the gate handle she turned and,
-hurrying away on her old legs, went through the back yard to the
-servants’ quarters.
-
-While Mávra Kuzmínichna was running to her room the officer walked about
-the yard gazing at his worn-out boots with lowered head and a faint
-smile on his lips. “What a pity I’ve missed Uncle! What a nice old
-woman! Where has she run off to? And how am I to find the nearest way
-to overtake my regiment, which must by now be getting near the Rogózhski
-gate?” thought he. Just then Mávra Kuzmínichna appeared from behind
-the corner of the house with a frightened yet resolute look, carrying a
-rolled-up check kerchief in her hand. While still a few steps from
-the officer she unfolded the kerchief and took out of it a white
-twenty-five-ruble assignat and hastily handed it to him.
-
-“If his excellency had been at home, as a kinsman he would of course...
-but as it is...”
-
-Mávra Kuzmínichna grew abashed and confused. The officer did not
-decline, but took the note quietly and thanked her.
-
-“If the count had been at home...” Mávra Kuzmínichna went on
-apologetically. “Christ be with you, sir! May God preserve you!” said
-she, bowing as she saw him out.
-
-Swaying his head and smiling as if amused at himself, the officer ran
-almost at a trot through the deserted streets toward the Yaúza bridge to
-overtake his regiment.
-
-But Mávra Kuzmínichna stood at the closed gate for some time with moist
-eyes, pensively swaying her head and feeling an unexpected flow of
-motherly tenderness and pity for the unknown young officer.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII
-
-From an unfinished house on the Varvárka, the ground floor of which was
-a dramshop, came drunken shouts and songs. On benches round the tables
-in a dirty little room sat some ten factory hands. Tipsy and perspiring,
-with dim eyes and wide-open mouths, they were all laboriously singing
-some song or other. They were singing discordantly, arduously, and with
-great effort, evidently not because they wished to sing, but because
-they wanted to show they were drunk and on a spree. One, a tall,
-fair-haired lad in a clean blue coat, was standing over the others. His
-face with its fine straight nose would have been handsome had it not
-been for his thin, compressed, twitching lips and dull, gloomy, fixed
-eyes. Evidently possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were
-singing, and solemnly and jerkily flourished above their heads his white
-arm with the sleeve turned up to the elbow, trying unnaturally to spread
-out his dirty fingers. The sleeve of his coat kept slipping down and he
-always carefully rolled it up again with his left hand, as if it were
-most important that the sinewy white arm he was flourishing should be
-bare. In the midst of the song cries were heard, and fighting and blows
-in the passage and porch. The tall lad waved his arm.
-
-“Stop it!” he exclaimed peremptorily. “There’s a fight, lads!” And,
-still rolling up his sleeve, he went out to the porch.
-
-The factory hands followed him. These men, who under the leadership of
-the tall lad were drinking in the dramshop that morning, had brought the
-publican some skins from the factory and for this had had drink served
-them. The blacksmiths from a neighboring smithy, hearing the sounds of
-revelry in the tavern and supposing it to have been broken into, wished
-to force their way in too and a fight in the porch had resulted.
-
-The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the door, and when the
-workmen came out the smith, wrenching himself free from the tavern
-keeper, fell face downward on the pavement.
-
-Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing against the publican
-with his chest.
-
-The lad with the turned-up sleeve gave the smith a blow in the face and
-cried wildly: “They’re fighting us, lads!”
-
-At that moment the first smith got up and, scratching his bruised
-face to make it bleed, shouted in a tearful voice: “Police! Murder!...
-They’ve killed a man, lads!”
-
-“Oh, gracious me, a man beaten to death—killed!...” screamed a woman
-coming out of a gate close by.
-
-A crowd gathered round the bloodstained smith.
-
-“Haven’t you robbed people enough—taking their last shirts?” said a
-voice addressing the publican. “What have you killed a man for, you
-thief?”
-
-The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared eyes from the
-publican to the smith and back again as if considering whom he ought to
-fight now.
-
-“Murderer!” he shouted suddenly to the publican. “Bind him, lads!”
-
-“I daresay you would like to bind me!” shouted the publican, pushing
-away the men advancing on him, and snatching his cap from his head he
-flung it on the ground.
-
-As if this action had some mysterious and menacing significance, the
-workmen surrounding the publican paused in indecision.
-
-“I know the law very well, mates! I’ll take the matter to the captain
-of police. You think I won’t get to him? Robbery is not permitted to
-anybody nowadays!” shouted the publican, picking up his cap.
-
-“Come along then! Come along then!” the publican and the tall young
-fellow repeated one after the other, and they moved up the street
-together.
-
-The bloodstained smith went beside them. The factory hands and others
-followed behind, talking and shouting.
-
-At the corner of the Moroséyka, opposite a large house with closed
-shutters and bearing a bootmaker’s signboard, stood a score of thin,
-worn-out, gloomy-faced bootmakers, wearing overalls and long tattered
-coats.
-
-“He should pay folks off properly,” a thin workingman, with frowning
-brows and a straggly beard, was saying.
-
-“But he’s sucked our blood and now he thinks he’s quit of us. He’s been
-misleading us all the week and now that he’s brought us to this pass
-he’s made off.”
-
-On seeing the crowd and the bloodstained man the workman ceased
-speaking, and with eager curiosity all the bootmakers joined the moving
-crowd.
-
-“Where are all the folks going?”
-
-“Why, to the police, of course!”
-
-“I say, is it true that we have been beaten?” “And what did you think?
-Look what folks are saying.”
-
-Questions and answers were heard. The publican, taking advantage of the
-increased crowd, dropped behind and returned to his tavern.
-
-The tall youth, not noticing the disappearance of his foe, waved his
-bare arm and went on talking incessantly, attracting general attention
-to himself. It was around him that the people chiefly crowded, expecting
-answers from him to the questions that occupied all their minds.
-
-“He must keep order, keep the law, that’s what the government is there
-for. Am I not right, good Christians?” said the tall youth, with a
-scarcely perceptible smile. “He thinks there’s no government! How can
-one do without government? Or else there would be plenty who’d rob us.”
-
-“Why talk nonsense?” rejoined voices in the crowd. “Will they give
-up Moscow like this? They told you that for fun, and you believed it!
-Aren’t there plenty of troops on the march? Let him in, indeed! That’s
-what the government is for. You’d better listen to what people are
-saying,” said some of the mob pointing to the tall youth.
-
-By the wall of China-Town a smaller group of people were gathered round
-a man in a frieze coat who held a paper in his hand.
-
-“An ukáse, they are reading an ukáse! Reading an ukáse!” cried voices in
-the crowd, and the people rushed toward the reader.
-
-The man in the frieze coat was reading the broadsheet of August 31. When
-the crowd collected round him he seemed confused, but at the demand
-of the tall lad who had pushed his way up to him, he began in a rather
-tremulous voice to read the sheet from the beginning.
-
-“Early tomorrow I shall go to his Serene Highness,” he read (“Sirin
-Highness,” said the tall fellow with a triumphant smile on his lips and
-a frown on his brow), “to consult with him to act, and to aid the army
-to exterminate these scoundrels. We too will take part...” the reader
-went on, and then paused (“Do you see,” shouted the youth victoriously,
-“he’s going to clear up the whole affair for you....”), “in destroying
-them, and will send these visitors to the devil. I will come back to
-dinner, and we’ll set to work. We will do, completely do, and undo these
-scoundrels.”
-
-The last words were read out in the midst of complete silence. The tall
-lad hung his head gloomily. It was evident that no one had understood
-the last part. In particular, the words “I will come back to dinner,”
-evidently displeased both reader and audience. The people’s minds
-were tuned to a high pitch and this was too simple and needlessly
-comprehensible—it was what anyone of them might have said and therefore
-was what an ukáse emanating from the highest authority should not say.
-
-They all stood despondent and silent. The tall youth moved his lips and
-swayed from side to side.
-
-“We should ask him... that’s he himself?”... “Yes, ask him indeed!...
-Why not? He’ll explain”... voices in the rear of the crowd were
-suddenly heard saying, and the general attention turned to the police
-superintendent’s trap which drove into the square attended by two
-mounted dragoons.
-
-The superintendent of police, who had gone that morning by Count
-Rostopchín’s orders to burn the barges and had in connection with that
-matter acquired a large sum of money which was at that moment in his
-pocket, on seeing a crowd bearing down upon him told his coachman to
-stop.
-
-“What people are these?” he shouted to the men, who were moving singly
-and timidly in the direction of his trap.
-
-“What people are these?” he shouted again, receiving no answer.
-
-“Your honor...” replied the shopman in the frieze coat, “your honor, in
-accord with the proclamation of his highest excellency the count, they
-desire to serve, not sparing their lives, and it is not any kind of
-riot, but as his highest excellence said...”
-
-“The count has not left, he is here, and an order will be issued
-concerning you,” said the superintendent of police. “Go on!” he ordered
-his coachman.
-
-The crowd halted, pressing around those who had heard what the
-superintendent had said, and looking at the departing trap.
-
-The superintendent of police turned round at that moment with a scared
-look, said something to his coachman, and his horses increased their
-speed.
-
-“It’s a fraud, lads! Lead the way to him, himself!” shouted the tall
-youth. “Don’t let him go, lads! Let him answer us! Keep him!” shouted
-different people and the people dashed in pursuit of the trap.
-
-Following the superintendent of police and talking loudly the crowd went
-in the direction of the Lubyánka Street.
-
-“There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away and left us to
-perish. Do they think we’re dogs?” voices in the crowd were heard saying
-more and more frequently.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV
-
-On the evening of the first of September, after his interview with
-Kutúzov, Count Rostopchín had returned to Moscow mortified and offended
-because he had not been invited to attend the council of war, and
-because Kutúzov had paid no attention to his offer to take part in the
-defense of the city; amazed also at the novel outlook revealed to him
-at the camp, which treated the tranquillity of the capital and its
-patriotic fervor as not merely secondary but quite irrelevant and
-unimportant matters. Distressed, offended, and surprised by all this,
-Rostopchín had returned to Moscow. After supper he lay down on a sofa
-without undressing, and was awakened soon after midnight by a courier
-bringing him a letter from Kutúzov. This letter requested the count to
-send police officers to guide the troops through the town, as the army
-was retreating to the Ryazán road beyond Moscow. This was not news to
-Rostopchín. He had known that Moscow would be abandoned not merely since
-his interview the previous day with Kutúzov on the Poklónny Hill but
-ever since the battle of Borodinó, for all the generals who came to
-Moscow after that battle had said unanimously that it was impossible to
-fight another battle, and since then the government property had been
-removed every night, and half the inhabitants had left the city
-with Rostopchín’s own permission. Yet all the same this information
-astonished and irritated the count, coming as it did in the form of a
-simple note with an order from Kutúzov, and received at night, breaking
-in on his beauty sleep.
-
-When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchín explained his actions at
-this time, he repeatedly says that he was then actuated by two important
-considerations: to maintain tranquillity in Moscow and expedite the
-departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this twofold aim all
-Rostopchín’s actions appear irreproachable. “Why were the holy relics,
-the arms, ammunition, gunpowder, and stores of corn not removed? Why
-were thousands of inhabitants deceived into believing that Moscow would
-not be given up—and thereby ruined?” “To preserve the tranquillity
-of the city,” explains Count Rostopchín. “Why were bundles of useless
-papers from the government offices, and Leppich’s balloon and other
-articles removed?” “To leave the town empty,” explains Count Rostopchín.
-One need only admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any action
-finds a justification.
-
-All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude for
-public tranquillity.
-
-On what, then, was Count Rostopchín’s fear for the tranquillity of
-Moscow based in 1812? What reason was there for assuming any probability
-of an uprising in the city? The inhabitants were leaving it and the
-retreating troops were filling it. Why should that cause the masses to
-riot?
-
-Neither in Moscow nor anywhere in Russia did anything resembling an
-insurrection ever occur when the enemy entered a town. More than
-ten thousand people were still in Moscow on the first and second of
-September, and except for a mob in the governor’s courtyard, assembled
-there at his bidding, nothing happened. It is obvious that there would
-have been even less reason to expect a disturbance among the people
-if after the battle of Borodinó, when the surrender of Moscow became
-certain or at least probable, Rostopchín instead of exciting the people
-by distributing arms and broadsheets had taken steps to remove all
-the holy relics, the gunpowder, munitions, and money, and had told the
-population plainly that the town would be abandoned.
-
-Rostopchín, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a sanguine and
-impulsive man who had always moved in the highest administrative circles
-and had no understanding at all of the people he supposed himself to
-be guiding. Ever since the enemy’s entry into Smolénsk he had in
-imagination been playing the role of director of the popular feeling
-of “the heart of Russia.” Not only did it seem to him (as to all
-administrators) that he controlled the external actions of Moscow’s
-inhabitants, but he also thought he controlled their mental attitude by
-means of his broadsheets and posters, written in a coarse tone which the
-people despise in their own class and do not understand from those in
-authority. Rostopchín was so pleased with the fine role of leader of
-popular feeling, and had grown so used to it, that the necessity of
-relinquishing that role and abandoning Moscow without any heroic display
-took him unawares and he suddenly felt the ground slip away from under
-his feet, so that he positively did not know what to do. Though he knew
-it was coming, he did not till the last moment wholeheartedly believe
-that Moscow would be abandoned, and did not prepare for it. The
-inhabitants left against his wishes. If the government offices were
-removed, this was only done on the demand of officials to whom the count
-yielded reluctantly. He was absorbed in the role he had created
-for himself. As is often the case with those gifted with an ardent
-imagination, though he had long known that Moscow would be abandoned he
-knew it only with his intellect, he did not believe it in his heart and
-did not adapt himself mentally to this new position of affairs.
-
-All his painstaking and energetic activity (in how far it was useful
-and had any effect on the people is another question) had been simply
-directed toward arousing in the masses his own feeling of patriotic
-hatred of the French.
-
-But when events assumed their true historical character, when expressing
-hatred for the French in words proved insufficient, when it was not
-even possible to express that hatred by fighting a battle, when
-self-confidence was of no avail in relation to the one question before
-Moscow, when the whole population streamed out of Moscow as one man,
-abandoning their belongings and proving by that negative action all
-the depth of their national feeling, then the role chosen by Rostopchín
-suddenly appeared senseless. He unexpectedly felt himself ridiculous,
-weak, and alone, with no ground to stand on.
-
-When, awakened from his sleep, he received that cold, peremptory note
-from Kutúzov, he felt the more irritated the more he felt himself
-to blame. All that he had been specially put in charge of, the state
-property which he should have removed, was still in Moscow and it was no
-longer possible to take the whole of it away.
-
-“Who is to blame for it? Who has let things come to such a pass?” he
-ruminated. “Not I, of course. I had everything ready. I had Moscow
-firmly in hand. And this is what they have let it come to! Villains!
-Traitors!” he thought, without clearly defining who the villains and
-traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors whoever
-they might be who were to blame for the false and ridiculous position in
-which he found himself.
-
-All that night Count Rostopchín issued orders, for which people came to
-him from all parts of Moscow. Those about him had never seen the count
-so morose and irritable.
-
-“Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar’s Department has sent
-for instructions.... From the Consistory, from the Senate, from the
-University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent...
-asking for information.... What are your orders about the Fire Brigade?
-From the governor of the prison... from the superintendent of the
-lunatic asylum...” All night long such announcements were continually
-being received by the count.
-
-To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies indicating that
-orders from him were not now needed, that the whole affair, carefully
-prepared by him, had now been ruined by somebody, and that that somebody
-would have to bear the whole responsibility for all that might happen.
-
-“Oh, tell that blockhead,” he said in reply to the question from the
-Registrar’s Department, “that he should remain to guard his documents.
-Now why are you asking silly questions about the Fire Brigade? They have
-horses, let them be off to Vladímir, and not leave them to the French.”
-
-“Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic asylum has come:
-what are your commands?”
-
-“My commands? Let them go away, that’s all.... And let the lunatics
-out into the town. When lunatics command our armies God evidently means
-these other madmen to be free.”
-
-In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison, Count
-Rostopchín shouted angrily at the governor:
-
-“Do you expect me to give you two battalions—which we have not got—for a
-convoy? Release them, that’s all about it!”
-
-“Your excellency, there are some political prisoners, Meshkóv,
-Vereshchágin...”
-
-“Vereshchágin! Hasn’t he been hanged yet?” shouted Rostopchín. “Bring
-him to me!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXV
-
-Toward nine o’clock in the morning, when the troops were already moving
-through Moscow, nobody came to the count any more for instructions.
-Those who were able to get away were going of their own accord, those
-who remained behind decided for themselves what they must do.
-
-The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to Sokólniki, and sat
-in his study with folded hands, morose, sallow, and taciturn.
-
-In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it
-is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is
-kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every
-administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the
-sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark,
-holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself
-moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding
-on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and
-the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves
-independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer
-reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead
-of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant,
-useless, feeble man.
-
-Rostopchín felt this, and it was this which exasperated him.
-
-The superintendent of police, whom the crowd had stopped, went in to
-see him at the same time as an adjutant who informed the count that the
-horses were harnessed. They were both pale, and the superintendent of
-police, after reporting that he had executed the instructions he had
-received, informed the count that an immense crowd had collected in the
-courtyard and wished to see him.
-
-Without saying a word Rostopchín rose and walked hastily to his light,
-luxurious drawing room, went to the balcony door, took hold of the
-handle, let it go again, and went to the window from which he had a
-better view of the whole crowd. The tall lad was standing in front,
-flourishing his arm and saying something with a stern look. The
-blood-stained smith stood beside him with a gloomy face. A drone of
-voices was audible through the closed window.
-
-“Is my carriage ready?” asked Rostopchín, stepping back from the window.
-
-“It is, your excellency,” replied the adjutant.
-
-Rostopchín went again to the balcony door.
-
-“But what do they want?” he asked the superintendent of police.
-
-“Your excellency, they say they have got ready, according to your
-orders, to go against the French, and they shouted something about
-treachery. But it is a turbulent crowd, your excellency—I hardly managed
-to get away from it. Your excellency, I venture to suggest...”
-
-“You may go. I don’t need you to tell me what to do!” exclaimed
-Rostopchín angrily.
-
-He stood by the balcony door looking at the crowd.
-
-“This is what they have done with Russia! This is what they have done
-with me!” thought he, full of an irrepressible fury that welled up
-within him against the someone to whom what was happening might be
-attributed. As often happens with passionate people, he was mastered by
-anger but was still seeking an object on which to vent it. “Here is
-that mob, the dregs of the people,” he thought as he gazed at the crowd:
-“this rabble they have roused by their folly! They want a victim,”
-he thought as he looked at the tall lad flourishing his arm. And this
-thought occurred to him just because he himself desired a victim,
-something on which to vent his rage.
-
-“Is the carriage ready?” he asked again.
-
-“Yes, your excellency. What are your orders about Vereshchágin? He is
-waiting at the porch,” said the adjutant.
-
-“Ah!” exclaimed Rostopchín, as if struck by an unexpected recollection.
-
-And rapidly opening the door he went resolutely out onto the balcony.
-The talking instantly ceased, hats and caps were doffed, and all eyes
-were raised to the count.
-
-“Good morning, lads!” said the count briskly and loudly. “Thank you for
-coming. I’ll come out to you in a moment, but we must first settle
-with the villain. We must punish the villain who has caused the ruin of
-Moscow. Wait for me!”
-
-And the count stepped as briskly back into the room and slammed the door
-behind him.
-
-A murmur of approbation and satisfaction ran through the crowd. “He’ll
-settle with all the villains, you’ll see! And you said the French...
-He’ll show you what law is!” the mob were saying as if reproving one
-another for their lack of confidence.
-
-A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of the front door,
-gave an order, and the dragoons formed up in line. The crowd moved
-eagerly from the balcony toward the porch. Rostopchín, coming out there
-with quick angry steps, looked hastily around as if seeking someone.
-
-“Where is he?” he inquired. And as he spoke he saw a young man coming
-round the corner of the house between two dragoons. He had a long thin
-neck, and his head, that had been half shaved, was again covered by
-short hair. This young man was dressed in a threadbare blue cloth coat
-lined with fox fur, that had once been smart, and dirty hempen convict
-trousers, over which were pulled his thin, dirty, trodden-down boots.
-On his thin, weak legs were heavy chains which hampered his irresolute
-movements.
-
-“Ah!” said Rostopchín, hurriedly turning away his eyes from the young
-man in the fur-lined coat and pointing to the bottom step of the porch.
-“Put him there.”
-
-The young man in his clattering chains stepped clumsily to the spot
-indicated, holding away with one finger the coat collar which chafed
-his neck, turned his long neck twice this way and that, sighed, and
-submissively folded before him his thin hands, unused to work.
-
-For several seconds while the young man was taking his place on the step
-the silence continued. Only among the back rows of the people, who were
-all pressing toward the one spot, could sighs, groans, and the shuffling
-of feet be heard.
-
-While waiting for the young man to take his place on the step Rostopchín
-stood frowning and rubbing his face with his hand.
-
-“Lads!” said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. “This man,
-Vereshchágin, is the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow is perishing.”
-
-The young man in the fur-lined coat, stooping a little, stood in a
-submissive attitude, his fingers clasped before him. His emaciated young
-face, disfigured by the half-shaven head, hung down hopelessly. At
-the count’s first words he raised it slowly and looked up at him as if
-wishing to say something or at least to meet his eye. But Rostopchín did
-not look at him. A vein in the young man’s long thin neck swelled like a
-cord and went blue behind the ear, and suddenly his face flushed.
-
-All eyes were fixed on him. He looked at the crowd, and rendered more
-hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled sadly
-and timidly, and lowering his head shifted his feet on the step.
-
-“He has betrayed his Tsar and his country, he has gone over to
-Bonaparte. He alone of all the Russians has disgraced the Russian name,
-he has caused Moscow to perish,” said Rostopchín in a sharp, even voice,
-but suddenly he glanced down at Vereshchágin who continued to stand in
-the same submissive attitude. As if inflamed by the sight, he raised his
-arm and addressed the people, almost shouting:
-
-“Deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you.”
-
-The crowd remained silent and only pressed closer and closer to
-one another. To keep one another back, to breathe in that stifling
-atmosphere, to be unable to stir, and to await something unknown,
-uncomprehended, and terrible, was becoming unbearable. Those standing
-in front, who had seen and heard what had taken place before them, all
-stood with wide-open eyes and mouths, straining with all their strength,
-and held back the crowd that was pushing behind them.
-
-“Beat him!... Let the traitor perish and not disgrace the Russian name!”
-shouted Rostopchín. “Cut him down. I command it.”
-
-Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of Rostopchín’s voice,
-the crowd moaned and heaved forward, but again paused.
-
-“Count!” exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of Vereshchágin in the
-midst of the momentary silence that ensued, “Count! One God is above us
-both....” He lifted his head and again the thick vein in his thin neck
-filled with blood and the color rapidly came and went in his face.
-
-He did not finish what he wished to say.
-
-“Cut him down! I command it...” shouted Rostopchín, suddenly growing
-pale like Vereshchágin.
-
-“Draw sabers!” cried the dragoon officer, drawing his own.
-
-Another still stronger wave flowed through the crowd and reaching the
-front ranks carried it swaying to the very steps of the porch. The tall
-youth, with a stony look on his face, and rigid and uplifted arm, stood
-beside Vereshchágin.
-
-“Saber him!” the dragoon officer almost whispered.
-
-And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury,
-struck Vereshchágin on the head with the blunt side of his saber.
-
-“Ah!” cried Vereshchágin in meek surprise, looking round with a
-frightened glance as if not understanding why this was done to him. A
-similar moan of surprise and horror ran through the crowd. “O Lord!”
-exclaimed a sorrowful voice.
-
-But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped from Vereshchágin
-he uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and that cry was fatal. The barrier
-of human feeling, strained to the utmost, that had held the crowd in
-check suddenly broke. The crime had begun and must now be completed. The
-plaintive moan of reproach was drowned by the threatening and angry roar
-of the crowd. Like the seventh and last wave that shatters a ship, that
-last irresistible wave burst from the rear and reached the front ranks,
-carrying them off their feet and engulfing them all. The dragoon was
-about to repeat his blow. Vereshchágin with a cry of horror, covering
-his head with his hands, rushed toward the crowd. The tall youth,
-against whom he stumbled, seized his thin neck with his hands and,
-yelling wildly, fell with him under the feet of the pressing, struggling
-crowd.
-
-Some beat and tore at Vereshchágin, others at the tall youth. And the
-screams of those that were being trampled on and of those who tried to
-rescue the tall lad only increased the fury of the crowd. It was a long
-time before the dragoons could extricate the bleeding youth, beaten
-almost to death. And for a long time, despite the feverish haste with
-which the mob tried to end the work that had been begun, those who were
-hitting, throttling, and tearing at Vereshchágin were unable to kill
-him, for the crowd pressed from all sides, swaying as one mass with them
-in the center and rendering it impossible for them either to kill him or
-let him go.
-
-“Hit him with an ax, eh!... Crushed?... Traitor, he sold Christ....
-Still alive... tenacious... serves him right! Torture serves a thief
-right. Use the hatchet!... What—still alive?”
-
-Only when the victim ceased to struggle and his cries changed to a
-long-drawn, measured death rattle did the crowd around his prostrate,
-bleeding corpse begin rapidly to change places. Each one came
-up, glanced at what had been done, and with horror, reproach, and
-astonishment pushed back again.
-
-“O Lord! The people are like wild beasts! How could he be alive?” voices
-in the crowd could be heard saying. “Quite a young fellow too... must
-have been a merchant’s son. What men!... and they say he’s not the right
-one.... How not the right one?... O Lord! And there’s another has been
-beaten too—they say he’s nearly done for.... Oh, the people... Aren’t
-they afraid of sinning?...” said the same mob now, looking with pained
-distress at the dead body with its long, thin, half-severed neck and its
-livid face stained with blood and dust.
-
-A painstaking police officer, considering the presence of a corpse in
-his excellency’s courtyard unseemly, told the dragoons to take it away.
-Two dragoons took it by its distorted legs and dragged it along the
-ground. The gory, dust-stained, half-shaven head with its long neck
-trailed twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank back from it.
-
-At the moment when Vereshchágin fell and the crowd closed in with savage
-yells and swayed about him, Rostopchín suddenly turned pale and, instead
-of going to the back entrance where his carriage awaited him, went
-with hurried steps and bent head, not knowing where and why, along the
-passage leading to the rooms on the ground floor. The count’s face was
-white and he could not control the feverish twitching of his lower jaw.
-
-“This way, your excellency... Where are you going?... This way,
-please...” said a trembling, frightened voice behind him.
-
-Count Rostopchín was unable to reply and, turning obediently, went in
-the direction indicated. At the back entrance stood his calèche. The
-distant roar of the yelling crowd was audible even there. He hastily
-took his seat and told the coachman to drive him to his country house in
-Sokólniki.
-
-When they reached the Myasnítski Street and could no longer hear
-the shouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered with
-dissatisfaction the agitation and fear he had betrayed before his
-subordinates. “The mob is terrible—disgusting,” he said to himself
-in French. “They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease.”
-“Count! One God is above us both!”—Vereshchágin’s words suddenly
-recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this
-was only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchín smiled disdainfully
-at himself. “I had other duties,” thought he. “The people had to be
-appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishing for the
-public good”—and he began thinking of his social duties to his family
-and to the city entrusted to him, and of himself—not himself as Theodore
-Vasílyevich Rostopchín (he fancied that Theodore Vasílyevich Rostopchín
-was sacrificing himself for the public good) but himself as governor,
-the representative of authority and of the Tsar. “Had I been simply
-Theodore Vasílyevich my course of action would have been quite
-different, but it was my duty to safeguard my life and dignity as
-commander in chief.”
-
-Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage and no longer
-hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchín grew physically
-calm and, as always happens, as soon as he became physically tranquil
-his mind devised reasons why he should be mentally tranquil too. The
-thought which tranquillized Rostopchín was not a new one. Since the
-world began and men have killed one another no one has ever committed
-such a crime against his fellow man without comforting himself with
-this same idea. This idea is le bien public, the hypothetical welfare of
-other people.
-
-To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never certain, but he
-who commits such a crime always knows just where that welfare lies. And
-Rostopchín now knew it.
-
-Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he had done, but
-he even found cause for self-satisfaction in having so successfully
-contrived to avail himself of a convenient opportunity to punish a
-criminal and at the same time pacify the mob.
-
-“Vereshchágin was tried and condemned to death,” thought Rostopchín
-(though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchágin to hard labor), “he
-was a traitor and a spy. I could not let him go unpunished and so I have
-killed two birds with one stone: to appease the mob I gave them a victim
-and at the same time punished a miscreant.”
-
-Having reached his country house and begun to give orders about domestic
-arrangements, the count grew quite tranquil.
-
-Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses across the
-Sokólniki field, no longer thinking of what had occurred but considering
-what was to come. He was driving to the Yaúza bridge where he had heard
-that Kutúzov was. Count Rostopchín was mentally preparing the angry and
-stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutúzov for his deception. He
-would make that foxy old courtier feel that the responsibility for all
-the calamities that would follow the abandonment of the city and the
-ruin of Russia (as Rostopchín regarded it) would fall upon his doting
-old head. Planning beforehand what he would say to Kutúzov, Rostopchín
-turned angrily in his calèche and gazed sternly from side to side.
-
-The Sokólniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it, in front of the
-almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be seen some people in white
-and others like them walking singly across the field shouting and
-gesticulating.
-
-One of these was running to cross the path of Count Rostopchín’s
-carriage, and the count himself, his coachman, and his dragoons
-looked with vague horror and curiosity at these released lunatics and
-especially at the one running toward them.
-
-Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his fluttering
-dressing gown, this lunatic was running impetuously, his gaze fixed on
-Rostopchín, shouting something in a hoarse voice and making signs to him
-to stop. The lunatic’s solemn, gloomy face was thin and yellow, with
-its beard growing in uneven tufts. His black, agate pupils with
-saffron-yellow whites moved restlessly near the lower eyelids.
-
-“Stop! Pull up, I tell you!” he cried in a piercing voice, and again
-shouted something breathlessly with emphatic intonations and gestures.
-
-Coming abreast of the calèche he ran beside it.
-
-“Thrice have they slain me, thrice have I risen from the dead. They
-stoned me, crucified me... I shall rise... shall rise... shall rise.
-They have torn my body. The kingdom of God will be overthrown... Thrice
-will I overthrow it and thrice re-establish it!” he cried, raising his
-voice higher and higher.
-
-Count Rostopchín suddenly grew pale as he had done when the crowd closed
-in on Vereshchágin. He turned away. “Go fas... faster!” he cried in a
-trembling voice to his coachman. The calèche flew over the ground as
-fast as the horses could draw it, but for a long time Count Rostopchín
-still heard the insane despairing screams growing fainter in the
-distance, while his eyes saw nothing but the astonished, frightened,
-bloodstained face of “the traitor” in the fur-lined coat.
-
-Recent as that mental picture was, Rostopchín already felt that it had
-cut deep into his heart and drawn blood. Even now he felt clearly that
-the gory trace of that recollection would not pass with time, but that
-the terrible memory would, on the contrary, dwell in his heart ever more
-cruelly and painfully to the end of his life. He seemed still to hear
-the sound of his own words: “Cut him down! I command it....”
-
-“Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident I said them....
-I need not have said them,” he thought. “And then nothing would have
-happened.” He saw the frightened and then infuriated face of the dragoon
-who dealt the blow, the look of silent, timid reproach that boy in the
-fur-lined coat had turned upon him. “But I did not do it for my own
-sake. I was bound to act that way.... The mob, the traitor... the public
-welfare,” thought he.
-
-Troops were still crowding at the Yaúza bridge. It was hot. Kutúzov,
-dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with his
-whip in the sand when a calèche dashed up noisily. A man in a general’s
-uniform with plumes in his hat went up to Kutúzov and said something
-in French. It was Count Rostopchín. He told Kutúzov that he had come
-because Moscow, the capital, was no more and only the army remained.
-
-“Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had not told
-me that you would not abandon Moscow without another battle; all this
-would not have happened,” he said.
-
-Kutúzov looked at Rostopchín as if, not grasping what was said to him,
-he was trying to read something peculiar written at that moment on the
-face of the man addressing him. Rostopchín grew confused and became
-silent. Kutúzov slightly shook his head and not taking his penetrating
-gaze from Rostopchín’s face muttered softly:
-
-“No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!”
-
-Whether Kutúzov was thinking of something entirely different when
-he spoke those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to be
-meaningless, at any rate Rostopchín made no reply and hastily left him.
-And strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count Rostopchín,
-took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where he began with shouts
-to drive on the carts that blocked the way.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI
-
-Toward four o’clock in the afternoon Murat’s troops were entering
-Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Württemberg hussars and behind
-them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.
-
-About the middle of the Arbát Street, near the Church of the Miraculous
-Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from the advanced
-detachment as to the condition in which they had found the citadel, le
-Kremlin.
-
-Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow. They
-all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-haired commander
-dressed up in feathers and gold.
-
-“Is that their Tsar himself? He’s not bad!” low voices could be heard
-saying.
-
-An interpreter rode up to the group.
-
-“Take off your cap... your caps!” These words went from one to another
-in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter and asked if
-it was far to the Krémlin. The porter, listening in perplexity to the
-unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing that the interpreter was
-speaking Russian, did not understand what was being said to him and
-slipped behind the others.
-
-Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the Russian
-army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and several
-voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French officer,
-returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat and reported
-that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and that there was
-probably an ambuscade there.
-
-“Good!” said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in his suite,
-ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at the gates.
-
-The guns emerged at a trot from the column following Murat and advanced
-up the Arbát. When they reached the end of the Vozdvízhenka Street they
-halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers superintended the
-placing of the guns and looked at the Krémlin through field glasses.
-
-The bells in the Krémlin were ringing for vespers, and this sound
-troubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A few
-infantrymen ran to the Kutáfyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens had been
-put there, and two musket shots rang out from under the gate as soon as
-an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was standing
-by the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, and the latter
-ran back again with his men.
-
-The sound of three more shots came from the gate.
-
-One shot struck a French soldier’s foot, and from behind the screens
-came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a
-word of command the expression of cheerful serenity on the faces of
-the French general, officers, and men changed to one of determined
-concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them from
-the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvízhenka,
-Mokhaváya, or Kutáfyev Street, nor the Tróitsa Gate (places familiar in
-Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove sanguinary.
-And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the gates ceased. The
-guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ash off their linstocks,
-and an officer gave the word “Fire!” This was followed by two whistling
-sounds of canister shot, one after another. The shot rattled against
-the stone of the gate and upon the wooden beams and screens, and two
-wavering clouds of smoke rose over the Square.
-
-A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over the
-stone-built Krémlin had died away the French heard a strange sound above
-their head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls and circled in the
-air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings. Together with that sound
-came a solitary human cry from the gateway and amid the smoke appeared
-the figure of a bareheaded man in a peasant’s coat. He grasped a musket
-and took aim at the French. “Fire!” repeated the officer once more,
-and the reports of a musket and of two cannon shots were heard
-simultaneously. The gate was again hidden by smoke.
-
-Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantry soldiers
-and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay three wounded and
-four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the foot of the wall,
-toward the Známenka.
-
-“Clear that away!” said the officer, pointing to the beams and the
-corpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threw
-the corpses over the parapet.
-
-Who these men were nobody knew. “Clear that away!” was all that was said
-of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed later on that
-they might not stink. Thiers alone dedicates a few eloquent lines to
-their memory: “These wretches had occupied the sacred citadel, having
-supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal, and fired” (the
-wretches) “at the French. Some of them were sabered and the Krémlin was
-purged of their presence.”
-
-Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The French entered
-the gates and began pitching their camp in the Senate Square. Out of the
-windows of the Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into the Square
-for fuel and kindled fires there.
-
-Other detachments passed through the Krémlin and encamped along
-the Moroséyka, the Lubyánka, and Pokróvka Streets. Others quartered
-themselves along the Vozdvízhenka, the Nikólski, and the Tverskóy
-Streets. No masters of the houses being found anywhere, the French were
-not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived in it as
-in a camp.
-
-Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their
-original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order. It
-was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army. But
-it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into their
-different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various regiments began
-to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the army was lost
-forever and there came into being something nondescript, neither
-citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When five weeks
-later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed an army. They
-were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of articles which
-seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man when he left
-Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but merely to keep
-what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts its paw into the narrow
-neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nuts will not open its
-fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore perishes, the
-French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perish because they
-carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what they had stolen was as
-impossible for them as it is for the monkey to open its paw and let
-go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment had entered a Moscow
-district, not a soldier or officer was left. Men in military uniforms
-and Hessian boots could be seen through the windows, laughing and
-walking through the rooms. In cellars and storerooms similar men were
-busy among the provisions, and in the yards unlocking or breaking open
-coach house and stable doors, lighting fires in kitchens and kneading
-and baking bread with rolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening,
-amusing, or caressing women and children. There were many such men both
-in the shops and houses—but there was no army.
-
-Order after order was issued by the French commanders that day
-forbidding the men to disperse about the town, sternly forbidding any
-violence to the inhabitants or any looting, and announcing a roll call
-for that very evening. But despite all these measures the men, who had
-till then constituted an army, flowed all over the wealthy, deserted
-city with its comforts and plentiful supplies. As a hungry herd of
-cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren field, but gets out
-of hand and at once disperses uncontrollably as soon as it reaches rich
-pastures, so did the army disperse all over the wealthy city.
-
-No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers—like water
-percolating through sand—spread irresistibly through the city in all
-directions from the Krémlin into which they had first marched. The
-cavalry, on entering a merchant’s house that had been abandoned and
-finding there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went on,
-all the same, to the next house which seemed to them better. Many of
-them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, and
-quarreled and even fought with other companies for them. Before they had
-had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into the streets to
-see the city and, hearing that everything had been abandoned, rushed
-to places where valuables were to be had for the taking. The officers
-followed to check the soldiers and were involuntarily drawn into doing
-the same. In Carriage Row carriages had been left in the shops, and
-generals flocked there to select calèches and coaches for themselves.
-The few inhabitants who had remained invited commanding officers to
-their houses, hoping thereby to secure themselves from being plundered.
-There were masses of wealth and there seemed no end to it. All around
-the quarters occupied by the French were other regions still unexplored
-and unoccupied where, they thought, yet greater riches might be found.
-And Moscow engulfed the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is
-spilled on dry ground both the dry ground and the water disappear and
-mud results; and in the same way the entry of the famished army into the
-rich and deserted city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction
-of both the army and the wealthy city.
-
-
-The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme féroce de
-Rostopchíne, * the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality,
-however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning
-of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people, responsible
-for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a position in which
-any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite apart from whether it
-had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior fire engines. Deserted
-Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of shavings has to burn on
-which sparks continually fall for several days. A town built of wood,
-where scarcely a day passes without conflagrations when the house owners
-are in residence and a police force is present, cannot help burning when
-its inhabitants have left it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke
-pipes, make campfires of the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and
-cook themselves meals twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to
-billet troops in the villages of any district and the number of fires in
-that district immediately increases. How much then must the probability
-of fire be increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops
-are quartered. “Le patriotisme féroce de Rostopchíne” and the barbarity
-of the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire by
-the soldiers’ pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the carelessness of
-enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even if there was any
-arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any reason to burn the
-houses—in any case a troublesome and dangerous thing to do), arson
-cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same thing would have happened
-without any incendiarism.
-
- * To Rostopchín’s ferocious patriotism.
-
-However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchín’s
-ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later
-on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is
-impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of the
-fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house must
-burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers are allowed to
-live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by its inhabitants, it
-is true, but by those who had abandoned it and not by those who remained
-in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not remain intact like
-Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its inhabitants
-abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and salt, nor
-bring them the keys of the city.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVII
-
-The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating starwise as it did,
-only reached the quarter where Pierre was staying by the evening of the
-second of September.
-
-After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances,
-Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely obsessed
-by one persistent thought. He did not know how or when this thought had
-taken such possession of him, but he remembered nothing of the past,
-understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and heard appeared to
-him like a dream.
-
-He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of life’s demands
-that enmeshed him, and which in his present condition he was unable
-to unravel. He had gone to Joseph Alexéevich’s house, on the plea of
-sorting the deceased’s books and papers, only in search of rest from
-life’s turmoil, for in his mind the memory of Joseph Alexéevich was
-connected with a world of eternal, solemn, and calm thoughts, quite
-contrary to the restless confusion into which he felt himself being
-drawn. He sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph Alexéevich’s study he
-really found it. When he sat with his elbows on the dusty writing table
-in the deathlike stillness of the study, calm and significant memories
-of the last few days rose one after another in his imagination,
-particularly of the battle of Borodinó and of that vague sense of his
-own insignificance and insincerity compared with the truth, simplicity,
-and strength of the class of men he mentally classed as they. When
-Gerásim roused him from his reverie the idea occurred to him of taking
-part in the popular defense of Moscow which he knew was projected. And
-with that object he had asked Gerásim to get him a peasant’s coat and
-a pistol, confiding to him his intentions of remaining in Joseph
-Alexéevich’s house and keeping his name secret. Then during the first
-day spent in inaction and solitude (he tried several times to fix his
-attention on the Masonic manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea
-that had previously occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of
-his name in connection with Bonaparte’s more than once vaguely presented
-itself. But the idea that he, L’russe Besuhof, was destined to set a
-limit to the power of the Beast was as yet only one of the fancies that
-often passed through his mind and left no trace behind.
-
-When, having bought the coat merely with the object of taking part among
-the people in the defense of Moscow, Pierre had met the Rostóvs and
-Natásha had said to him: “Are you remaining in Moscow?... How splendid!”
-the thought flashed into his mind that it really would be a good thing,
-even if Moscow were taken, for him to remain there and do what he was
-predestined to do.
-
-Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and not lagging in
-any way behind them, Pierre went to the Three Hills gate. But when he
-returned to the house convinced that Moscow would not be defended, he
-suddenly felt that what before had seemed to him merely a possibility
-had now become absolutely necessary and inevitable. He must remain in
-Moscow, concealing his name, and must meet Napoleon and kill him, and
-either perish or put an end to the misery of all Europe—which it seemed
-to him was solely due to Napoleon.
-
-Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on Bonaparte’s life in 1809
-by a German student in Vienna, and knew that the student had been shot.
-And the risk to which he would expose his life by carrying out his
-design excited him still more.
-
-Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to this purpose.
-The first was a feeling of the necessity of sacrifice and suffering in
-view of the common calamity, the same feeling that had caused him to go
-to Mozháysk on the twenty-fifth and to make his way to the very thick
-of the battle and had now caused him to run away from his home and, in
-place of the luxury and comfort to which he was accustomed, to sleep
-on a hard sofa without undressing and eat the same food as Gerásim.
-The other was that vague and quite Russian feeling of contempt for
-everything conventional, artificial, and human—for everything the
-majority of men regard as the greatest good in the world. Pierre had
-first experienced this strange and fascinating feeling at the Slobóda
-Palace, when he had suddenly felt that wealth, power, and life—all that
-men so painstakingly acquire and guard—if it has any worth has so only
-by reason of the joy with which it can all be renounced.
-
-It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to spend his last
-penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for no
-apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money he
-possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions which from
-an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it were, his personal
-power and strength, affirming the existence of a higher, nonhuman
-criterion of life.
-
-From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling for the first time
-at the Slobóda Palace he had been continuously under its influence, but
-only now found full satisfaction for it. Moreover, at this moment Pierre
-was supported in his design and prevented from renouncing it by what he
-had already done in that direction. If he were now to leave Moscow like
-everyone else, his flight from home, the peasant coat, the pistol, and
-his announcement to the Rostóvs that he would remain in Moscow would all
-become not merely meaningless but contemptible and ridiculous, and to
-this Pierre was very sensitive.
-
-Pierre’s physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded to his
-mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food, the vodka he drank during
-those days, the absence of wine and cigars, his dirty unchanged linen,
-two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa without bedding—all
-this kept him in a state of excitement bordering on insanity.
-
-It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The French had already entered
-Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of acting he only thought about
-his undertaking, going over its minutest details in his mind. In his
-fancy he did not clearly picture to himself either the striking of the
-blow or the death of Napoleon, but with extraordinary vividness and
-melancholy enjoyment imagined his own destruction and heroic endurance.
-
-“Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!” he thought.
-“Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly... with pistol or dagger?
-But that is all the same! ‘It is not I but the hand of Providence that
-punishes thee,’ I shall say,” thought he, imagining what he would say
-when killing Napoleon. “Well then, take me and execute me!” he went on,
-speaking to himself and bowing his head with a sad but firm expression.
-
-While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was talking to himself
-in this way, the study door opened and on the threshold appeared
-the figure of Makár Alexéevich, always so timid before but now quite
-transformed.
-
-His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and distorted. He
-was obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he grew confused at first, but
-noticing embarrassment on Pierre’s face immediately grew bold and,
-staggering on his thin legs, advanced into the middle of the room.
-
-“They’re frightened,” he said confidentially in a hoarse voice. “I say I
-won’t surrender, I say... Am I not right, sir?”
-
-He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the table seized it
-with unexpected rapidity and ran out into the corridor.
-
-Gerásim and the porter, who had followed Makár Alexéevich, stopped him
-in the vestibule and tried to take the pistol from him. Pierre, coming
-out into the corridor, looked with pity and repulsion at the half-crazy
-old man. Makár Alexéevich, frowning with exertion, held on to the pistol
-and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic fancy in his head.
-
-“To arms! Board them! No, you shan’t get it,” he yelled.
-
-“That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodness—please, sir, to
-let go! Please, sir...” pleaded Gerásim, trying carefully to steer Makár
-Alexéevich by the elbows back to the door.
-
-“Who are you? Bonaparte!...” shouted Makár Alexéevich.
-
-“That’s not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and rest. Allow me to
-have the pistol.”
-
-“Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?” shouted Makár
-Alexéevich, brandishing the pistol. “Board them!”
-
-“Catch hold!” whispered Gerásim to the porter.
-
-They seized Makár Alexéevich by the arms and dragged him to the door.
-
-The vestibule was filled with the discordant sounds of a struggle and of
-a tipsy, hoarse voice.
-
-Suddenly a fresh sound, a piercing feminine scream, reverberated from
-the porch and the cook came running into the vestibule.
-
-“It’s them! Gracious heavens! O Lord, four of them, horsemen!” she
-cried.
-
-Gerásim and the porter let Makár Alexéevich go, and in the now silent
-corridor the sound of several hands knocking at the front door could be
-heard.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVIII
-
-Pierre, having decided that until he had carried out his design he would
-disclose neither his identity nor his knowledge of French, stood at the
-half-open door of the corridor, intending to conceal himself as soon
-as the French entered. But the French entered and still Pierre did not
-retire—an irresistible curiosity kept him there.
-
-There were two of them. One was an officer—a tall, soldierly, handsome
-man—the other evidently a private or an orderly, sunburned, short, and
-thin, with sunken cheeks and a dull expression. The officer walked in
-front, leaning on a stick and slightly limping. When he had advanced
-a few steps he stopped, having apparently decided that these were good
-quarters, turned round to the soldiers standing at the entrance, and in
-a loud voice of command ordered them to put up the horses. Having done
-that, the officer, lifting his elbow with a smart gesture, stroked his
-mustache and lightly touched his hat.
-
-“Bonjour, la compagnie!” * said he gaily, smiling and looking about him.
-
- * “Good day, everybody!”
-
-
-No one gave any reply.
-
-“Vous êtes le bourgeois?” * the officer asked Gerásim.
-
- * “Are you the master here?”
-
-
-Gerásim gazed at the officer with an alarmed and inquiring look.
-
-“Quartier, quartier, logement!” said the officer, looking down at the
-little man with a condescending and good-natured smile. “Les français
-sont de bons enfants. Que diable! Voyons! Ne nous fâchons pas, mon
-vieux!” * added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerásim on the
-shoulder. “Well, does no one speak French in this establishment?” he
-asked again in French, looking around and meeting Pierre’s eyes. Pierre
-moved away from the door.
-
- * “Quarters, quarters, lodgings! The French are good
- fellows. What the devil! There, don’t let us be cross, old
- fellow!”
-
-
-Again the officer turned to Gerásim and asked him to show him the rooms
-in the house.
-
-“Master, not here—don’t understand... me, you...” said Gerásim, trying
-to render his words more comprehensible by contorting them.
-
-Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before Gerásim’s
-nose, intimating that he did not understand him either, and moved,
-limping, to the door at which Pierre was standing. Pierre wished to go
-away and conceal himself, but at that moment he saw Makár Alexéevich
-appearing at the open kitchen door with the pistol in his hand. With
-a madman’s cunning, Makár Alexéevich eyed the Frenchman, raised his
-pistol, and took aim.
-
-“Board them!” yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger. Hearing
-the yell the officer turned round, and at the same moment Pierre threw
-himself on the drunkard. Just when Pierre snatched at and struck up the
-pistol Makár Alexéevich at last got his fingers on the trigger, there
-was a deafening report, and all were enveloped in a cloud of smoke. The
-Frenchman turned pale and rushed to the door.
-
-Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of French, Pierre,
-snatching away the pistol and throwing it down, ran up to the officer
-and addressed him in French.
-
-“You are not wounded?” he asked.
-
-“I think not,” answered the Frenchman, feeling himself over. “But I have
-had a lucky escape this time,” he added, pointing to the damaged plaster
-of the wall. “Who is that man?” said he, looking sternly at Pierre.
-
-“Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred,” said Pierre rapidly,
-quite forgetting the part he had intended to play. “He is an unfortunate
-madman who did not know what he was doing.”
-
-The officer went up to Makár Alexéevich and took him by the collar.
-
-Makár Alexéevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about to
-fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall.
-
-“Brigand! You shall pay for this,” said the Frenchman, letting go
-of him. “We French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon
-traitors,” he added, with a look of gloomy dignity and a fine energetic
-gesture.
-
-Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not to hold that
-drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence with the
-same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with a smile. For
-a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome face assumed a
-melodramatically gentle expression and he held out his hand.
-
-“You have saved my life. You are French,” said he.
-
-For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only a Frenchman could
-perform a great deed, and to save his life—the life of M. Ramballe,
-captain of the 13th Light Regiment—was undoubtedly a very great deed.
-
-But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer’s conviction
-based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him.
-
-“I am Russian,” he said quickly.
-
-“Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others,” said the officer, waving his
-finger before his nose and smiling. “You shall tell me all about that
-presently. I am delighted to meet a compatriot. Well, and what are we
-to do with this man?” he added, addressing himself to Pierre as to a
-brother.
-
-Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that loftiest
-of human appellations he could not renounce it, said the officer’s look
-and tone. In reply to his last question Pierre again explained who Makár
-Alexéevich was and how just before their arrival that drunken imbecile
-had seized the loaded pistol which they had not had time to recover from
-him, and begged the officer to let the deed go unpunished.
-
-The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic gesture with his
-arm.
-
-“You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his pardon? I grant it
-you. Lead that man away!” said he quickly and energetically, and taking
-the arm of Pierre whom he had promoted to be a Frenchman for saving his
-life, he went with him into the room.
-
-The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into the passage asking
-what had happened, and expressed their readiness to punish the culprits,
-but the officer sternly checked them.
-
-“You will be called in when you are wanted,” he said.
-
-The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had meanwhile had time
-to visit the kitchen, came up to his officer.
-
-“Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen,” said he.
-“Shall I serve them up?”
-
-“Yes, and some wine,” answered the captain.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIX
-
-When the French officer went into the room with Pierre the latter again
-thought it his duty to assure him that he was not French and wished to
-go away, but the officer would not hear of it. He was so very polite,
-amiable, good-natured, and genuinely grateful to Pierre for saving his
-life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse, and sat down with him in
-the parlor—the first room they entered. To Pierre’s assurances that he
-was not a Frenchman, the captain, evidently not understanding how anyone
-could decline so flattering an appellation, shrugged his shoulders and
-said that if Pierre absolutely insisted on passing for a Russian let it
-be so, but for all that he would be forever bound to Pierre by gratitude
-for saving his life.
-
-Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity for perceiving the
-feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre’s feelings
-were, the latter would probably have left him, but the man’s animated
-obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed Pierre.
-
-“A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito,” said the officer, looking
-at Pierre’s fine though dirty linen and at the ring on his finger.
-“I owe my life to you and offer you my friendship. A Frenchman never
-forgets either an insult or a service. I offer you my friendship. That
-is all I can say.”
-
-There was so much good nature and nobility (in the French sense of the
-word) in the officer’s voice, in the expression of his face and in
-his gestures, that Pierre, unconsciously smiling in response to the
-Frenchman’s smile, pressed the hand held out to him.
-
-“Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the Legion
-of Honor for the affair on the seventh of September,” he introduced
-himself, a self-satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his lips under
-his mustache. “Will you now be so good as to tell me with whom I have
-the honor of conversing so pleasantly, instead of being in the ambulance
-with that maniac’s bullet in my body?”
-
-Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing,
-began to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason for
-concealing it, but the Frenchman hastily interrupted him.
-
-“Oh, please!” said he. “I understand your reasons. You are an officer...
-a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us. That’s not
-my business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am quite at
-your service. You belong to the gentry?” he concluded with a shade of
-inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. “Your baptismal name, if you
-please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you say.... That’s all I
-want to know.”
-
-When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and vodka
-brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a Russian cellar
-and brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share his dinner, and
-himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a healthy and hungry man,
-munching his food rapidly with his strong teeth, continually smacking
-his lips, and repeating—“Excellent! Delicious!” His face grew red and
-was covered with perspiration. Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner
-with pleasure. Morel, the orderly, brought some hot water in a saucepan
-and placed a bottle of claret in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass,
-taken from the kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known
-to the French and had been given a special name. They called it limonade
-de cochon (pig’s lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the limonade de
-cochon he had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they
-had taken while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and
-applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up
-to its neck in a table napkin and poured out wine for himself and for
-Pierre. The satisfaction of his hunger and the wine rendered the captain
-still more lively and he chatted incessantly all through dinner.
-
-“Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for
-saving me from that maniac.... You see, I have bullets enough in my
-body already. Here is one I got at Wagram” (he touched his side) “and a
-second at Smolénsk”—he showed a scar on his cheek—“and this leg which as
-you see does not want to march, I got that on the seventh at the great
-battle of la Moskowa. Sacré Dieu! It was splendid! That deluge of fire
-was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us there, my word! You may
-be proud of it! And on my honor, in spite of the cough I caught there, I
-should be ready to begin again. I pity those who did not see it.”
-
-“I was there,” said Pierre.
-
-“Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly brave foes. The
-great redoubt held out well, by my pipe!” continued the Frenchman. “And
-you made us pay dear for it. I was at it three times—sure as I sit here.
-Three times we reached the guns and three times we were thrown back
-like cardboard figures. Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur Pierre! Your
-grenadiers were splendid, by heaven! I saw them close up their ranks six
-times in succession and march as if on parade. Fine fellows! Our King of
-Naples, who knows what’s what, cried ‘Bravo!’ Ha, ha! So you are one of
-us soldiers!” he added, smiling, after a momentary pause. “So much
-the better, so much the better, Monsieur Pierre! Terrible in battle...
-gallant... with the fair” (he winked and smiled), “that’s what the
-French are, Monsieur Pierre, aren’t they?”
-
-The captain was so naïvely and good-humoredly gay, so real, and so
-pleased with himself that Pierre almost winked back as he looked merrily
-at him. Probably the word “gallant” turned the captain’s thoughts to the
-state of Moscow.
-
-“Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have all left
-Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to be afraid of?”
-
-“Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the Russians entered it?”
-asked Pierre.
-
-“Ha, ha, ha!” The Frenchman emitted a merry, sanguine chuckle, patting
-Pierre on the shoulder. “What a thing to say!” he exclaimed. “Paris?...
-But Paris, Paris...”
-
-“Paris—the capital of the world,” Pierre finished his remark for him.
-
-The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of stopping short in the
-middle of his talk and gazing intently with his laughing, kindly eyes.
-
-“Well, if you hadn’t told me you were Russian, I should have wagered
-that you were Parisian! You have that... I don’t know what, that...” and
-having uttered this compliment, he again gazed at him in silence.
-
-“I have been in Paris. I spent years there,” said Pierre.
-
-“Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who doesn’t know Paris
-is a savage. You can tell a Parisian two leagues off. Paris is Talma, la
-Duchénois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards,” and noticing that
-his conclusion was weaker than what had gone before, he added quickly:
-“There is only one Paris in the world. You have been to Paris and have
-remained Russian. Well, I don’t esteem you the less for it.”
-
-Under the influence of the wine he had drunk, and after the days he had
-spent alone with his depressing thoughts, Pierre involuntarily enjoyed
-talking with this cheerful and good-natured man.
-
-“To return to your ladies—I hear they are lovely. What a wretched idea
-to go and bury themselves in the steppes when the French army is in
-Moscow. What a chance those girls have missed! Your peasants, now—that’s
-another thing; but you civilized people, you ought to know us better
-than that. We took Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome, Warsaw, all
-the world’s capitals.... We are feared, but we are loved. We are nice to
-know. And then the Emperor...” he began, but Pierre interrupted him.
-
-“The Emperor,” Pierre repeated, and his face suddenly became sad and
-embarrassed, “is the Emperor...?”
-
-“The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius—that’s
-what the Emperor is! It is I, Ramballe, who tell you so.... I assure you
-I was his enemy eight years ago. My father was an emigrant count.... But
-that man has vanquished me. He has taken hold of me. I could not resist
-the sight of the grandeur and glory with which he has covered France.
-When I understood what he wanted—when I saw that he was preparing a bed
-of laurels for us, you know, I said to myself: ‘That is a monarch,’ and
-I devoted myself to him! So there! Oh yes, mon cher, he is the greatest
-man of the ages past or future.”
-
-“Is he in Moscow?” Pierre stammered with a guilty look.
-
-The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled.
-
-“No, he will make his entry tomorrow,” he replied, and continued his
-talk.
-
-Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of several voices at
-the gate and by Morel, who came to say that some Württemberg hussars had
-come and wanted to put up their horses in the yard where the captain’s
-horses were. This difficulty had arisen chiefly because the hussars did
-not understand what was said to them in French.
-
-The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and in a stern voice
-asked him to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding officer,
-and by what right he allowed himself to claim quarters that were already
-occupied. The German who knew little French, answered the two first
-questions by giving the names of his regiment and of his commanding
-officer, but in reply to the third question which he did not understand
-said, introducing broken French into his own German, that he was the
-quartermaster of the regiment and his commander had ordered him to
-occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre, who knew German,
-translated what the German said to the captain and gave the captain’s
-reply to the Württemberg hussar in German. When he had understood what
-was said to him, the German submitted and took his men elsewhere. The
-captain went out into the porch and gave some orders in a loud voice.
-
-When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the same place as
-before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He
-really was suffering at that moment. When the captain went out and he
-was left alone, suddenly he came to himself and realized the position
-he was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken or that the happy
-conquerors were masters in it and were patronizing him. Painful as
-that was it was not that which tormented Pierre at the moment. He was
-tormented by the consciousness of his own weakness. The few glasses of
-wine he had drunk and the conversation with this good-natured man had
-destroyed the mood of concentrated gloom in which he had spent the last
-few days and which was essential for the execution of his design. The
-pistol, dagger, and peasant coat were ready. Napoleon was to enter the
-town next day. Pierre still considered that it would be a useful and
-worthy action to slay the evildoer, but now he felt that he would not
-do it. He did not know why, but he felt a foreboding that he would not
-carry out his intention. He struggled against the confession of his
-weakness but dimly felt that he could not overcome it and that his
-former gloomy frame of mind, concerning vengeance, killing, and
-self-sacrifice, had been dispersed like dust by contact with the first
-man he met.
-
-The captain returned to the room, limping slightly and whistling a tune.
-
-The Frenchman’s chatter which had previously amused Pierre now repelled
-him. The tune he was whistling, his gait, and the gesture with which
-he twirled his mustache, all now seemed offensive. “I will go away
-immediately. I won’t say another word to him,” thought Pierre. He
-thought this, but still sat in the same place. A strange feeling of
-weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get up and go away, but
-could not do so.
-
-The captain, on the other hand, seemed very cheerful. He paced up and
-down the room twice. His eyes shone and his mustache twitched as if he
-were smiling to himself at some amusing thought.
-
-“The colonel of those Württembergers is delightful,” he suddenly said.
-“He’s a German, but a nice fellow all the same.... But he’s a German.”
-He sat down facing Pierre. “By the way, you know German, then?”
-
-Pierre looked at him in silence.
-
-“What is the German for ‘shelter’?”
-
-“Shelter?” Pierre repeated. “The German for shelter is Unterkunft.”
-
-“How do you say it?” the captain asked quickly and doubtfully.
-
-“Unterkunft,” Pierre repeated.
-
-“Onterkoff,” said the captain and looked at Pierre for some seconds with
-laughing eyes. “These Germans are first-rate fools, don’t you think so,
-Monsieur Pierre?” he concluded.
-
-“Well, let’s have another bottle of this Moscow Bordeaux, shall we?
-Morel will warm us up another little bottle. Morel!” he called out
-gaily.
-
-Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain looked at Pierre
-by the candlelight and was evidently struck by the troubled expression
-on his companion’s face. Ramballe, with genuine distress and sympathy in
-his face, went up to Pierre and bent over him.
-
-“There now, we’re sad,” said he, touching Pierre’s hand. “Have I
-upset you? No, really, have you anything against me?” he asked Pierre.
-“Perhaps it’s the state of affairs?”
-
-Pierre did not answer, but looked cordially into the Frenchman’s eyes
-whose expression of sympathy was pleasing to him.
-
-“Honestly, without speaking of what I owe you, I feel friendship for
-you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and death.
-I say it with my hand on my heart!” said he, striking his chest.
-
-“Thank you,” said Pierre.
-
-The captain gazed intently at him as he had done when he learned that
-“shelter” was Unterkunft in German, and his face suddenly brightened.
-
-“Well, in that case, I drink to our friendship!” he cried gaily, filling
-two glasses with wine.
-
-Pierre took one of the glasses and emptied it. Ramballe emptied his too,
-again pressed Pierre’s hand, and leaned his elbows on the table in a
-pensive attitude.
-
-“Yes, my dear friend,” he began, “such is fortune’s caprice. Who would
-have said that I should be a soldier and a captain of dragoons in the
-service of Bonaparte, as we used to call him? Yet here I am in Moscow
-with him. I must tell you, mon cher,” he continued in the sad and
-measured tones of a man who intends to tell a long story, “that our name
-is one of the most ancient in France.”
-
-And with a Frenchman’s easy and naïve frankness the captain told Pierre
-the story of his ancestors, his childhood, youth, and manhood, and all
-about his relations and his financial and family affairs, “ma pauvre
-mère” playing of course an important part in the story.
-
-“But all that is only life’s setting, the real thing is love—love! Am I
-not right, Monsieur Pierre?” said he, growing animated. “Another glass?”
-
-Pierre again emptied his glass and poured himself out a third.
-
-“Oh, women, women!” and the captain, looking with glistening eyes at
-Pierre, began talking of love and of his love affairs.
-
-There were very many of these, as one could easily believe, looking
-at the officer’s handsome, self-satisfied face, and noting the eager
-enthusiasm with which he spoke of women. Though all Ramballe’s love
-stories had the sensual character which Frenchmen regard as the special
-charm and poetry of love, yet he told his story with such sincere
-conviction that he alone had experienced and known all the charm of love
-and he described women so alluringly that Pierre listened to him with
-curiosity.
-
-It was plain that l’amour which the Frenchman was so fond of was not
-that low and simple kind that Pierre had once felt for his wife, nor
-was it the romantic love stimulated by himself that he experienced for
-Natásha. (Ramballe despised both these kinds of love equally: the one
-he considered the “love of clodhoppers” and the other the “love
-of simpletons.”) L’amour which the Frenchman worshiped consisted
-principally in the unnaturalness of his relation to the woman and in a
-combination of incongruities giving the chief charm to the feeling.
-
-Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his love for a
-fascinating marquise of thirty-five and at the same time for a charming,
-innocent child of seventeen, daughter of the bewitching marquise. The
-conflict of magnanimity between the mother and the daughter, ending in
-the mother’s sacrificing herself and offering her daughter in marriage
-to her lover, even now agitated the captain, though it was the memory of
-a distant past. Then he recounted an episode in which the husband played
-the part of the lover, and he—the lover—assumed the role of the husband,
-as well as several droll incidents from his recollections of Germany,
-where “shelter” is called Unterkunft and where the husbands eat
-sauerkraut and the young girls are “too blonde.”
-
-Finally, the latest episode in Poland still fresh in the captain’s
-memory, and which he narrated with rapid gestures and glowing face, was
-of how he had saved the life of a Pole (in general, the saving of
-life continually occurred in the captain’s stories) and the Pole had
-entrusted to him his enchanting wife (parisienne de cœur) while himself
-entering the French service. The captain was happy, the enchanting
-Polish lady wished to elope with him, but, prompted by magnanimity, the
-captain restored the wife to the husband, saying as he did so: “I have
-saved your life, and I save your honor!” Having repeated these words the
-captain wiped his eyes and gave himself a shake, as if driving away the
-weakness which assailed him at this touching recollection.
-
-Listening to the captain’s tales, Pierre—as often happens late in the
-evening and under the influence of wine—followed all that was told him,
-understood it all, and at the same time followed a train of personal
-memories which, he knew not why, suddenly arose in his mind. While
-listening to these love stories his own love for Natásha unexpectedly
-rose to his mind, and going over the pictures of that love in his
-imagination he mentally compared them with Ramballe’s tales. Listening
-to the story of the struggle between love and duty, Pierre saw before
-his eyes every minutest detail of his last meeting with the object of
-his love at the Súkharev water tower. At the time of that meeting it had
-not produced an effect upon him—he had not even once recalled it. But
-now it seemed to him that that meeting had had in it something very
-important and poetic.
-
-“Peter Kirílovich, come here! We have recognized you,” he now seemed
-to hear the words she had uttered and to see before him her eyes, her
-smile, her traveling hood, and a stray lock of her hair... and there
-seemed to him something pathetic and touching in all this.
-
-Having finished his tale about the enchanting Polish lady, the captain
-asked Pierre if he had ever experienced a similar impulse to sacrifice
-himself for love and a feeling of envy of the legitimate husband.
-
-Challenged by this question Pierre raised his head and felt a need to
-express the thoughts that filled his mind. He began to explain that he
-understood love for a woman somewhat differently. He said that in all
-his life he had loved and still loved only one woman, and that she could
-never be his.
-
-“Tiens!” said the captain.
-
-Pierre then explained that he had loved this woman from his earliest
-years, but that he had not dared to think of her because she was too
-young, and because he had been an illegitimate son without a name.
-Afterwards when he had received a name and wealth he dared not think of
-her because he loved her too well, placing her far above everything in
-the world, and especially therefore above himself.
-
-When he had reached this point, Pierre asked the captain whether he
-understood that.
-
-The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he did not understand
-it he begged Pierre to continue.
-
-“Platónic love, clouds...” he muttered.
-
-Whether it was the wine he had drunk, or an impulse of frankness, or the
-thought that this man did not, and never would, know any of those who
-played a part in his story, or whether it was all these things together,
-something loosened Pierre’s tongue. Speaking thickly and with a faraway
-look in his shining eyes, he told the whole story of his life: his
-marriage, Natásha’s love for his best friend, her betrayal of him, and
-all his own simple relations with her. Urged on by Ramballe’s questions
-he also told what he had at first concealed—his own position and even
-his name.
-
-More than anything else in Pierre’s story the captain was impressed by
-the fact that Pierre was very rich, had two mansions in Moscow, and that
-he had abandoned everything and not left the city, but remained there
-concealing his name and station.
-
-When it was late at night they went out together into the street. The
-night was warm and light. To the left of the house on the Pokróvka a
-fire glowed—the first of those that were beginning in Moscow. To the
-right and high up in the sky was the sickle of the waning moon and
-opposite to it hung that bright comet which was connected in Pierre’s
-heart with his love. At the gate stood Gerásim, the cook, and two
-Frenchmen. Their laughter and their mutually incomprehensible remarks in
-two languages could be heard. They were looking at the glow seen in the
-town.
-
-There was nothing terrible in the one small, distant fire in the immense
-city.
-
-Gazing at the high starry sky, at the moon, at the comet, and at the
-glow from the fire, Pierre experienced a joyful emotion. “There now,
-how good it is, what more does one need?” thought he. And suddenly
-remembering his intention he grew dizzy and felt so faint that he leaned
-against the fence to save himself from falling.
-
-Without taking leave of his new friend, Pierre left the gate with
-unsteady steps and returning to his room lay down on the sofa and
-immediately fell asleep.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXX
-
-The glow of the first fire that began on the second of September was
-watched from the various roads by the fugitive Muscovites and by the
-retreating troops, with many different feelings.
-
-The Rostóv party spent the night at Mytíshchi, fourteen miles from
-Moscow. They had started so late on the first of September, the road
-had been so blocked by vehicles and troops, so many things had been
-forgotten for which servants were sent back, that they had decided to
-spend that night at a place three miles out of Moscow. The next morning
-they woke late and were again delayed so often that they only got as far
-as Great Mytíshchi. At ten o’clock that evening the Rostóv family and
-the wounded traveling with them were all distributed in the yards and
-huts of that large village. The Rostóvs’ servants and coachmen and the
-orderlies of the wounded officers, after attending to their masters, had
-supper, fed the horses, and came out into the porches.
-
-In a neighboring hut lay Raévski’s adjutant with a fractured wrist. The
-awful pain he suffered made him moan incessantly and piteously, and his
-moaning sounded terrible in the darkness of the autumn night. He had
-spent the first night in the same yard as the Rostóvs. The countess said
-she had been unable to close her eyes on account of his moaning, and at
-Mytíshchi she moved into a worse hut simply to be farther away from the
-wounded man.
-
-In the darkness of the night one of the servants noticed, above the high
-body of a coach standing before the porch, the small glow of another
-fire. One glow had long been visible and everybody knew that it was
-Little Mytíshchi burning—set on fire by Mamónov’s Cossacks.
-
-“But look here, brothers, there’s another fire!” remarked an orderly.
-
-All turned their attention to the glow.
-
-“But they told us Little Mytíshchi had been set on fire by Mamónov’s
-Cossacks.”
-
-“But that’s not Mytíshchi, it’s farther away.”
-
-“Look, it must be in Moscow!”
-
-Two of the gazers went round to the other side of the coach and sat down
-on its steps.
-
-“It’s more to the left, why, Little Mytíshchi is over there, and this is
-right on the other side.”
-
-Several men joined the first two.
-
-“See how it’s flaring,” said one. “That’s a fire in Moscow: either in
-the Sushchévski or the Rogózhski quarter.”
-
-No one replied to this remark and for some time they all gazed silently
-at the spreading flames of the second fire in the distance.
-
-Old Daniel Teréntich, the count’s valet (as he was called), came up to
-the group and shouted at Míshka.
-
-“What are you staring at, you good-for-nothing?... The count will be
-calling and there’s nobody there; go and gather the clothes together.”
-
-“I only ran out to get some water,” said Míshka.
-
-“But what do you think, Daniel Teréntich? Doesn’t it look as if that
-glow were in Moscow?” remarked one of the footmen.
-
-Daniel Teréntich made no reply, and again for a long time they were all
-silent. The glow spread, rising and falling, farther and farther still.
-
-“God have mercy.... It’s windy and dry...” said another voice.
-
-“Just look! See what it’s doing now. O Lord! You can even see the crows
-flying. Lord have mercy on us sinners!”
-
-“They’ll put it out, no fear!”
-
-“Who’s to put it out?” Daniel Teréntich, who had hitherto been silent,
-was heard to say. His voice was calm and deliberate. “Moscow it is,
-brothers,” said he. “Mother Moscow, the white...” his voice faltered,
-and he gave way to an old man’s sob.
-
-And it was as if they had all only waited for this to realize the
-significance for them of the glow they were watching. Sighs were heard,
-words of prayer, and the sobbing of the count’s old valet.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXI
-
-The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that Moscow was
-burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went out to look. Sónya
-and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out with him. Only
-Natásha and the countess remained in the room. Pétya was no longer
-with the family, he had gone on with his regiment which was making for
-Tróitsa.
-
-The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry. Natásha,
-pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench under the icons just
-where she had sat down on arriving and paid no attention to her father’s
-words. She was listening to the ceaseless moaning of the adjutant, three
-houses off.
-
-“Oh, how terrible,” said Sónya returning from the yard chilled and
-frightened. “I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there’s an awful
-glow! Natásha, do look! You can see it from the window,” she said to her
-cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind.
-
-But Natásha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to her
-and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove. She had been in
-this condition of stupor since the morning, when Sónya, to the surprise
-and annoyance of the countess, had for some unaccountable reason found
-it necessary to tell Natásha of Prince Andrew’s wound and of his being
-with their party. The countess had seldom been so angry with anyone as
-she was with Sónya. Sónya had cried and begged to be forgiven and now,
-as if trying to atone for her fault, paid unceasing attention to her
-cousin.
-
-“Look, Natásha, how dreadfully it is burning!” said she.
-
-“What’s burning?” asked Natásha. “Oh, yes, Moscow.”
-
-And as if in order not to offend Sónya and to get rid of her, she turned
-her face to the window, looked out in such a way that it was evident
-that she could not see anything, and again settled down in her former
-attitude.
-
-“But you didn’t see it!”
-
-“Yes, really I did,” Natásha replied in a voice that pleaded to be left
-in peace.
-
-Both the countess and Sónya understood that, naturally, neither Moscow
-nor the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of importance to
-Natásha.
-
-The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The countess went
-up to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand as she
-was wont to do when Natásha was ill, then touched her forehead with her
-lips as if to feel whether she was feverish, and finally kissed her.
-
-“You are cold. You are trembling all over. You’d better lie down,” said
-the countess.
-
-“Lie down? All right, I will. I’ll lie down at once,” said Natásha.
-
-When Natásha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew was seriously
-wounded and was traveling with their party, she had at first asked many
-questions: Where was he going? How was he wounded? Was it serious? And
-could she see him? But after she had been told that she could not see
-him, that he was seriously wounded but that his life was not in danger,
-she ceased to ask questions or to speak at all, evidently disbelieving
-what they told her, and convinced that say what she might she would
-still be told the same. All the way she had sat motionless in a corner
-of the coach with wide open eyes, and the expression in them which the
-countess knew so well and feared so much, and now she sat in the same
-way on the bench where she had seated herself on arriving. She was
-planning something and either deciding or had already decided something
-in her mind. The countess knew this, but what it might be she did not
-know, and this alarmed and tormented her.
-
-“Natásha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed.”
-
-A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame Schoss
-and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor.
-
-“No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor,” Natásha replied
-irritably and she went to the window and opened it. Through the open
-window the moans of the adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She put
-her head out into the damp night air, and the countess saw her slim neck
-shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window frame. Natásha knew
-it was not Prince Andrew who was moaning. She knew Prince Andrew was in
-the same yard as themselves and in a part of the hut across the passage;
-but this dreadful incessant moaning made her sob. The countess exchanged
-a look with Sónya.
-
-“Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet,” said the countess, softly
-touching Natásha’s shoulders. “Come, lie down.”
-
-“Oh, yes... I’ll lie down at once,” said Natásha, and began hurriedly
-undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat.
-
-When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket, she sat
-down with her foot under her on the bed that had been made up on the
-floor, jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the front,
-and began replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced fingers rapidly
-unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head moved from side
-to side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly wide, looked fixedly before
-her. When her toilet for the night was finished she sank gently onto the
-sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the door.
-
-“Natásha, you’d better lie in the middle,” said Sónya.
-
-“I’ll stay here,” muttered Natásha. “Do lie down,” she added crossly,
-and buried her face in the pillow.
-
-The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sónya undressed hastily and lay down.
-The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left in
-the room. But in the yard there was a light from the fire at Little
-Mytíshchi a mile and a half away, and through the night came the noise
-of people shouting at a tavern Mamónov’s Cossacks had set up across the
-street, and the adjutant’s unceasing moans could still be heard.
-
-For a long time Natásha listened attentively to the sounds that reached
-her from inside and outside the room and did not move. First she heard
-her mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed under
-her, then Madame Schoss’ familiar whistling snore and Sónya’s gentle
-breathing. Then the countess called to Natásha. Natásha did not answer.
-
-“I think she’s asleep, Mamma,” said Sónya softly.
-
-After a short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one
-replied.
-
-Soon after that Natásha heard her mother’s even breathing. Natásha did
-not move, though her little bare foot, thrust out from under the quilt,
-was growing cold on the bare floor.
-
-As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped in a
-crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied near
-by. The shouting in the tavern had died down; only the moaning of the
-adjutant was heard. Natásha sat up.
-
-“Sónya, are you asleep? Mamma?” she whispered.
-
-No one replied. Natásha rose slowly and carefully, crossed herself, and
-stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her slim, supple,
-bare feet. The boards of the floor creaked. Stepping cautiously from one
-foot to the other she ran like a kitten the few steps to the door and
-grasped the cold door handle.
-
-It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically against
-all the walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking with alarm and
-terror and overflowing with love.
-
-She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the cold,
-damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed her. With
-her bare feet she touched a sleeping man, stepped over him, and opened
-the door into the part of the hut where Prince Andrew lay. It was dark
-in there. In the farthest corner, on a bench beside a bed on which
-something was lying, stood a tallow candle with a long, thick, and
-smoldering wick.
-
-From the moment she had been told that morning of Prince Andrew’s wound
-and his presence there, Natásha had resolved to see him. She did not
-know why she had to, she knew the meeting would be painful, but felt the
-more convinced that it was necessary.
-
-All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night. But now
-that the moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might
-see. How was he maimed? What was left of him? Was he like that incessant
-moaning of the adjutant’s? Yes, he was altogether like that. In her
-imagination he was that terrible moaning personified. When she saw an
-indistinct shape in the corner, and mistook his knees raised under the
-quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a horrible body there, and stood
-still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her forward. She
-cautiously took one step and then another, and found herself in the
-middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man—Timókhin—was
-lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons, and two others—the
-doctor and a valet—lay on the floor.
-
-The valet sat up and whispered something. Timókhin, kept awake by the
-pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange
-apparition of a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and nightcap.
-The valet’s sleepy, frightened exclamation, “What do you want? What’s
-the matter?” made Natásha approach more swiftly to what was lying in the
-corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body looked, she must see him.
-She passed the valet, the snuff fell from the candle wick, and she saw
-Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside the quilt, and such as she
-had always seen him.
-
-He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face, his
-glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and especially his neck,
-delicate as a child’s, revealed by the turn-down collar of his shirt,
-gave him a peculiarly innocent, childlike look, such as she had never
-seen on him before. She went up to him and with a swift, flexible,
-youthful movement dropped on her knees.
-
-He smiled and held out his hand to her.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXII
-
-Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the
-ambulance station on the field of Borodinó. His feverish state and the
-inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor’s
-opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with
-pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that his
-temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning.
-The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had
-remained in the calèche, but at Mytíshchi the wounded man himself asked
-to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his removal into
-the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose consciousness. When he
-had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a long time motionless with
-closed eyes. Then he opened them and whispered softly: “And the tea?”
-His remembering such a small detail of everyday life astonished
-the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew’s pulse, and to his surprise and
-dissatisfaction found it had improved. He was dissatisfied because he
-knew by experience that if his patient did not die now, he would do so
-a little later with greater suffering. Timókhin, the red-nosed major of
-Prince Andrew’s regiment, had joined him in Moscow and was being
-taken along with him, having been wounded in the leg at the battle of
-Borodinó. They were accompanied by a doctor, Prince Andrew’s valet, his
-coachman, and two orderlies.
-
-They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking with
-feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to understand and
-remember something.
-
-“I don’t want any more. Is Timókhin here?” he asked.
-
-Timókhin crept along the bench to him.
-
-“I am here, your excellency.”
-
-“How’s your wound?”
-
-“Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?”
-
-Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something.
-
-“Couldn’t one get a book?” he asked.
-
-“What book?”
-
-“The Gospels. I haven’t one.”
-
-The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he
-was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly but
-reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him as he was
-uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted the cloak
-with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the noisome smell of
-mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began examining that dreadful
-place. The doctor was very much displeased about something and made a
-change in the dressings, turning the wounded man over so that he groaned
-again and grew unconscious and delirious from the agony. He kept asking
-them to get him the book and put it under him.
-
-“What trouble would it be to you?” he said. “I have not got one. Please
-get it for me and put it under for a moment,” he pleaded in a piteous
-voice.
-
-The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.
-
-“You fellows have no conscience,” said he to the valet who was pouring
-water over his hands. “For just one moment I didn’t look after you...
-It’s such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it.”
-
-“By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under him!”
-said the valet.
-
-The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was the
-matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he asked
-to be carried into the hut after his calèche had stopped at Mytíshchi.
-After growing confused from pain while being carried into the hut he
-again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once more recalled
-all that had happened to him, and above all vividly remembered the
-moment at the ambulance station when, at the sight of the sufferings of
-a man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to him which promised him
-happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague and indefinite, again
-possessed his soul. He remembered that he had now a new source of
-happiness and that this happiness had something to do with the Gospels.
-That was why he asked for a copy of them. The uncomfortable position in
-which they had put him and turned him over again confused his thoughts,
-and when he came to himself a third time it was in the complete
-stillness of the night. Everybody near him was sleeping. A cricket
-chirped from across the passage; someone was shouting and singing in
-the street; cockroaches rustled on the table, on the icons, and on
-the walls, and a big fly flopped at the head of the bed and around the
-candle beside him, the wick of which was charred and had shaped itself
-like a mushroom.
-
-His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of,
-feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the
-power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which to
-fix his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from the
-deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in and can
-then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew’s mind was not
-in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of his mind were more
-active and clearer than ever, but they acted apart from his will. Most
-diverse thoughts and images occupied him simultaneously. At times his
-brain suddenly began to work with a vigor, clearness, and depth it had
-never reached when he was in health, but suddenly in the midst of its
-work it would turn to some unexpected idea and he had not the strength
-to turn it back again.
-
-“Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be
-deprived,” he thought as he lay in the semidarkness of the quiet hut,
-gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. “A happiness
-lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act
-on man—a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving. Every man
-can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was possible only
-for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was the Son...?”
-
-And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince Andrew
-heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality) a
-soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating
-“piti-piti-piti,” and then “titi,” and then again “piti-piti-piti,” and
-“ti-ti” once more. At the same time he felt that above his face, above
-the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being erected out
-of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this whispered music.
-He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it was difficult) so
-that this airy structure should not collapse; but nevertheless it kept
-collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound of whispered rhythmic
-music—“it stretches, stretches, spreading out and stretching,” said
-Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to this whispering and feeling
-the sensation of this drawing out and the construction of this edifice
-of needles, he also saw by glimpses a red halo round the candle, and
-heard the rustle of the cockroaches and the buzzing of the fly that
-flopped against his pillow and his face. Each time the fly touched his
-face it gave him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise it did not
-destroy the structure, though it knocked against the very region of his
-face where it was rising. But besides this there was something else of
-importance. It was something white by the door—the statue of a sphinx,
-which also oppressed him.
-
-“But perhaps that’s my shirt on the table,” he thought, “and that’s my
-legs, and that is the door, but why is it always stretching and drawing
-itself out, and ‘piti-piti-piti’ and ‘ti-ti’ and ‘piti-piti-piti’...?
-That’s enough, please leave off!” Prince Andrew painfully entreated
-someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings again swam to the surface of
-his mind with peculiar clearness and force.
-
-“Yes—love,” he thought again quite clearly. “But not love which loves
-for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason,
-but the love which I—while dying—first experienced when I saw my enemy
-and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very
-essence of the soul and does not require an object. Now again I feel
-that bliss. To love one’s neighbors, to love one’s enemies, to love
-everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to
-love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved
-by divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that I
-loved that man. What has become of him? Is he alive?...
-
-“When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but
-divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can
-destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people have
-I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as I did
-her.” And he vividly pictured to himself Natásha, not as he had done in
-the past with nothing but her charms which gave him delight, but for
-the first time picturing to himself her soul. And he understood her
-feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now understood for the
-first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her, the cruelty of his
-rupture with her. “If only it were possible for me to see her once more!
-Just once, looking into those eyes to say...”
-
-“Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!” flopped the fly....
-And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a world of
-reality and delirium in which something particular was happening. In
-that world some structure was still being erected and did not fall,
-something was still stretching out, and the candle with its red halo
-was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay near the door; but
-besides all this something creaked, there was a whiff of fresh air, and
-a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the door. And that sphinx had
-the pale face and shining eyes of the very Natásha of whom he had just
-been thinking.
-
-“Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is,” thought Prince Andrew,
-trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face remained
-before him with the force of reality and drew nearer. Prince Andrew
-wished to return to that former world of pure thought, but he could not,
-and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft whispering voice
-continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed him and stretched
-out, and the strange face was before him. Prince Andrew collected all
-his strength in an effort to recover his senses, he moved a little, and
-suddenly there was a ringing in his ears, a dimness in his eyes, and
-like a man plunged into water he lost consciousness. When he came to
-himself, Natásha, that same living Natásha whom of all people he most
-longed to love with this new pure divine love that had been revealed to
-him, was kneeling before him. He realized that it was the real living
-Natásha, and he was not surprised but quietly happy. Natásha, motionless
-on her knees (she was unable to stir), with frightened eyes riveted on
-him, was restraining her sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the
-lower part of it something quivered.
-
-Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.
-
-“You?” he said. “How fortunate!”
-
-With a rapid but careful movement Natásha drew nearer to him on her
-knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and began
-kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.
-
-“Forgive me!” she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him.
-“Forgive me!”
-
-“I love you,” said Prince Andrew.
-
-“Forgive...!”
-
-“Forgive what?” he asked.
-
-“Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!” faltered Natásha in a scarcely
-audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more rapidly, just
-touching it with her lips.
-
-“I love you more, better than before,” said Prince Andrew, lifting her
-face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.
-
-Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,
-compassionately, and with joyous love. Natásha’s thin pale face, with
-its swollen lips, was more than plain—it was dreadful. But Prince Andrew
-did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were beautiful. They
-heard the sound of voices behind them.
-
-Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.
-Timókhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had
-long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his bare
-body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.
-
-“What’s this?” said the doctor, rising from his bed. “Please go away,
-madam!”
-
-At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her
-daughter’s absence, knocked at the door.
-
-Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natásha went out of the room
-and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.
-
-From that time, during all the rest of the Rostóvs’ journey, at every
-halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natásha never left the
-wounded Bolkónski, and the doctor had to admit that he had not expected
-from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in nursing a
-wounded man.
-
-Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew die
-in her daughter’s arms during the journey—as, judging by what the doctor
-said, it seemed might easily happen—she could not oppose Natásha. Though
-with the intimacy now established between the wounded man and Natásha
-the thought occurred that should he recover their former engagement
-would be renewed, no one—least of all Natásha and Prince Andrew—spoke of
-this: the unsettled question of life and death, which hung not only over
-Bolkónski but over all Russia, shut out all other considerations.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIII
-
-On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching, the
-clothes in which he had slept without undressing felt uncomfortable on
-his body, and his mind had a dim consciousness of something shameful
-he had done the day before. That something shameful was his yesterday’s
-conversation with Captain Ramballe.
-
-It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out of doors.
-Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with an engraved
-stock which Gerásim had replaced on the writing table, he remembered
-where he was and what lay before him that very day.
-
-“Am I not too late?” he thought. “No, probably he won’t make his entry
-into Moscow before noon.”
-
-Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before him, but
-hastened to act.
-
-After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was about to go out.
-But it then occurred to him for the first time that he certainly could
-not carry the weapon in his hand through the streets. It was difficult
-to hide such a big pistol even under his wide coat. He could not
-carry it unnoticed in his belt or under his arm. Besides, it had been
-discharged, and he had not had time to reload it. “No matter, the dagger
-will do,” he said to himself, though when planning his design he had
-more than once come to the conclusion that the chief mistake made by the
-student in 1809 had been to try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But as
-his chief aim consisted not in carrying out his design, but in proving
-to himself that he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he
-could to achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a
-green sheath which he had bought at the Súkharev market with the pistol,
-and hid it under his waistcoat.
-
-Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his head,
-Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or meeting
-the captain, and passed out into the street.
-
-The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much indifference the
-evening before, had greatly increased during the night. Moscow was on
-fire in several places. The buildings in Carriage Row, across the river,
-in the Bazaar and the Povarskóy, as well as the barges on the Moskvá
-River and the timber yards by the Dorogomílov Bridge, were all ablaze.
-
-Pierre’s way led through side streets to the Povarskóy and from there
-to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbát, where he had long before
-decided that the deed should be done. The gates of most of the houses
-were locked and the shutters up. The streets and lanes were deserted.
-The air was full of smoke and the smell of burning. Now and then he met
-Russians with anxious and timid faces, and Frenchmen with an air not of
-the city but of the camp, walking in the middle of the streets. Both
-the Russians and the French looked at Pierre with surprise. Besides his
-height and stoutness, and the strange morose look of suffering in his
-face and whole figure, the Russians stared at Pierre because they could
-not make out to what class he could belong. The French followed him with
-astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the
-other Russians who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paid no
-attention to them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who were
-explaining something to some Russians who did not understand them,
-stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French.
-
-Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinel
-standing beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when the shout
-was threateningly repeated and he heard the click of the man’s musket as
-he raised it did Pierre understand that he had to pass on the other side
-of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing of what went on around
-him. He carried his resolution within himself in terror and haste, like
-something dreadful and alien to him, for, after the previous night’s
-experience, he was afraid of losing it. But he was not destined to bring
-his mood safely to his destination. And even had he not been hindered by
-anything on the way, his intention could not now have been carried out,
-for Napoleon had passed the Arbát more than four hours previously on his
-way from the Dorogomílov suburb to the Krémlin, and was now sitting in
-a very gloomy frame of mind in a royal study in the Krémlin, giving
-detailed and exact orders as to measures to be taken immediately
-to extinguish the fire, to prevent looting, and to reassure the
-inhabitants. But Pierre did not know this; he was entirely absorbed
-in what lay before him, and was tortured—as those are who obstinately
-undertake a task that is impossible for them not because of its
-difficulty but because of its incompatibility with their natures—by the
-fear of weakening at the decisive moment and so losing his self-esteem.
-
-Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way by instinct
-and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to the Povarskóy.
-
-As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser—he
-even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame rose
-from under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the streets
-and they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that something
-unusual was happening around him, did not realize that he was
-approaching the fire. As he was going along a footpath across a
-wide-open space adjoining the Povarskóy on one side and the gardens
-of Prince Gruzínski’s house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard the
-desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if awakening
-from a dream and lifted his head.
-
-By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts of household
-goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, and trunks. On the
-ground, beside the trunks, sat a thin woman no longer young, with long,
-prominent upper teeth, and wearing a black cloak and cap. This woman,
-swaying to and fro and muttering something, was choking with sobs. Two
-girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in dirty short frocks and cloaks,
-were staring at their mother with a look of stupefaction on their pale
-frightened faces. The youngest child, a boy of about seven, who wore an
-overcoat and an immense cap evidently not his own, was crying in his
-old nurse’s arms. A dirty, barefooted maid was sitting on a trunk,
-and, having undone her pale-colored plait, was pulling it straight
-and sniffing at her singed hair. The woman’s husband, a short,
-round-shouldered man in the undress uniform of a civilian official, with
-sausage-shaped whiskers and showing under his square-set cap the hair
-smoothly brushed forward over his temples, with expressionless face was
-moving the trunks, which were placed one on another, and was dragging
-some garments from under them.
-
-As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his feet.
-
-“Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends... help
-us, somebody,” she muttered between her sobs. “My girl... My daughter!
-My youngest daughter is left behind. She’s burned! Ooh! Was it for this
-I nursed you.... Ooh!”
-
-“Don’t, Mary Nikoláevna!” said her husband to her in a low voice,
-evidently only to justify himself before the stranger. “Sister must have
-taken her, or else where can she be?” he added.
-
-“Monster! Villain!” shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing to weep.
-“You have no heart, you don’t feel for your own child! Another man would
-have rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster and neither a
-man nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man,” she went on,
-addressing Pierre rapidly between her sobs. “The fire broke out
-alongside, and blew our way, the maid called out ‘Fire!’ and we rushed
-to collect our things. We ran out just as we were.... This is what we
-have brought away.... The icons, and my dowry bed, all the rest is lost.
-We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O Lord!...” and again she
-began to sob. “My child, my dear one! Burned, burned!”
-
-“But where was she left?” asked Pierre.
-
-From the expression of his animated face the woman saw that this man
-might help her.
-
-“Oh, dear sir!” she cried, seizing him by the legs. “My benefactor, set
-my heart at ease.... Aníska, go, you horrid girl, show him the way!” she
-cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth and still farther exposing
-her long teeth.
-
-“Show me the way, show me, I... I’ll do it,” gasped Pierre rapidly.
-
-The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her plait,
-sighed, and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierre felt
-as if he had come back to life after a heavy swoon. He held his head
-higher, his eyes shone with the light of life, and with swift steps
-he followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on the Povarskóy. The
-whole street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tongues of flame here
-and there broke through that cloud. A great number of people crowded in
-front of the conflagration. In the middle of the street stood a French
-general saying something to those around him. Pierre, accompanied by the
-maid, was advancing to the spot where the general stood, but the French
-soldiers stopped him.
-
-“On ne passe pas!” * cried a voice.
-
- * “You can’t pass!”
-
-
-“This way, uncle,” cried the girl. “We’ll pass through the side street,
-by the Nikúlins’!”
-
-Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up with her.
-She ran across the street, turned down a side street to the left, and,
-passing three houses, turned into a yard on the right.
-
-“It’s here, close by,” said she and, running across the yard, opened a
-gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a small wooden
-wing of the house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. One of its
-sides had fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flames issued from
-the openings of the windows and from under the roof.
-
-As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air and
-involuntarily stopped.
-
-“Which is it? Which is your house?” he asked.
-
-“Ooh!” wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. “That’s it, that was our
-lodging. You’ve burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my precious little
-missy! Ooh!” lamented Aníska, who at the sight of the fire felt that she
-too must give expression to her feelings.
-
-Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that he
-involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon the large house
-that was as yet burning only at one end, just below the roof, and around
-which swarmed a crowd of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not realize
-what these men, who were dragging something out, were about; but seeing
-before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt saber and trying
-to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely understood that looting was
-going on there, but he had no time to dwell on that idea.
-
-The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings, the
-whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the people, and
-the sight of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thick black clouds
-and now soaring up with glittering sparks, with here and there dense
-sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fish scales creeping along
-the walls), and the heat and smoke and rapidity of motion, produced
-on Pierre the usual animating effects of a conflagration. It had a
-peculiarly strong effect on him because at the sight of the fire he felt
-himself suddenly freed from the ideas that had weighed him down. He felt
-young, bright, adroit, and resolute. He ran round to the other side of
-the lodge and was about to dash into that part of it which was still
-standing, when just above his head he heard several voices shouting
-and then a cracking sound and the ring of something heavy falling close
-beside him.
-
-Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house some Frenchmen
-who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled with metal
-articles. Other French soldiers standing below went up to the drawer.
-
-“What does this fellow want?” shouted one of them referring to Pierre.
-
-“There’s a child in that house. Haven’t you seen a child?” cried Pierre.
-
-“What’s he talking about? Get along!” said several voices, and one of
-the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to take from
-them some of the plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, moved
-threateningly toward him.
-
-“A child?” shouted a Frenchman from above. “I did hear something
-squealing in the garden. Perhaps it’s his brat that the fellow is
-looking for. After all, one must be human, you know....”
-
-“Where is it? Where?” said Pierre.
-
-“There! There!” shouted the Frenchman at the window, pointing to the
-garden at the back of the house. “Wait a bit—I’m coming down.”
-
-And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow with a spot
-on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a window on the
-ground floor, and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran with him into the
-garden.
-
-“Hurry up, you others!” he called out to his comrades. “It’s getting
-hot.”
-
-When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchman pulled
-Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled space where a
-three-year-old girl in a pink dress was lying under a seat.
-
-“There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!” said the
-Frenchman. “Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal you
-know!” and the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his
-comrades.
-
-Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going to take
-her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly, scrofulous-looking
-child, unattractively like her mother, began to yell and run away.
-Pierre, however, seized her and lifted her in his arms. She screamed
-desperately and angrily and tried with her little hands to pull Pierre’s
-hands away and to bite them with her slobbering mouth. Pierre was seized
-by a sense of horror and repulsion such as he had experienced when
-touching some nasty little animal. But he made an effort not to throw
-the child down and ran with her to the large house. It was now, however,
-impossible to get back the way he had come; the maid, Aníska, was no
-longer there, and Pierre with a feeling of pity and disgust pressed the
-wet, painfully sobbing child to himself as tenderly as he could and ran
-with her through the garden seeking another way out.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIV
-
-Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back
-with his little burden to the Gruzínski garden at the corner of the
-Povarskóy. He did not at first recognize the place from which he had set
-out to look for the child, so crowded was it now with people and goods
-that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian families who
-had taken refuge here from the fire with their belongings, there were
-several French soldiers in a variety of clothing. Pierre took no notice
-of them. He hurried to find the family of that civil servant in order to
-restore the daughter to her mother and go to save someone else. Pierre
-felt that he had still much to do and to do quickly. Glowing with the
-heat and from running, he felt at that moment more strongly than ever
-the sense of youth, animation, and determination that had come on him
-when he ran to save the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging
-with her little hands to Pierre’s coat, sat on his arm gazing about
-her like some little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a
-slight smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that
-frightened, sickly little face.
-
-He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left them. He
-walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various faces he
-met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family
-consisting of a very handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new,
-cloth-covered, sheepskin coat and new boots, an old woman of similar
-type, and a young woman. That very young woman seemed to Pierre the
-perfection of Oriental beauty, with her sharply outlined, arched,
-black eyebrows and the extraordinarily soft, bright color of her long,
-beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the
-crowd on the open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright
-lilac shawl on her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown out
-onto the snow. She was sitting on some bundles a little behind the old
-woman, and looked from under her long lashes with motionless, large,
-almond-shaped eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she was aware
-of her beauty and fearful because of it. Her face struck Pierre and,
-hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to look at her.
-When he had reached the fence, still without finding those he sought, he
-stopped and looked about him.
-
-With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous than
-before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered about him.
-
-“Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You’re of the gentry yourself,
-aren’t you? Whose child is it?” they asked him.
-
-Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat who
-had been sitting there with her other children, and he asked whether
-anyone knew where she had gone.
-
-“Why, that must be the Anférovs,” said an old deacon, addressing a
-pockmarked peasant woman. “Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!” he added
-in his customary bass.
-
-“The Anférovs? No,” said the woman. “They left in the morning. That must
-be either Mary Nikoláevna’s or the Ivánovs’!”
-
-“He says ‘a woman,’ and Mary Nikoláevna is a lady,” remarked a house
-serf.
-
-“Do you know her? She’s thin, with long teeth,” said Pierre.
-
-“That’s Mary Nikoláevna! They went inside the garden when these wolves
-swooped down,” said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers.
-
-“O Lord, have mercy!” added the deacon.
-
-“Go over that way, they’re there. It’s she! She kept on lamenting and
-crying,” continued the woman. “It’s she. Here, this way!”
-
-But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds been
-intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was looking at
-the Armenian family and at two French soldiers who had gone up to them.
-One of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat tied round
-the waist with a rope. He had a nightcap on his head and his feet were
-bare. The other, whose appearance particularly struck Pierre, was a
-long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in his movements
-and with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a woman’s loose gown
-of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian boots. The little
-barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the Armenians and,
-saying something, immediately seized the old man by his legs and the old
-man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in the frieze gown
-stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl and with his hands in
-his pockets stood staring at her, motionless and silent.
-
-“Here, take the child!” said Pierre peremptorily and hurriedly to the
-woman, handing the little girl to her. “Give her back to them, give her
-back!” he almost shouted, putting the child, who began screaming, on the
-ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the Armenian family.
-
-The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman had
-secured his second boot and was slapping one boot against the other.
-The old man was saying something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre
-caught but a glimpse of this, his whole attention was directed to the
-Frenchman in the frieze gown who meanwhile, swaying slowly from side to
-side, had drawn nearer to the young woman and taking his hands from his
-pockets had seized her by the neck.
-
-The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same attitude,
-with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or feel what the
-soldier was doing to her.
-
-While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the
-Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing
-from her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the young
-woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.
-
-“Let that woman alone!” exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious voice,
-seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him aside.
-
-The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing down
-the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward Pierre.
-
-“Voyons, pas de bêtises!” * he cried.
-
- * “Look here, no nonsense!”
-
-
-Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered nothing and
-his strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted Frenchman
-and, before the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked him off his
-feet and hammered him with his fists. Shouts of approval were heard
-from the crowd around, and at the same moment a mounted patrol of French
-Uhlans appeared from round the corner. The Uhlans came up at a trot to
-Pierre and the Frenchman and surrounded them. Pierre remembered nothing
-of what happened after that. He only remembered beating someone and
-being beaten and finally feeling that his hands were bound and that a
-crowd of French soldiers stood around him and were searching him.
-
-“Lieutenant, he has a dagger,” were the first words Pierre understood.
-
-“Ah, a weapon?” said the officer and turned to the barefooted soldier
-who had been arrested with Pierre. “All right, you can tell all about it
-at the court-martial.” Then he turned to Pierre. “Do you speak French?”
-
-Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did not reply. His
-face probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something in
-a whisper and four more Uhlans left the ranks and placed themselves on
-both sides of Pierre.
-
-“Do you speak French?” the officer asked again, keeping at a distance
-from Pierre. “Call the interpreter.”
-
-A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the ranks, and
-by his clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once knew him to be a
-French salesman from one of the Moscow shops.
-
-“He does not look like a common man,” said the interpreter, after a
-searching look at Pierre.
-
-“Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary,” remarked the officer. “And
-ask him who he is,” he added.
-
-“Who are you?” asked the interpreter in poor Russian. “You must answer
-the chief.”
-
-“I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner—take me!” Pierre
-suddenly replied in French.
-
-“Ah, ah!” muttered the officer with a frown. “Well then, march!”
-
-A crowd had collected round the Uhlans. Nearest to Pierre stood the
-pockmarked peasant woman with the little girl, and when the patrol
-started she moved forward.
-
-“Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?” said she. “And the little
-girl, the little girl, what am I to do with her if she’s not theirs?”
-said the woman.
-
-“What does that woman want?” asked the officer.
-
-Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight of the
-little girl he had saved.
-
-“What does she want?” he murmured. “She is bringing me my daughter whom
-I have just saved from the flames,” said he. “Good-by!” And without
-knowing how this aimless lie had escaped him, he went along with
-resolute and triumphant steps between the French soldiers.
-
-The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various
-streets of Moscow by Durosnel’s order to put a stop to the pillage,
-and especially to catch the incendiaries who, according to the general
-opinion which had that day originated among the higher French officers,
-were the cause of the conflagrations. After marching through a number
-of streets the patrol arrested five more Russian suspects: a small
-shopkeeper, two seminary students, a peasant, and a house serf, besides
-several looters. But of all these various suspected characters, Pierre
-was considered to be the most suspicious of all. When they had all been
-brought for the night to a large house on the Zúbov Rampart that was
-being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed apart under strict guard.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK TWELVE: 1812
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-In Petersburg at that time a complicated struggle was being carried on
-with greater heat than ever in the highest circles, between the parties
-of Rumyántsev, the French, Márya Fëdorovna, the Tsarévich, and others,
-drowned as usual by the buzzing of the court drones. But the calm,
-luxurious life of Petersburg, concerned only about phantoms and
-reflections of real life, went on in its old way and made it hard,
-except by a great effort, to realize the danger and the difficult
-position of the Russian people. There were the same receptions and
-balls, the same French theater, the same court interests and service
-interests and intrigues as usual. Only in the very highest circles were
-attempts made to keep in mind the difficulties of the actual position.
-Stories were whispered of how differently the two Empresses behaved
-in these difficult circumstances. The Empress Márya, concerned for
-the welfare of the charitable and educational institutions under her
-patronage, had given directions that they should all be removed to
-Kazán, and the things belonging to these institutions had already been
-packed up. The Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what instructions
-she would be pleased to give—with her characteristic Russian patriotism
-had replied that she could give no directions about state institutions
-for that was the affair of the sovereign, but as far as she personally
-was concerned she would be the last to quit Petersburg.
-
-At Anna Pávlovna’s on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of the
-battle of Borodinó, there was a soiree, the chief feature of which was
-to be the reading of a letter from His Lordship the Bishop when sending
-the Emperor an icon of the Venerable Sergius. It was regarded as a model
-of ecclesiastical, patriotic eloquence. Prince Vasíli himself, famed for
-his elocution, was to read it. (He used to read at the Empress’.) The
-art of his reading was supposed to lie in rolling out the words, quite
-independently of their meaning, in a loud and singsong voice alternating
-between a despairing wail and a tender murmur, so that the wail fell
-quite at random on one word and the murmur on another. This reading,
-as was always the case at Anna Pávlovna’s soirees, had a political
-significance. That evening she expected several important personages who
-had to be made ashamed of their visits to the French theater and aroused
-to a patriotic temper. A good many people had already arrived, but Anna
-Pávlovna, not yet seeing all those whom she wanted in her drawing room,
-did not let the reading begin but wound up the springs of a general
-conversation.
-
-The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of Countess Bezúkhova.
-She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously, had missed
-several gatherings of which she was usually the ornament, and was said
-to be receiving no one, and instead of the celebrated Petersburg doctors
-who usually attended her had entrusted herself to some Italian doctor
-who was treating her in some new and unusual way.
-
-They all knew very well that the enchanting countess’ illness arose from
-an inconvenience resulting from marrying two husbands at the same time,
-and that the Italian’s cure consisted in removing such inconvenience;
-but in Anna Pávlovna’s presence no one dared to think of this or even
-appear to know it.
-
-“They say the poor countess is very ill. The doctor says it is angina
-pectoris.”
-
-“Angina? Oh, that’s a terrible illness!”
-
-“They say that the rivals are reconciled, thanks to the angina...” and
-the word angina was repeated with great satisfaction.
-
-“The count is pathetic, they say. He cried like a child when the doctor
-told him the case was dangerous.”
-
-“Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting woman.”
-
-“You are speaking of the poor countess?” said Anna Pávlovna, coming
-up just then. “I sent to ask for news, and hear that she is a little
-better. Oh, she is certainly the most charming woman in the world,” she
-went on, with a smile at her own enthusiasm. “We belong to different
-camps, but that does not prevent my esteeming her as she deserves. She
-is very unfortunate!” added Anna Pávlovna.
-
-Supposing that by these words Anna Pávlovna was somewhat lifting the
-veil from the secret of the countess’ malady, an unwary young man
-ventured to express surprise that well-known doctors had not been called
-in and that the countess was being attended by a charlatan who might
-employ dangerous remedies.
-
-“Your information may be better than mine,” Anna Pávlovna suddenly and
-venomously retorted on the inexperienced young man, “but I know on good
-authority that this doctor is a very learned and able man. He is private
-physician to the Queen of Spain.”
-
-And having thus demolished the young man, Anna Pávlovna turned to
-another group where Bilíbin was talking about the Austrians: having
-wrinkled up his face he was evidently preparing to smooth it out again
-and utter one of his mots.
-
-“I think it is delightful,” he said, referring to a diplomatic note that
-had been sent to Vienna with some Austrian banners captured from the
-French by Wittgenstein, “the hero of Petropol” as he was then called in
-Petersburg.
-
-“What? What’s that?” asked Anna Pávlovna, securing silence for the mot,
-which she had heard before.
-
-And Bilíbin repeated the actual words of the diplomatic dispatch, which
-he had himself composed.
-
-“The Emperor returns these Austrian banners,” said Bilíbin, “friendly
-banners gone astray and found on a wrong path,” and his brow became
-smooth again.
-
-“Charming, charming!” observed Prince Vasíli.
-
-“The path to Warsaw, perhaps,” Prince Hippolyte remarked loudly and
-unexpectedly. Everybody looked at him, understanding what he meant.
-Prince Hippolyte himself glanced around with amused surprise. He knew no
-more than the others what his words meant. During his diplomatic career
-he had more than once noticed that such utterances were received as very
-witty, and at every opportunity he uttered in that way the first words
-that entered his head. “It may turn out very well,” he thought, “but
-if not, they’ll know how to arrange matters.” And really, during the
-awkward silence that ensued, that insufficiently patriotic person
-entered whom Anna Pávlovna had been waiting for and wished to convert,
-and she, smiling and shaking a finger at Hippolyte, invited Prince
-Vasíli to the table and bringing him two candles and the manuscript
-begged him to begin. Everyone became silent.
-
-“Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor!” Prince Vasíli sternly declaimed,
-looking round at his audience as if to inquire whether anyone had
-anything to say to the contrary. But no one said anything. “Moscow, our
-ancient capital, the New Jerusalem, receives her Christ”—he placed a
-sudden emphasis on the word her—“as a mother receives her zealous sons
-into her arms, and through the gathering mists, foreseeing the brilliant
-glory of thy rule, sings in exultation, ‘Hosanna, blessed is he that
-cometh!’”
-
-Prince Vasíli pronounced these last words in a tearful voice.
-
-Bilíbin attentively examined his nails, and many of those present
-appeared intimidated, as if asking in what they were to blame. Anna
-Pávlovna whispered the next words in advance, like an old woman
-muttering the prayer at Communion: “Let the bold and insolent
-Goliath...” she whispered.
-
-Prince Vasíli continued.
-
-“Let the bold and insolent Goliath from the borders of France encompass
-the realms of Russia with death-bearing terrors; humble Faith, the sling
-of the Russian David, shall suddenly smite his head in his bloodthirsty
-pride. This icon of the Venerable Sergius, the servant of God and
-zealous champion of old of our country’s weal, is offered to Your
-Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my waning strength prevents rejoicing
-in the sight of your most gracious presence. I raise fervent prayers to
-Heaven that the Almighty may exalt the race of the just, and mercifully
-fulfill the desires of Your Majesty.”
-
-“What force! What a style!” was uttered in approval both of reader and
-of author.
-
-Animated by that address Anna Pávlovna’s guests talked for a long time
-of the state of the fatherland and offered various conjectures as to the
-result of the battle to be fought in a few days.
-
-“You will see,” said Anna Pávlovna, “that tomorrow, on the Emperor’s
-birthday, we shall receive news. I have a favorable presentiment!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-Anna Pávlovna’s presentiment was in fact fulfilled. Next day during the
-service at the palace church in honor of the Emperor’s birthday, Prince
-Volkónski was called out of the church and received a dispatch from
-Prince Kutúzov. It was Kutúzov’s report, written from Tatárinova on the
-day of the battle. Kutúzov wrote that the Russians had not retreated a
-step, that the French losses were much heavier than ours, and that he
-was writing in haste from the field of battle before collecting full
-information. It followed that there must have been a victory. And at
-once, without leaving the church, thanks were rendered to the Creator
-for His help and for the victory.
-
-Anna Pávlovna’s presentiment was justified, and all that morning a
-joyously festive mood reigned in the city. Everyone believed the victory
-to have been complete, and some even spoke of Napoleon’s having been
-captured, of his deposition, and of the choice of a new ruler for
-France.
-
-It is very difficult for events to be reflected in their real strength
-and completeness amid the conditions of court life and far from the
-scene of action. General events involuntarily group themselves around
-some particular incident. So now the courtiers’ pleasure was based as
-much on the fact that the news had arrived on the Emperor’s birthday as
-on the fact of the victory itself. It was like a successfully arranged
-surprise. Mention was made in Kutúzov’s report of the Russian losses,
-among which figured the names of Túchkov, Bagratión, and Kutáysov. In
-the Petersburg world this sad side of the affair again involuntarily
-centered round a single incident: Kutáysov’s death. Everybody knew
-him, the Emperor liked him, and he was young and interesting. That day
-everyone met with the words:
-
-“What a wonderful coincidence! Just during the service. But what a loss
-Kutáysov is! How sorry I am!”
-
-“What did I tell about Kutúzov?” Prince Vasíli now said with a
-prophet’s pride. “I always said he was the only man capable of defeating
-Napoleon.”
-
-But next day no news arrived from the army and the public mood grew
-anxious. The courtiers suffered because of the suffering the suspense
-occasioned the Emperor.
-
-“Fancy the Emperor’s position!” said they, and instead of extolling
-Kutúzov as they had done the day before, they condemned him as the cause
-of the Emperor’s anxiety. That day Prince Vasíli no longer boasted of
-his protégé Kutúzov, but remained silent when the commander in chief was
-mentioned. Moreover, toward evening, as if everything conspired to make
-Petersburg society anxious and uneasy, a terrible piece of news was
-added. Countess Hélène Bezúkhova had suddenly died of that terrible
-malady it had been so agreeable to mention. Officially, at large
-gatherings, everyone said that Countess Bezúkhova had died of a
-terrible attack of angina pectoris, but in intimate circles details
-were mentioned of how the private physician of the Queen of Spain had
-prescribed small doses of a certain drug to produce a certain effect;
-but Hélène, tortured by the fact that the old count suspected her and
-that her husband to whom she had written (that wretched, profligate
-Pierre) had not replied, had suddenly taken a very large dose of the
-drug, and had died in agony before assistance could be rendered her.
-It was said that Prince Vasíli and the old count had turned upon the
-Italian, but the latter had produced such letters from the unfortunate
-deceased that they had immediately let the matter drop.
-
-Talk in general centered round three melancholy facts: the Emperor’s
-lack of news, the loss of Kutáysov, and the death of Hélène.
-
-On the third day after Kutúzov’s report a country gentleman arrived from
-Moscow, and news of the surrender of Moscow to the French spread through
-the whole town. This was terrible! What a position for the Emperor to
-be in! Kutúzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasíli during the visits of
-condolence paid to him on the occasion of his daughter’s death said of
-Kutúzov, whom he had formerly praised (it was excusable for him in his
-grief to forget what he had said), that it was impossible to expect
-anything else from a blind and depraved old man.
-
-“I only wonder that the fate of Russia could have been entrusted to such
-a man.”
-
-As long as this news remained unofficial it was possible to doubt it,
-but the next day the following communication was received from Count
-Rostopchín:
-
-Prince Kutúzov’s adjutant has brought me a letter in which he demands
-police officers to guide the army to the Ryazán road. He writes that
-he is regretfully abandoning Moscow. Sire! Kutúzov’s action decides the
-fate of the capital and of your empire! Russia will shudder to learn of
-the abandonment of the city in which her greatness is centered and in
-which lie the ashes of your ancestors! I shall follow the army. I have
-had everything removed, and it only remains for me to weep over the fate
-of my fatherland.
-
-On receiving this dispatch the Emperor sent Prince Volkónski to Kutúzov
-with the following rescript:
-
-Prince Michael Ilariónovich! Since the twenty-ninth of August I have
-received no communication from you, yet on the first of September I
-received from the commander in chief of Moscow, via Yaroslávl, the sad
-news that you, with the army, have decided to abandon Moscow. You can
-yourself imagine the effect this news has had on me, and your silence
-increases my astonishment. I am sending this by Adjutant-General Prince
-Volkónski, to hear from you the situation of the army and the reasons
-that have induced you to take this melancholy decision.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-Nine days after the abandonment of Moscow, a messenger from Kutúzov
-reached Petersburg with the official announcement of that event. This
-messenger was Michaud, a Frenchman who did not know Russian, but who was
-quoique étranger, russe de cœur et d’âme, * as he said of himself.
-
- * Though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul.
-
-The Emperor at once received this messenger in his study at the palace
-on Stone Island. Michaud, who had never seen Moscow before the campaign
-and who did not know Russian, yet felt deeply moved (as he wrote) when
-he appeared before notre très gracieux souverain * with the news of the
-burning of Moscow, dont les flammes éclairaient sa route. *(2)
-
- * Our most gracious sovereign.
-
- * (2) Whose flames illumined his route.
-
-Though the source of M. Michaud’s chagrin must have been different from
-that which caused Russians to grieve, he had such a sad face when shown
-into the Emperor’s study that the latter at once asked:
-
-“Have you brought me sad news, Colonel?”
-
-“Very sad, sire,” replied Michaud, lowering his eyes with a sigh. “The
-abandonment of Moscow.”
-
-“Have they surrendered my ancient capital without a battle?” asked the
-Emperor quickly, his face suddenly flushing.
-
-Michaud respectfully delivered the message Kutúzov had entrusted to him,
-which was that it had been impossible to fight before Moscow, and that
-as the only remaining choice was between losing the army as well as
-Moscow, or losing Moscow alone, the field marshal had to choose the
-latter.
-
-The Emperor listened in silence, not looking at Michaud.
-
-“Has the enemy entered the city?” he asked.
-
-“Yes, sire, and Moscow is now in ashes. I left it all in flames,”
-replied Michaud in a decided tone, but glancing at the Emperor he was
-frightened by what he had done.
-
-The Emperor began to breathe heavily and rapidly, his lower lip
-trembled, and tears instantly appeared in his fine blue eyes.
-
-But this lasted only a moment. He suddenly frowned, as if blaming
-himself for his weakness, and raising his head addressed Michaud in a
-firm voice:
-
-“I see, Colonel, from all that is happening, that Providence requires
-great sacrifices of us... I am ready to submit myself in all things to
-His will; but tell me, Michaud, how did you leave the army when it
-saw my ancient capital abandoned without a battle? Did you not notice
-discouragement?...”
-
-Seeing that his most gracious ruler was calm once more, Michaud also
-grew calm, but was not immediately ready to reply to the Emperor’s
-direct and relevant question which required a direct answer.
-
-“Sire, will you allow me to speak frankly as befits a loyal soldier?” he
-asked to gain time.
-
-“Colonel, I always require it,” replied the Emperor. “Conceal nothing
-from me, I wish to know absolutely how things are.”
-
-“Sire!” said Michaud with a subtle, scarcely perceptible smile on his
-lips, having now prepared a well-phrased reply, “sire, I left the
-whole army, from its chiefs to the lowest soldier, without exception in
-desperate and agonized terror...”
-
-“How is that?” the Emperor interrupted him, frowning sternly. “Would
-misfortune make my Russians lose heart?... Never!”
-
-Michaud had only waited for this to bring out the phrase he had
-prepared.
-
-“Sire,” he said, with respectful playfulness, “they are only afraid lest
-Your Majesty, in the goodness of your heart, should allow yourself to be
-persuaded to make peace. They are burning for the combat,” declared this
-representative of the Russian nation, “and to prove to Your Majesty by
-the sacrifice of their lives how devoted they are....”
-
-“Ah!” said the Emperor reassured, and with a kindly gleam in his eyes,
-he patted Michaud on the shoulder. “You set me at ease, Colonel.”
-
-He bent his head and was silent for some time.
-
-“Well, then, go back to the army,” he said, drawing himself up to his
-full height and addressing Michaud with a gracious and majestic gesture,
-“and tell our brave men and all my good subjects wherever you go that
-when I have not a soldier left I shall put myself at the head of my
-beloved nobility and my good peasants and so use the last resources of
-my empire. It still offers me more than my enemies suppose,” said the
-Emperor growing more and more animated; “but should it ever be ordained
-by Divine Providence,” he continued, raising to heaven his fine eyes
-shining with emotion, “that my dynasty should cease to reign on the
-throne of my ancestors, then after exhausting all the means at my
-command, I shall let my beard grow to here” (he pointed halfway down his
-chest) “and go and eat potatoes with the meanest of my peasants, rather
-than sign the disgrace of my country and of my beloved people whose
-sacrifices I know how to appreciate.”
-
-Having uttered these words in an agitated voice the Emperor suddenly
-turned away as if to hide from Michaud the tears that rose to his eyes,
-and went to the further end of his study. Having stood there a few
-moments, he strode back to Michaud and pressed his arm below the elbow
-with a vigorous movement. The Emperor’s mild and handsome face was
-flushed and his eyes gleamed with resolution and anger.
-
-“Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you here, perhaps we may
-recall it with pleasure someday... Napoleon or I,” said the Emperor,
-touching his breast. “We can no longer both reign together. I have
-learned to know him, and he will not deceive me any more....”
-
-And the Emperor paused, with a frown.
-
-When he heard these words and saw the expression of firm resolution in
-the Emperor’s eyes, Michaud—quoique étranger, russe de cœur et d’âme,—at
-that solemn moment felt himself enraptured by all that he had heard (as
-he used afterwards to say), and gave expression to his own feelings and
-those of the Russian people whose representative he considered himself
-to be, in the following words:
-
-“Sire!” said he, “Your Majesty is at this moment signing the glory of
-the nation and the salvation of Europe!”
-
-With an inclination of the head the Emperor dismissed him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-It is natural for us who were not living in those days to imagine that
-when half Russia had been conquered and the inhabitants were fleeing to
-distant provinces, and one levy after another was being raised for the
-defense of the fatherland, all Russians from the greatest to the least
-were solely engaged in sacrificing themselves, saving their fatherland,
-or weeping over its downfall. The tales and descriptions of that time
-without exception speak only of the self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion,
-despair, grief, and the heroism of the Russians. But it was not really
-so. It appears so to us because we see only the general historic
-interest of that time and do not see all the personal human interests
-that people had. Yet in reality those personal interests of the moment
-so much transcend the general interests that they always prevent the
-public interest from being felt or even noticed. Most of the people at
-that time paid no attention to the general progress of events but were
-guided only by their private interests, and they were the very people
-whose activities at that period were most useful.
-
-Those who tried to understand the general course of events and to take
-part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism were the most useless members
-of society, they saw everything upside down, and all they did for the
-common good turned out to be useless and foolish—like Pierre’s and
-Mamónov’s regiments which looted Russian villages, and the lint the
-young ladies prepared and that never reached the wounded, and so on.
-Even those, fond of intellectual talk and of expressing their feelings,
-who discussed Russia’s position at the time involuntarily introduced
-into their conversation either a shade of pretense and falsehood or
-useless condemnation and anger directed against people accused of
-actions no one could possibly be guilty of. In historic events the rule
-forbidding us to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is specially
-applicable. Only unconscious action bears fruit, and he who plays a part
-in an historic event never understands its significance. If he tries to
-realize it his efforts are fruitless.
-
-The more closely a man was engaged in the events then taking place in
-Russia the less did he realize their significance. In Petersburg and
-in the provinces at a distance from Moscow, ladies, and gentlemen in
-militia uniforms, wept for Russia and its ancient capital and talked of
-self-sacrifice and so on; but in the army which retired beyond Moscow
-there was little talk or thought of Moscow, and when they caught sight
-of its burned ruins no one swore to be avenged on the French, but they
-thought about their next pay, their next quarters, of Matrëshka the
-vivandière, and like matters.
-
-As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas Rostóv took a close
-and prolonged part in the defense of his country, but did so casually,
-without any aim at self-sacrifice, and he therefore looked at what was
-going on in Russia without despair and without dismally racking his
-brains over it. Had he been asked what he thought of the state of
-Russia, he would have said that it was not his business to think about
-it, that Kutúzov and others were there for that purpose, but that he had
-heard that the regiments were to be made up to their full strength, that
-fighting would probably go on for a long time yet, and that things being
-so it was quite likely he might be in command of a regiment in a couple
-of years’ time.
-
-As he looked at the matter in this way, he learned that he was being
-sent to Vorónezh to buy remounts for his division, not only without
-regret at being prevented from taking part in the coming battle, but
-with the greatest pleasure—which he did not conceal and which his
-comrades fully understood.
-
-A few days before the battle of Borodinó, Nicholas received the
-necessary money and warrants, and having sent some hussars on in
-advance, he set out with post horses for Vorónezh.
-
-Only a man who has experienced it—that is, has passed some months
-continuously in an atmosphere of campaigning and war—can understand the
-delight Nicholas felt when he escaped from the region covered by the
-army’s foraging operations, provision trains, and hospitals. When—free
-from soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of a camp—he saw villages
-with peasants and peasant women, gentlemen’s country houses, fields
-where cattle were grazing, posthouses with stationmasters asleep in
-them, he rejoiced as though seeing all this for the first time. What for
-a long while specially surprised and delighted him were the women, young
-and healthy, without a dozen officers making up to each of them; women,
-too, who were pleased and flattered that a passing officer should joke
-with them.
-
-In the highest spirits Nicholas arrived at night at a hotel in Vorónezh,
-ordered things he had long been deprived of in camp, and next day, very
-clean-shaven and in a full-dress uniform he had not worn for a long
-time, went to present himself to the authorities.
-
-The commander of the militia was a civilian general, an old man who was
-evidently pleased with his military designation and rank. He received
-Nicholas brusquely (imagining this to be characteristically military)
-and questioned him with an important air, as if considering the general
-progress of affairs and approving and disapproving with full right to do
-so. Nicholas was in such good spirits that this merely amused him.
-
-From the commander of the militia he drove to the governor. The governor
-was a brisk little man, very simple and affable. He indicated the stud
-farms at which Nicholas might procure horses, recommended to him a horse
-dealer in the town and a landowner fourteen miles out of town who had
-the best horses, and promised to assist him in every way.
-
-“You are Count Ilyá Rostóv’s son? My wife was a great friend of your
-mother’s. We are at home on Thursdays—today is Thursday, so please come
-and see us quite informally,” said the governor, taking leave of him.
-
-Immediately on leaving the governor’s, Nicholas hired post horses and,
-taking his squadron quartermaster with him, drove at a gallop to the
-landowner, fourteen miles away, who had the stud. Everything seemed to
-him pleasant and easy during that first part of his stay in Vorónezh
-and, as usually happens when a man is in a pleasant state of mind,
-everything went well and easily.
-
-The landowner to whom Nicholas went was a bachelor, an old cavalryman, a
-horse fancier, a sportsman, the possessor of some century-old brandy
-and some old Hungarian wine, who had a snuggery where he smoked, and who
-owned some splendid horses.
-
-In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked stallions for six
-thousand rubles—to serve, as he said, as samples of his remounts. After
-dining and taking rather too much of the Hungarian wine, Nicholas—having
-exchanged kisses with the landowner, with whom he was already on the
-friendliest terms—galloped back over abominable roads, in the brightest
-frame of mind, continually urging on the driver so as to be in time for
-the governor’s party.
-
-When he had changed, poured water over his head, and scented himself,
-Nicholas arrived at the governor’s rather late, but with the phrase
-“better late than never” on his lips.
-
-It was not a ball, nor had dancing been announced, but everyone knew
-that Catherine Petróvna would play valses and the écossaise on the
-clavichord and that there would be dancing, and so everyone had come as
-to a ball.
-
-Provincial life in 1812 went on very much as usual, but with this
-difference, that it was livelier in the towns in consequence of the
-arrival of many wealthy families from Moscow, and as in everything that
-went on in Russia at that time a special recklessness was noticeable, an
-“in for a penny, in for a pound—who cares?” spirit, and the inevitable
-small talk, instead of turning on the weather and mutual acquaintances,
-now turned on Moscow, the army, and Napoleon.
-
-The society gathered together at the governor’s was the best in
-Vorónezh.
-
-There were a great many ladies and some of Nicholas’ Moscow
-acquaintances, but there were no men who could at all vie with the
-cavalier of St. George, the hussar remount officer, the good-natured
-and well-bred Count Rostóv. Among the men was an Italian prisoner, an
-officer of the French army; and Nicholas felt that the presence of that
-prisoner enhanced his own importance as a Russian hero. The Italian
-was, as it were, a war trophy. Nicholas felt this, it seemed to him
-that everyone regarded the Italian in the same light, and he treated him
-cordially though with dignity and restraint.
-
-As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing around him
-a fragrance of perfume and wine, and had uttered the words “better late
-than never” and heard them repeated several times by others, people
-clustered around him; all eyes turned on him, and he felt at once
-that he had entered into his proper position in the province—that of
-a universal favorite: a very pleasant position, and intoxicatingly so
-after his long privations. At posting stations, at inns, and in the
-landowner’s snuggery, maidservants had been flattered by his notice, and
-here too at the governor’s party there were (as it seemed to Nicholas)
-an inexhaustible number of pretty young women, married and unmarried,
-impatiently awaiting his notice. The women and girls flirted with him
-and, from the first day, the people concerned themselves to get this
-fine young daredevil of an hussar married and settled down. Among these
-was the governor’s wife herself, who welcomed Rostóv as a near relative
-and called him “Nicholas.”
-
-Catherine Petróvna did actually play valses and the écossaise, and
-dancing began in which Nicholas still further captivated the provincial
-society by his agility. His particularly free manner of dancing even
-surprised them all. Nicholas was himself rather surprised at the way he
-danced that evening. He had never danced like that in Moscow and would
-even have considered such a very free and easy manner improper and in
-bad form, but here he felt it incumbent on him to astonish them all by
-something unusual, something they would have to accept as the regular
-thing in the capital though new to them in the provinces.
-
-All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed, plump and
-pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials.
-With the naïve conviction of young men in a merry mood that other men’s
-wives were created for them, Rostóv did not leave the lady’s side and
-treated her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style, as if,
-without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and the lady
-would get on together. The husband, however, did not seem to share that
-conviction and tried to behave morosely with Rostóv. But the
-latter’s good-natured naïveté was so boundless that sometimes even he
-involuntarily yielded to Nicholas’ good humor. Toward the end of the
-evening, however, as the wife’s face grew more flushed and animated, the
-husband’s became more and more melancholy and solemn, as though there
-were but a given amount of animation between them and as the wife’s
-share increased the husband’s diminished.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair, bending closely
-over the blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments with a
-smile that never left his face. Jauntily shifting the position of his
-legs in their tight riding breeches, diffusing an odor of perfume, and
-admiring his partner, himself, and the fine outlines of his legs in
-their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the blonde lady that he
-wished to run away with a certain lady here in Vorónezh.
-
-“Which lady?”
-
-“A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes” (Nicholas looked at his
-partner) “are blue, her mouth coral and ivory; her figure” (he glanced
-at her shoulders) “like Diana’s....”
-
-The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what she was talking
-about.
-
-“Ah, Nikíta Iványch!” cried Nicholas, rising politely, and as if wishing
-Nikíta Iványch to share his joke, he began to tell him of his intention
-to elope with a blonde lady.
-
-The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The governor’s good-natured
-wife came up with a look of disapproval.
-
-“Anna Ignátyevna wants to see you, Nicholas,” said she, pronouncing the
-name so that Nicholas at once understood that Anna Ignátyevna was a very
-important person. “Come, Nicholas! You know you let me call you so?”
-
-“Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?”
-
-“Anna Ignátyevna Malvíntseva. She has heard from her niece how you
-rescued her.... Can you guess?”
-
-“I rescued such a lot of them!” said Nicholas.
-
-“Her niece, Princess Bolkónskaya. She is here in Vorónezh with her aunt.
-Oho! How you blush. Why, are...?”
-
-“Not a bit! Please don’t, Aunt!”
-
-“Very well, very well!... Oh, what a fellow you are!”
-
-The governor’s wife led him up to a tall and very stout old lady with
-a blue headdress, who had just finished her game of cards with the most
-important personages of the town. This was Malvíntseva, Princess Mary’s
-aunt on her mother’s side, a rich, childless widow who always lived in
-Vorónezh. When Rostóv approached her she was standing settling up for
-the game. She looked at him and, screwing up her eyes sternly, continued
-to upbraid the general who had won from her.
-
-“Very pleased, mon cher,” she then said, holding out her hand to
-Nicholas. “Pray come and see me.”
-
-After a few words about Princess Mary and her late father, whom
-Malvíntseva had evidently not liked, and having asked what Nicholas
-knew of Prince Andrew, who also was evidently no favorite of hers, the
-important old lady dismissed Nicholas after repeating her invitation to
-come to see her.
-
-Nicholas promised to come and blushed again as he bowed. At the mention
-of Princess Mary he experienced a feeling of shyness and even of fear,
-which he himself did not understand.
-
-When he had parted from Malvíntseva Nicholas wished to return to the
-dancing, but the governor’s little wife placed her plump hand on his
-sleeve and, saying that she wanted to have a talk with him, led him to
-her sitting room, from which those who were there immediately withdrew
-so as not to be in her way.
-
-“Do you know, dear boy,” began the governor’s wife with a serious
-expression on her kind little face, “that really would be the match for
-you: would you like me to arrange it?”
-
-“Whom do you mean, Aunt?” asked Nicholas.
-
-“I will make a match for you with the princess. Catherine Petróvna
-speaks of Lily, but I say, no—the princess! Do you want me to do it? I
-am sure your mother will be grateful to me. What a charming girl she is,
-really! And she is not at all so plain, either.”
-
-“Not at all,” replied Nicholas as if offended at the idea. “As befits
-a soldier, Aunt, I don’t force myself on anyone or refuse anything,” he
-said before he had time to consider what he was saying.
-
-“Well then, remember, this is not a joke!”
-
-“Of course not!”
-
-“Yes, yes,” the governor’s wife said as if talking to herself. “But,
-my dear boy, among other things you are too attentive to the other, the
-blonde. One is sorry for the husband, really....”
-
-“Oh no, we are good friends with him,” said Nicholas in the simplicity
-of his heart; it did not enter his head that a pastime so pleasant to
-himself might not be pleasant to someone else.
-
-“But what nonsense I have been saying to the governor’s wife!” thought
-Nicholas suddenly at supper. “She will really begin to arrange a
-match... and Sónya...?” And on taking leave of the governor’s wife,
-when she again smilingly said to him, “Well then, remember!” he drew her
-aside.
-
-“But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt...”
-
-“What is it, my dear? Come, let’s sit down here,” said she.
-
-Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his most intimate
-thoughts (which he would not have told to his mother, his sister, or
-his friend) to this woman who was almost a stranger. When he afterwards
-recalled that impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable frankness which
-had very important results for him, it seemed to him—as it seems to
-everyone in such cases—that it was merely some silly whim that seized
-him: yet that burst of frankness, together with other trifling events,
-had immense consequences for him and for all his family.
-
-“You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry an heiress, but the
-very idea of marrying for money is repugnant to me.”
-
-“Oh yes, I understand,” said the governor’s wife.
-
-“But Princess Bolkónskaya—that’s another matter. I will tell you the
-truth. In the first place I like her very much, I feel drawn to her; and
-then, after I met her under such circumstances—so strangely, the idea
-often occurred to me: ‘This is fate.’ Especially if you remember that
-Mamma had long been thinking of it; but I had never happened to meet her
-before, somehow it had always happened that we did not meet. And as long
-as my sister Natásha was engaged to her brother it was of course out of
-the question for me to think of marrying her. And it must needs happen
-that I should meet her just when Natásha’s engagement had been broken
-off... and then everything... So you see... I never told this to anyone
-and never will, only to you.”
-
-The governor’s wife pressed his elbow gratefully.
-
-“You know Sónya, my cousin? I love her, and promised to marry her, and
-will do so.... So you see there can be no question about—” said Nicholas
-incoherently and blushing.
-
-“My dear boy, what a way to look at it! You know Sónya has nothing and
-you yourself say your Papa’s affairs are in a very bad way. And what
-about your mother? It would kill her, that’s one thing. And what sort of
-life would it be for Sónya—if she’s a girl with a heart? Your mother
-in despair, and you all ruined.... No, my dear, you and Sónya ought to
-understand that.”
-
-Nicholas remained silent. It comforted him to hear these arguments.
-
-“All the same, Aunt, it is impossible,” he rejoined with a sigh, after
-a short pause. “Besides, would the princess have me? And besides, she is
-now in mourning. How can one think of it!”
-
-“But you don’t suppose I’m going to get you married at once? There is
-always a right way of doing things,” replied the governor’s wife.
-
-“What a matchmaker you are, Aunt...” said Nicholas, kissing her plump
-little hand.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostóv, Princess Mary had
-found her nephew there with his tutor, and a letter from Prince Andrew
-giving her instructions how to get to her Aunt Malvíntseva at Vorónezh.
-That feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her during her
-father’s illness, since his death, and especially since her meeting with
-Rostóv was smothered by arrangements for the journey, anxiety about her
-brother, settling in a new house, meeting new people, and attending to
-her nephew’s education. She was sad. Now, after a month passed in quiet
-surroundings, she felt more and more deeply the loss of her father which
-was associated in her mind with the ruin of Russia. She was agitated and
-incessantly tortured by the thought of the dangers to which her brother,
-the only intimate person now remaining to her, was exposed. She was
-worried too about her nephew’s education for which she had always felt
-herself incompetent, but in the depths of her soul she felt at peace—a
-peace arising from consciousness of having stifled those personal dreams
-and hopes that had been on the point of awakening within her and were
-related to her meeting with Rostóv.
-
-The day after her party the governor’s wife came to see Malvíntseva
-and, after discussing her plan with the aunt, remarked that though
-under present circumstances a formal betrothal was, of course, not to be
-thought of, all the same the young people might be brought together and
-could get to know one another. Malvíntseva expressed approval, and the
-governor’s wife began to speak of Rostóv in Mary’s presence, praising
-him and telling how he had blushed when Princess Mary’s name was
-mentioned. But Princess Mary experienced a painful rather than a joyful
-feeling—her mental tranquillity was destroyed, and desires, doubts,
-self-reproach, and hopes reawoke.
-
-During the two days that elapsed before Rostóv called, Princess Mary
-continually thought of how she ought to behave to him. First she decided
-not to come to the drawing room when he called to see her aunt—that it
-would not be proper for her, in her deep mourning, to receive visitors;
-then she thought this would be rude after what he had done for her; then
-it occurred to her that her aunt and the governor’s wife had intentions
-concerning herself and Rostóv—their looks and words at times seemed to
-confirm this supposition—then she told herself that only she, with her
-sinful nature, could think this of them: they could not forget that
-situated as she was, while still wearing deep mourning, such matchmaking
-would be an insult to her and to her father’s memory. Assuming that she
-did go down to see him, Princess Mary imagined the words he would say
-to her and what she would say to him, and these words sometimes seemed
-undeservedly cold and then to mean too much. More than anything she
-feared lest the confusion she felt might overwhelm her and betray her as
-soon as she saw him.
-
-But when on Sunday after church the footman announced in the drawing
-room that Count Rostóv had called, the princess showed no confusion,
-only a slight blush suffused her cheeks and her eyes lit up with a new
-and radiant light.
-
-“You have met him, Aunt?” said she in a calm voice, unable herself to
-understand that she could be outwardly so calm and natural.
-
-When Rostóv entered the room, the princess dropped her eyes for an
-instant, as if to give the visitor time to greet her aunt, and then
-just as Nicholas turned to her she raised her head and met his look with
-shining eyes. With a movement full of dignity and grace she half rose
-with a smile of pleasure, held out her slender, delicate hand to him,
-and began to speak in a voice in which for the first time new deep
-womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who was in the drawing
-room, looked at Princess Mary in bewildered surprise. Herself a
-consummate coquette, she could not have maneuvered better on meeting a
-man she wished to attract.
-
-“Either black is particularly becoming to her or she really has greatly
-improved without my having noticed it. And above all, what tact and
-grace!” thought Mademoiselle Bourienne.
-
-Had Princess Mary been capable of reflection at that moment, she would
-have been more surprised than Mademoiselle Bourienne at the change that
-had taken place in herself. From the moment she recognized that dear,
-loved face, a new life force took possession of her and compelled her to
-speak and act apart from her own will. From the time Rostóv entered, her
-face became suddenly transformed. It was as if a light had been kindled
-in a carved and painted lantern and the intricate, skillful, artistic
-work on its sides, that previously seemed dark, coarse, and meaningless,
-was suddenly shown up in unexpected and striking beauty. For the first
-time all that pure, spiritual, inward travail through which she had
-lived appeared on the surface. All her inward labor, her dissatisfaction
-with herself, her sufferings, her strivings after goodness, her
-meekness, love, and self-sacrifice—all this now shone in those radiant
-eyes, in her delicate smile, and in every trait of her gentle face.
-
-Rostóv saw all this as clearly as if he had known her whole life. He
-felt that the being before him was quite different from, and better
-than, anyone he had met before, and above all better than himself.
-
-Their conversation was very simple and unimportant. They spoke of the
-war, and like everyone else unconsciously exaggerated their sorrow
-about it; they spoke of their last meeting—Nicholas trying to change the
-subject—they talked of the governor’s kind wife, of Nicholas’ relations,
-and of Princess Mary’s.
-
-She did not talk about her brother, diverting the conversation as soon
-as her aunt mentioned Andrew. Evidently she could speak of Russia’s
-misfortunes with a certain artificiality, but her brother was too near
-her heart and she neither could nor would speak lightly of him. Nicholas
-noticed this, as he noticed every shade of Princess Mary’s character
-with an observation unusual to him, and everything confirmed his
-conviction that she was a quite unusual and extraordinary being.
-Nicholas blushed and was confused when people spoke to him about the
-princess (as she did when he was mentioned) and even when he thought of
-her, but in her presence he felt quite at ease, and said not at all what
-he had prepared, but what, quite appropriately, occurred to him at the
-moment.
-
-When a pause occurred during his short visit, Nicholas, as is usual when
-there are children, turned to Prince Andrew’s little son, caressing him
-and asking whether he would like to be an hussar. He took the boy on
-his knee, played with him, and looked round at Princess Mary. With a
-softened, happy, timid look she watched the boy she loved in the arms
-of the man she loved. Nicholas also noticed that look and, as if
-understanding it, flushed with pleasure and began to kiss the boy with
-good natured playfulness.
-
-As she was in mourning Princess Mary did not go out into society, and
-Nicholas did not think it the proper thing to visit her again; but all
-the same the governor’s wife went on with her matchmaking, passing on to
-Nicholas the flattering things Princess Mary said of him and vice
-versa, and insisting on his declaring himself to Princess Mary. For this
-purpose she arranged a meeting between the young people at the bishop’s
-house before Mass.
-
-Though Rostóv told the governor’s wife that he would not make any
-declaration to Princess Mary, he promised to go.
-
-As at Tilsit Rostóv had not allowed himself to doubt that what everybody
-considered right was right, so now, after a short but sincere struggle
-between his effort to arrange his life by his own sense of justice, and
-in obedient submission to circumstances, he chose the latter and yielded
-to the power he felt irresistibly carrying him he knew not where. He
-knew that after his promise to Sónya it would be what he deemed base to
-declare his feelings to Princess Mary. And he knew that he would never
-act basely. But he also knew (or rather felt at the bottom of his heart)
-that by resigning himself now to the force of circumstances and to those
-who were guiding him, he was not only doing nothing wrong, but was doing
-something very important—more important than anything he had ever done
-in his life.
-
-After meeting Princess Mary, though the course of his life went on
-externally as before, all his former amusements lost their charm for him
-and he often thought about her. But he never thought about her as he
-had thought of all the young ladies without exception whom he had met
-in society, nor as he had for a long time, and at one time rapturously,
-thought about Sónya. He had pictured each of those young ladies as
-almost all honest-hearted young men do, that is, as a possible wife,
-adapting her in his imagination to all the conditions of married life:
-a white dressing gown, his wife at the tea table, his wife’s carriage,
-little ones, Mamma and Papa, their relations to her, and so on—and these
-pictures of the future had given him pleasure. But with Princess Mary,
-to whom they were trying to get him engaged, he could never picture
-anything of future married life. If he tried, his pictures seemed
-incongruous and false. It made him afraid.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-The dreadful news of the battle of Borodinó, of our losses in killed and
-wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow reached
-Vorónezh in the middle of September. Princess Mary, having learned of
-her brother’s wound only from the Gazette and having no definite news of
-him, prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had not seen her again himself) to
-set off in search of Prince Andrew.
-
-When he received the news of the battle of Borodinó and the abandonment
-of Moscow, Rostóv was not seized with despair, anger, the desire for
-vengeance, or any feeling of that kind, but everything in Vorónezh
-suddenly seemed to him dull and tiresome, and he experienced an
-indefinite feeling of shame and awkwardness. The conversations he heard
-seemed to him insincere; he did not know how to judge all these affairs
-and felt that only in the regiment would everything again become clear
-to him. He made haste to finish buying the horses, and often became
-unreasonably angry with his servant and squadron quartermaster.
-
-A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving, at which
-Nicholas was present, was held in the cathedral for the Russian victory.
-He stood a little behind the governor and held himself with military
-decorum through the service, meditating on a great variety of subjects.
-When the service was over the governor’s wife beckoned him to her.
-
-“Have you seen the princess?” she asked, indicating with a movement of
-her head a lady standing on the opposite side, beyond the choir.
-
-Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not so much by the profile
-he saw under her bonnet as by the feeling of solicitude, timidity, and
-pity that immediately overcame him. Princess Mary, evidently engrossed
-by her thoughts, was crossing herself for the last time before leaving
-the church.
-
-Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the same face he had
-seen before, there was the same general expression of refined, inner,
-spiritual labor, but now it was quite differently lit up. There was a
-pathetic expression of sorrow, prayer, and hope in it. As had occurred
-before when she was present, Nicholas went up to her without waiting to
-be prompted by the governor’s wife and not asking himself whether or not
-it was right and proper to address her here in church, and told her he
-had heard of her trouble and sympathized with his whole soul. As soon as
-she heard his voice a vivid glow kindled in her face, lighting up both
-her sorrow and her joy.
-
-“There is one thing I wanted to tell you, Princess,” said Rostóv. “It
-is that if your brother, Prince Andrew Nikoláevich, were not living, it
-would have been at once announced in the Gazette, as he is a colonel.”
-
-The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was saying, but cheered
-by the expression of regretful sympathy on his face.
-
-“And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound” (the Gazette said
-it was a shell) “either proving fatal at once or being very slight,”
-continued Nicholas. “We must hope for the best, and I am sure...”
-
-Princess Mary interrupted him.
-
-“Oh, that would be so dread...” she began and, prevented by agitation
-from finishing, she bent her head with a movement as graceful as
-everything she did in his presence and, looking up at him gratefully,
-went out, following her aunt.
-
-That evening Nicholas did not go out, but stayed at home to settle some
-accounts with the horse dealers. When he had finished that business it
-was already too late to go anywhere but still too early to go to bed,
-and for a long time he paced up and down the room, reflecting on his
-life, a thing he rarely did.
-
-Princess Mary had made an agreeable impression on him when he had met
-her in Smolénsk province. His having encountered her in such exceptional
-circumstances, and his mother having at one time mentioned her to him as
-a good match, had drawn his particular attention to her. When he met her
-again in Vorónezh the impression she made on him was not merely pleasing
-but powerful. Nicholas had been struck by the peculiar moral beauty he
-observed in her at this time. He was, however, preparing to go away and
-it had not entered his head to regret that he was thus depriving himself
-of chances of meeting her. But that day’s encounter in church had, he
-felt, sunk deeper than was desirable for his peace of mind. That pale,
-sad, refined face, that radiant look, those gentle graceful gestures,
-and especially the deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her features
-agitated him and evoked his sympathy. In men Rostóv could not bear to
-see the expression of a higher spiritual life (that was why he did not
-like Prince Andrew) and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy
-and dreaminess, but in Princess Mary that very sorrow which revealed
-the depth of a whole spiritual world foreign to him was an irresistible
-attraction.
-
-“She must be a wonderful woman. A real angel!” he said to himself.
-“Why am I not free? Why was I in such a hurry with Sónya?” And he
-involuntarily compared the two: the lack of spirituality in the one and
-the abundance of it in the other—a spirituality he himself lacked and
-therefore valued most highly. He tried to picture what would happen were
-he free. How he would propose to her and how she would become his wife.
-But no, he could not imagine that. He felt awed, and no clear picture
-presented itself to his mind. He had long ago pictured to himself a
-future with Sónya, and that was all clear and simple just because it
-had all been thought out and he knew all there was in Sónya, but it was
-impossible to picture a future with Princess Mary, because he did not
-understand her but simply loved her.
-
-Reveries about Sónya had had something merry and playful in them, but to
-dream of Princess Mary was always difficult and a little frightening.
-
-“How she prayed!” he thought. “It was plain that her whole soul was in
-her prayer. Yes, that was the prayer that moves mountains, and I am
-sure her prayer will be answered. Why don’t I pray for what I want?” he
-suddenly thought. “What do I want? To be free, released from Sónya...
-She was right,” he thought, remembering what the governor’s wife had
-said: “Nothing but misfortune can come of marrying Sónya. Muddles,
-grief for Mamma... business difficulties... muddles, terrible muddles!
-Besides, I don’t love her—not as I should. O, God! release me from
-this dreadful, inextricable position!” he suddenly began to pray. “Yes,
-prayer can move mountains, but one must have faith and not pray as
-Natásha and I used to as children, that the snow might turn into
-sugar—and then run out into the yard to see whether it had done so. No,
-but I am not praying for trifles now,” he thought as he put his pipe
-down in a corner, and folding his hands placed himself before the icon.
-Softened by memories of Princess Mary he began to pray as he had not
-done for a long time. Tears were in his eyes and in his throat when the
-door opened and Lavrúshka came in with some papers.
-
-“Blockhead! Why do you come in without being called?” cried Nicholas,
-quickly changing his attitude.
-
-“From the governor,” said Lavrúshka in a sleepy voice. “A courier has
-arrived and there’s a letter for you.”
-
-“Well, all right, thanks. You can go!”
-
-Nicholas took the two letters, one of which was from his mother and
-the other from Sónya. He recognized them by the handwriting and opened
-Sónya’s first. He had read only a few lines when he turned pale and his
-eyes opened wide with fear and joy.
-
-“No, it’s not possible!” he cried aloud.
-
-Unable to sit still he paced up and down the room holding the letter and
-reading it. He glanced through it, then read it again, and then again,
-and standing still in the middle of the room he raised his shoulders,
-stretching out his hands, with his mouth wide open and his eyes fixed.
-What he had just been praying for with confidence that God would hear
-him had come to pass; but Nicholas was as much astonished as if it were
-something extraordinary and unexpected, and as if the very fact that it
-had happened so quickly proved that it had not come from God to whom he
-had prayed, but by some ordinary coincidence.
-
-This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite voluntary letter
-from Sónya freed him from the knot that fettered him and from which
-there had seemed no escape. She wrote that the last unfortunate
-events—the loss of almost the whole of the Rostóvs’ Moscow property—and
-the countess’ repeatedly expressed wish that Nicholas should marry
-Princess Bolkónskaya, together with his silence and coldness of late,
-had all combined to make her decide to release him from his promise and
-set him completely free.
-
-It would be too painful to me to think that I might be a cause of sorrow
-or discord in the family that has been so good to me (she wrote), and my
-love has no aim but the happiness of those I love; so, Nicholas, I
-beg you to consider yourself free, and to be assured that, in spite of
-everything, no one can love you more than does
-
-Your Sónya
-
-Both letters were written from Tróitsa. The other, from the countess,
-described their last days in Moscow, their departure, the fire, and
-the destruction of all their property. In this letter the countess also
-mentioned that Prince Andrew was among the wounded traveling with them;
-his state was very critical, but the doctor said there was now more
-hope. Sónya and Natásha were nursing him.
-
-Next day Nicholas took his mother’s letter and went to see Princess
-Mary. Neither he nor she said a word about what “Natásha nursing him”
-might mean, but thanks to this letter Nicholas suddenly became almost as
-intimate with the princess as if they were relations.
-
-The following day he saw Princess Mary off on her journey to Yaroslávl,
-and a few days later left to rejoin his regiment.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-Sónya’s letter written from Tróitsa, which had come as an answer to
-Nicholas’ prayer, was prompted by this: the thought of getting Nicholas
-married to an heiress occupied the old countess’ mind more and more. She
-knew that Sónya was the chief obstacle to this happening, and Sónya’s
-life in the countess’ house had grown harder and harder, especially
-after they had received a letter from Nicholas telling of his meeting
-with Princess Mary in Boguchárovo. The countess let no occasion slip of
-making humiliating or cruel allusions to Sónya.
-
-But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and excited by all that
-was going on, she called Sónya to her and, instead of reproaching and
-making demands on her, tearfully implored her to sacrifice herself
-and repay all that the family had done for her by breaking off her
-engagement with Nicholas.
-
-“I shall not be at peace till you promise me this.”
-
-Sónya burst into hysterical tears and replied through her sobs that
-she would do anything and was prepared for anything, but gave no actual
-promise and could not bring herself to decide to do what was demanded
-of her. She must sacrifice herself for the family that had reared and
-brought her up. To sacrifice herself for others was Sónya’s habit. Her
-position in the house was such that only by sacrifice could she show her
-worth, and she was accustomed to this and loved doing it. But in all her
-former acts of self-sacrifice she had been happily conscious that they
-raised her in her own esteem and in that of others, and so made her more
-worthy of Nicholas whom she loved more than anything in the world. But
-now they wanted her to sacrifice the very thing that constituted the
-whole reward for her self-sacrifice and the whole meaning of her life.
-And for the first time she felt bitterness against those who had been
-her benefactors only to torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous
-of Natásha who had never experienced anything of this sort, had never
-needed to sacrifice herself, but made others sacrifice themselves for
-her and yet was beloved by everybody. And for the first time Sónya felt
-that out of her pure, quiet love for Nicholas a passionate feeling
-was beginning to grow up which was stronger than principle, virtue,
-or religion. Under the influence of this feeling Sónya, whose life of
-dependence had taught her involuntarily to be secretive, having answered
-the countess in vague general terms, avoided talking with her and
-resolved to wait till she should see Nicholas, not in order to set him
-free but on the contrary at that meeting to bind him to her forever.
-
-The bustle and terror of the Rostóvs’ last days in Moscow stifled the
-gloomy thoughts that oppressed Sónya. She was glad to find escape
-from them in practical activity. But when she heard of Prince Andrew’s
-presence in their house, despite her sincere pity for him and for
-Natásha, she was seized by a joyful and superstitious feeling that God
-did not intend her to be separated from Nicholas. She knew that Natásha
-loved no one but Prince Andrew and had never ceased to love him. She
-knew that being thrown together again under such terrible circumstances
-they would again fall in love with one another, and that Nicholas would
-then not be able to marry Princess Mary as they would be within the
-prohibited degrees of affinity. Despite all the terror of what had
-happened during those last days and during the first days of their
-journey, this feeling that Providence was intervening in her personal
-affairs cheered Sónya.
-
-At the Tróitsa monastery the Rostóvs first broke their journey for a
-whole day.
-
-Three large rooms were assigned to them in the monastery hostelry, one
-of which was occupied by Prince Andrew. The wounded man was much better
-that day and Natásha was sitting with him. In the next room sat the
-count and countess respectfully conversing with the prior, who was
-calling on them as old acquaintances and benefactors of the monastery.
-Sónya was there too, tormented by curiosity as to what Prince Andrew and
-Natásha were talking about. She heard the sound of their voices through
-the door. That door opened and Natásha came out, looking excited. Not
-noticing the monk, who had risen to greet her and was drawing back the
-wide sleeve on his right arm, she went up to Sónya and took her hand.
-
-“Natásha, what are you about? Come here!” said the countess.
-
-Natásha went up to the monk for his blessing, and he advised her to pray
-for aid to God and His saint.
-
-As soon as the prior withdrew, Natásha took her friend by the hand and
-went with her into the unoccupied room.
-
-“Sónya, will he live?” she asked. “Sónya, how happy I am, and how
-unhappy!... Sónya, dovey, everything is as it used to be. If only he
-lives! He cannot... because... because... of...” and Natásha burst into
-tears.
-
-“Yes! I knew it! Thank God!” murmured Sónya. “He will live.”
-
-Sónya was not less agitated than her friend by the latter’s fear and
-grief and by her own personal feelings which she shared with no one.
-Sobbing, she kissed and comforted Natásha. “If only he lives!” she
-thought. Having wept, talked, and wiped away their tears, the two
-friends went together to Prince Andrew’s door. Natásha opened it
-cautiously and glanced into the room, Sónya standing beside her at the
-half-open door.
-
-Prince Andrew was lying raised high on three pillows. His pale face was
-calm, his eyes closed, and they could see his regular breathing.
-
-“O, Natásha!” Sónya suddenly almost screamed, catching her companion’s
-arm and stepping back from the door.
-
-“What? What is it?” asked Natásha.
-
-“It’s that, that...” said Sónya, with a white face and trembling lips.
-
-Natásha softly closed the door and went with Sónya to the window, not
-yet understanding what the latter was telling her.
-
-“You remember,” said Sónya with a solemn and frightened expression.
-“You remember when I looked in the mirror for you... at Otrádnoe at
-Christmas? Do you remember what I saw?”
-
-“Yes, yes!” cried Natásha opening her eyes wide, and vaguely recalling
-that Sónya had told her something about Prince Andrew whom she had seen
-lying down.
-
-“You remember?” Sónya went on. “I saw it then and told everybody, you
-and Dunyásha. I saw him lying on a bed,” said she, making a gesture with
-her hand and a lifted finger at each detail, “and that he had his eyes
-closed and was covered just with a pink quilt, and that his hands were
-folded,” she concluded, convincing herself that the details she had just
-seen were exactly what she had seen in the mirror.
-
-She had in fact seen nothing then but had mentioned the first thing that
-came into her head, but what she had invented then seemed to her now
-as real as any other recollection. She not only remembered what she had
-then said—that he turned to look at her and smiled and was covered with
-something red—but was firmly convinced that she had then seen and said
-that he was covered with a pink quilt and that his eyes were closed.
-
-“Yes, yes, it really was pink!” cried Natásha, who now thought she
-too remembered the word pink being used, and saw in this the most
-extraordinary and mysterious part of the prediction.
-
-“But what does it mean?” she added meditatively.
-
-“Oh, I don’t know, it is all so strange,” replied Sónya, clutching at
-her head.
-
-A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natásha went to him, but
-Sónya, feeling unusually excited and touched, remained at the window
-thinking about the strangeness of what had occurred.
-
-
-They had an opportunity that day to send letters to the army, and the
-countess was writing to her son.
-
-“Sónya!” said the countess, raising her eyes from her letter as her
-niece passed, “Sónya, won’t you write to Nicholas?” She spoke in a soft,
-tremulous voice, and in the weary eyes that looked over her spectacles
-Sónya read all that the countess meant to convey with these words. Those
-eyes expressed entreaty, shame at having to ask, fear of a refusal, and
-readiness for relentless hatred in case of such refusal.
-
-Sónya went up to the countess and, kneeling down, kissed her hand.
-
-“Yes, Mamma, I will write,” said she.
-
-Sónya was softened, excited, and touched by all that had occurred that
-day, especially by the mysterious fulfillment she had just seen of her
-vision. Now that she knew that the renewal of Natásha’s relations with
-Prince Andrew would prevent Nicholas from marrying Princess Mary, she
-was joyfully conscious of a return of that self-sacrificing spirit in
-which she was accustomed to live and loved to live. So with a joyful
-consciousness of performing a magnanimous deed—interrupted several times
-by the tears that dimmed her velvety black eyes—she wrote that touching
-letter the arrival of which had so amazed Nicholas.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre treated him with
-hostility but yet with respect, in the guardhouse to which he was taken.
-In their attitude toward him could still be felt both uncertainty as
-to who he might be—perhaps a very important person—and hostility as a
-result of their recent personal conflict with him.
-
-But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre felt that for the
-new guard—both officers and men—he was not as interesting as he had
-been to his captors; and in fact the guard of the second day did not
-recognize in this big, stout man in a peasant coat the vigorous person
-who had fought so desperately with the marauder and the convoy and had
-uttered those solemn words about saving a child; they saw in him only
-No. 17 of the captured Russians, arrested and detained for some reason
-by order of the Higher Command. If they noticed anything remarkable
-about Pierre, it was only his unabashed, meditative concentration
-and thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke French, which struck them as
-surprisingly good. In spite of this he was placed that day with the
-other arrested suspects, as the separate room he had occupied was
-required by an officer.
-
-All the Russians confined with Pierre were men of the lowest class and,
-recognizing him as a gentleman, they all avoided him, more especially as
-he spoke French. Pierre felt sad at hearing them making fun of him.
-
-That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he, probably, among
-them) were to be tried for incendiarism. On the third day he was taken
-with the others to a house where a French general with a white mustache
-sat with two colonels and other Frenchmen with scarves on their arms.
-With the precision and definiteness customary in addressing prisoners,
-and which is supposed to preclude human frailty, Pierre like the others
-was questioned as to who he was, where he had been, with what object,
-and so on.
-
-These questions, like questions put at trials generally, left the
-essence of the matter aside, shut out the possibility of that essence’s
-being revealed, and were designed only to form a channel through which
-the judges wished the answers of the accused to flow so as to lead to
-the desired result, namely a conviction. As soon as Pierre began to say
-anything that did not fit in with that aim, the channel was removed and
-the water could flow to waste. Pierre felt, moreover, what the accused
-always feel at their trial, perplexity as to why these questions were
-put to him. He had a feeling that it was only out of condescension or a
-kind of civility that this device of placing a channel was employed. He
-knew he was in these men’s power, that only by force had they brought
-him there, that force alone gave them the right to demand answers
-to their questions, and that the sole object of that assembly was to
-inculpate him. And so, as they had the power and wish to inculpate
-him, this expedient of an inquiry and trial seemed unnecessary. It was
-evident that any answer would lead to conviction. When asked what he
-was doing when he was arrested, Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner
-that he was restoring to its parents a child he had saved from the
-flames. Why had he fought the marauder? Pierre answered that he “was
-protecting a woman,” and that “to protect a woman who was being insulted
-was the duty of every man; that...” They interrupted him, for this
-was not to the point. Why was he in the yard of a burning house where
-witnesses had seen him? He replied that he had gone out to see what
-was happening in Moscow. Again they interrupted him: they had not asked
-where he was going, but why he was found near the fire? Who was he? they
-asked, repeating their first question, which he had declined to answer.
-Again he replied that he could not answer it.
-
-“Put that down, that’s bad... very bad,” sternly remarked the general
-with the white mustache and red flushed face.
-
-
-On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zúbovski rampart.
-
-Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach house of a merchant’s
-house near the Crimean bridge. On his way through the streets Pierre
-felt stifled by the smoke which seemed to hang over the whole
-city. Fires were visible on all sides. He did not then realize the
-significance of the burning of Moscow, and looked at the fires with
-horror.
-
-He passed four days in the coach house near the Crimean bridge and
-during that time learned, from the talk of the French soldiers, that all
-those confined there were awaiting a decision which might come any day
-from the marshal. What marshal this was, Pierre could not learn from the
-soldiers. Evidently for them “the marshal” represented a very high and
-rather mysterious power.
-
-These first days, before the eighth of September when the prisoners were
-had up for a second examination, were the hardest of all for Pierre.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-On the eighth of September an officer—a very important one judging by
-the respect the guards showed him—entered the coach house where the
-prisoners were. This officer, probably someone on the staff, was holding
-a paper in his hand, and called over all the Russians there, naming
-Pierre as “the man who does not give his name.” Glancing indolently and
-indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered the officer in charge
-to have them decently dressed and tidied up before taking them to the
-marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers arrived and Pierre with
-thirteen others was led to the Virgin’s Field. It was a fine day, sunny
-after rain, and the air was unusually pure. The smoke did not hang low
-as on the day when Pierre had been taken from the guardhouse on the
-Zúbovski rampart, but rose through the pure air in columns. No flames
-were seen, but columns of smoke rose on all sides, and all Moscow as far
-as Pierre could see was one vast charred ruin. On all sides there were
-waste spaces with only stoves and chimney stacks still standing, and
-here and there the blackened walls of some brick houses. Pierre gazed
-at the ruins and did not recognize districts he had known well. Here and
-there he could see churches that had not been burned. The Krémlin, which
-was not destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and
-the belfry of Iván the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin
-glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly.
-These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the
-Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate this
-holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to be
-seen were tattered and frightened people who tried to hide when they saw
-the French.
-
-It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed, but in
-place of the Russian order of life that had been destroyed, Pierre
-unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French order had been
-established over this ruined nest. He felt this in the looks of
-the soldiers who, marching in regular ranks briskly and gaily, were
-escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the looks of an
-important French official in a carriage and pair driven by a soldier,
-whom they met on the way. He felt it in the merry sounds of regimental
-music he heard from the left side of the field, and felt and realized
-it especially from the list of prisoners the French officer had read out
-when he came that morning. Pierre had been taken by one set of soldiers
-and led first to one and then to another place with dozens of other men,
-and it seemed that they might have forgotten him, or confused him with
-the others. But no: the answers he had given when questioned had come
-back to him in his designation as “the man who does not give his name,”
-and under that appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were
-now leading him somewhere with unhesitating assurance on their faces
-that he and all the other prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted
-and that they were being taken to the proper place. Pierre felt himself
-to be an insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose
-action he did not understand but which was working well.
-
-He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of the Virgin’s
-Field, to a large white house with an immense garden not far from the
-convent. This was Prince Shcherbátov’s house, where Pierre had often
-been in other days, and which, as he learned from the talk of the
-soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal, the Duke of Eckmühl (Davout).
-
-They were taken to the entrance and led into the house one by one.
-Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted through a glass gallery,
-an anteroom, and a hall, which were familiar to him, into a long low
-study at the door of which stood an adjutant.
-
-Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the further end of
-the room. Pierre went close up to him, but Davout, evidently consulting
-a paper that lay before him, did not look up. Without raising his eyes,
-he said in a low voice:
-
-“Who are you?”
-
-Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a word. To him
-Davout was not merely a French general, but a man notorious for his
-cruelty. Looking at his cold face, as he sat like a stern schoolmaster
-who was prepared to wait awhile for an answer, Pierre felt that every
-instant of delay might cost him his life; but he did not know what
-to say. He did not venture to repeat what he had said at his first
-examination, yet to disclose his rank and position was dangerous and
-embarrassing. So he was silent. But before he had decided what to do,
-Davout raised his head, pushed his spectacles back on his forehead,
-screwed up his eyes, and looked intently at him.
-
-“I know that man,” he said in a cold, measured tone, evidently
-calculated to frighten Pierre.
-
-The chill that had been running down Pierre’s back now seized his head
-as in a vise.
-
-“You cannot know me, General, I have never seen you...”
-
-“He is a Russian spy,” Davout interrupted, addressing another general
-who was present, but whom Pierre had not noticed.
-
-Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation in his voice Pierre
-rapidly began:
-
-“No, monseigneur,” he said, suddenly remembering that Davout was a duke.
-“No, monseigneur, you cannot have known me. I am a militia officer and
-have not quitted Moscow.”
-
-“Your name?” asked Davout.
-
-“Bezúkhov.”
-
-“What proof have I that you are not lying?”
-
-“Monseigneur!” exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended but in a pleading
-voice.
-
-Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they looked
-at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from conditions of war
-and law, that look established human relations between the two men. At
-that moment an immense number of things passed dimly through both their
-minds, and they realized that they were both children of humanity and
-were brothers.
-
-At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his head from the
-papers where human affairs and lives were indicated by numbers, Pierre
-was merely a circumstance, and Davout could have shot him without
-burdening his conscience with an evil deed, but now he saw in him a
-human being. He reflected for a moment.
-
-“How can you show me that you are telling the truth?” said Davout
-coldly.
-
-Pierre remembered Ramballe, and named him and his regiment and the
-street where the house was.
-
-“You are not what you say,” returned Davout.
-
-In a trembling, faltering voice Pierre began adducing proofs of the
-truth of his statements.
-
-But at that moment an adjutant entered and reported something to Davout.
-
-Davout brightened up at the news the adjutant brought, and began
-buttoning up his uniform. It seemed that he had quite forgotten Pierre.
-
-When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he jerked his head in
-Pierre’s direction with a frown and ordered him to be led away. But
-where they were to take him Pierre did not know: back to the coach house
-or to the place of execution his companions had pointed out to him as
-they crossed the Virgin’s Field.
-
-He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was putting another
-question to Davout.
-
-“Yes, of course!” replied Davout, but what this “yes” meant, Pierre did
-not know.
-
-Pierre could not afterwards remember how he went, whether it was far, or
-in which direction. His faculties were quite numbed, he was stupefied,
-and noticing nothing around him went on moving his legs as the others
-did till they all stopped and he stopped too. The only thought in his
-mind at that time was: who was it that had really sentenced him to
-death? Not the men on the commission that had first examined him—not one
-of them wished to or, evidently, could have done it. It was not Davout,
-who had looked at him in so human a way. In another moment Davout would
-have realized that he was doing wrong, but just then the adjutant had
-come in and interrupted him. The adjutant, also, had evidently had no
-evil intent though he might have refrained from coming in. Then who was
-executing him, killing him, depriving him of life—him, Pierre, with all
-his memories, aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this? And
-Pierre felt that it was no one.
-
-It was a system—a concurrence of circumstances.
-
-A system of some sort was killing him—Pierre—depriving him of life, of
-everything, annihilating him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-From Prince Shcherbátov’s house the prisoners were led straight down the
-Virgin’s Field, to the left of the nunnery, as far as a kitchen garden
-in which a post had been set up. Beyond that post a fresh pit had been
-dug in the ground, and near the post and the pit a large crowd stood
-in a semicircle. The crowd consisted of a few Russians and many
-of Napoleon’s soldiers who were not on duty—Germans, Italians, and
-Frenchmen, in a variety of uniforms. To the right and left of the post
-stood rows of French troops in blue uniforms with red epaulets and high
-boots and shakos.
-
-The prisoners were placed in a certain order, according to the list
-(Pierre was sixth), and were led to the post. Several drums suddenly
-began to beat on both sides of them, and at that sound Pierre felt as
-if part of his soul had been torn away. He lost the power of thinking or
-understanding. He could only hear and see. And he had only one wish—that
-the frightful thing that had to happen should happen quickly. Pierre
-looked round at his fellow prisoners and scrutinized them.
-
-The two first were convicts with shaven heads. One was tall and thin,
-the other dark, shaggy, and sinewy, with a flat nose. The third was
-a domestic serf, about forty-five years old, with grizzled hair and a
-plump, well-nourished body. The fourth was a peasant, a very handsome
-man with a broad, light-brown beard and black eyes. The fifth was a
-factory hand, a thin, sallow-faced lad of eighteen in a loose coat.
-
-Pierre heard the French consulting whether to shoot them separately or
-two at a time. “In couples,” replied the officer in command in a calm
-voice. There was a stir in the ranks of the soldiers and it was evident
-that they were all hurrying—not as men hurry to do something they
-understand, but as people hurry to finish a necessary but unpleasant and
-incomprehensible task.
-
-A French official wearing a scarf came up to the right of the row of
-prisoners and read out the sentence in Russian and in French.
-
-Then two pairs of Frenchmen approached the criminals and at the
-officer’s command took the two convicts who stood first in the row. The
-convicts stopped when they reached the post and, while sacks were being
-brought, looked dumbly around as a wounded beast looks at an approaching
-huntsman. One crossed himself continually, the other scratched his back
-and made a movement of the lips resembling a smile. With hurried hands
-the soldiers blindfolded them, drawing the sacks over their heads, and
-bound them to the post.
-
-Twelve sharpshooters with muskets stepped out of the ranks with a firm
-regular tread and halted eight paces from the post. Pierre turned away
-to avoid seeing what was going to happen. Suddenly a crackling, rolling
-noise was heard which seemed to him louder than the most terrific
-thunder, and he looked round. There was some smoke, and the Frenchmen
-were doing something near the pit, with pale faces and trembling hands.
-Two more prisoners were led up. In the same way and with similar looks,
-these two glanced vainly at the onlookers with only a silent appeal for
-protection in their eyes, evidently unable to understand or believe
-what was going to happen to them. They could not believe it because they
-alone knew what their life meant to them, and so they neither understood
-nor believed that it could be taken from them.
-
-Again Pierre did not wish to look and again turned away; but again the
-sound as of a frightful explosion struck his ear, and at the same moment
-he saw smoke, blood, and the pale, scared faces of the Frenchmen who
-were again doing something by the post, their trembling hands impeding
-one another. Pierre, breathing heavily, looked around as if asking what
-it meant. The same question was expressed in all the looks that met his.
-
-On the faces of all the Russians and of the French soldiers and officers
-without exception, he read the same dismay, horror, and conflict that
-were in his own heart. “But who, after all, is doing this? They are all
-suffering as I am. Who then is it? Who?” flashed for an instant through
-his mind.
-
-“Sharpshooters of the 86th, forward!” shouted someone. The fifth
-prisoner, the one next to Pierre, was led away—alone. Pierre did not
-understand that he was saved, that he and the rest had been brought
-there only to witness the execution. With ever-growing horror, and no
-sense of joy or relief, he gazed at what was taking place. The fifth man
-was the factory lad in the loose cloak. The moment they laid hands on
-him he sprang aside in terror and clutched at Pierre. (Pierre shuddered
-and shook himself free.) The lad was unable to walk. They dragged him
-along, holding him up under the arms, and he screamed. When they got
-him to the post he grew quiet, as if he suddenly understood something.
-Whether he understood that screaming was useless or whether he thought
-it incredible that men should kill him, at any rate he took his stand at
-the post, waiting to be blindfolded like the others, and like a wounded
-animal looked around him with glittering eyes.
-
-Pierre was no longer able to turn away and close his eyes. His curiosity
-and agitation, like that of the whole crowd, reached the highest pitch
-at this fifth murder. Like the others this fifth man seemed calm; he
-wrapped his loose cloak closer and rubbed one bare foot with the other.
-
-When they began to blindfold him he himself adjusted the knot which
-hurt the back of his head; then when they propped him against the
-bloodstained post, he leaned back and, not being comfortable in that
-position, straightened himself, adjusted his feet, and leaned back again
-more comfortably. Pierre did not take his eyes from him and did not miss
-his slightest movement.
-
-Probably a word of command was given and was followed by the reports of
-eight muskets; but try as he would Pierre could not afterwards remember
-having heard the slightest sound of the shots. He only saw how the
-workman suddenly sank down on the cords that held him, how blood showed
-itself in two places, how the ropes slackened under the weight of the
-hanging body, and how the workman sat down, his head hanging unnaturally
-and one leg bent under him. Pierre ran up to the post. No one hindered
-him. Pale, frightened people were doing something around the workman.
-The lower jaw of an old Frenchman with a thick mustache trembled as he
-untied the ropes. The body collapsed. The soldiers dragged it awkwardly
-from the post and began pushing it into the pit.
-
-They all plainly and certainly knew that they were criminals who must
-hide the traces of their guilt as quickly as possible.
-
-Pierre glanced into the pit and saw that the factory lad was lying with
-his knees close up to his head and one shoulder higher than the other.
-That shoulder rose and fell rhythmically and convulsively, but spadefuls
-of earth were already being thrown over the whole body. One of the
-soldiers, evidently suffering, shouted gruffly and angrily at Pierre to
-go back. But Pierre did not understand him and remained near the post,
-and no one drove him away.
-
-When the pit had been filled up a command was given. Pierre was taken
-back to his place, and the rows of troops on both sides of the post
-made a half turn and went past it at a measured pace. The twenty-four
-sharpshooters with discharged muskets, standing in the center of the
-circle, ran back to their places as the companies passed by.
-
-Pierre gazed now with dazed eyes at these sharpshooters who ran in
-couples out of the circle. All but one rejoined their companies. This
-one, a young soldier, his face deadly pale, his shako pushed back, and
-his musket resting on the ground, still stood near the pit at the spot
-from which he had fired. He swayed like a drunken man, taking some steps
-forward and back to save himself from falling. An old, noncommissioned
-officer ran out of the ranks and taking him by the elbow dragged him to
-his company. The crowd of Russians and Frenchmen began to disperse. They
-all went away silently and with drooping heads.
-
-“That will teach them to start fires,” said one of the Frenchmen.
-
-Pierre glanced round at the speaker and saw that it was a soldier who
-was trying to find some relief after what had been done, but was not
-able to do so. Without finishing what he had begun to say he made a
-hopeless movement with his arm and went away.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-After the execution Pierre was separated from the rest of the prisoners
-and placed alone in a small, ruined, and befouled church.
-
-Toward evening a noncommissioned officer entered with two soldiers and
-told him that he had been pardoned and would now go to the barracks for
-the prisoners of war. Without understanding what was said to him, Pierre
-got up and went with the soldiers. They took him to the upper end of the
-field, where there were some sheds built of charred planks, beams,
-and battens, and led him into one of them. In the darkness some twenty
-different men surrounded Pierre. He looked at them without understanding
-who they were, why they were there, or what they wanted of him. He heard
-what they said, but did not understand the meaning of the words and
-made no kind of deduction from or application of them. He replied to
-questions they put to him, but did not consider who was listening to his
-replies, nor how they would understand them. He looked at their faces
-and figures, but they all seemed to him equally meaningless.
-
-From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible murders committed by
-men who did not wish to commit them, it was as if the mainspring of
-his life, on which everything depended and which made everything appear
-alive, had suddenly been wrenched out and everything had collapsed
-into a heap of meaningless rubbish. Though he did not acknowledge it to
-himself, his faith in the right ordering of the universe, in humanity,
-in his own soul, and in God, had been destroyed. He had experienced this
-before, but never so strongly as now. When similar doubts had assailed
-him before, they had been the result of his own wrongdoing, and at the
-bottom of his heart he had felt that relief from his despair and from
-those doubts was to be found within himself. But now he felt that
-the universe had crumbled before his eyes and only meaningless ruins
-remained, and this not by any fault of his own. He felt that it was not
-in his power to regain faith in the meaning of life.
-
-Around him in the darkness men were standing and evidently something
-about him interested them greatly. They were telling him something and
-asking him something. Then they led him away somewhere, and at last he
-found himself in a corner of the shed among men who were laughing and
-talking on all sides.
-
-“Well, then, mates... that very prince who...” some voice at the other
-end of the shed was saying, with a strong emphasis on the word who.
-
-Sitting silent and motionless on a heap of straw against the wall,
-Pierre sometimes opened and sometimes closed his eyes. But as soon as
-he closed them he saw before him the dreadful face of the factory
-lad—especially dreadful because of its simplicity—and the faces of the
-murderers, even more dreadful because of their disquiet. And he opened
-his eyes again and stared vacantly into the darkness around him.
-
-Beside him in a stooping position sat a small man of whose presence he
-was first made aware by a strong smell of perspiration which came from
-him every time he moved. This man was doing something to his legs in the
-darkness, and though Pierre could not see his face he felt that the man
-continually glanced at him. On growing used to the darkness Pierre saw
-that the man was taking off his leg bands, and the way he did it aroused
-Pierre’s interest.
-
-Having unwound the string that tied the band on one leg, he carefully
-coiled it up and immediately set to work on the other leg, glancing up
-at Pierre. While one hand hung up the first string the other was already
-unwinding the band on the second leg. In this way, having carefully
-removed the leg bands by deft circular motions of his arm following
-one another uninterruptedly, the man hung the leg bands up on some pegs
-fixed above his head. Then he took out a knife, cut something, closed
-the knife, placed it under the head of his bed, and, seating himself
-comfortably, clasped his arms round his lifted knees and fixed his eyes
-on Pierre. The latter was conscious of something pleasant, comforting,
-and well-rounded in these deft movements, in the man’s well-ordered
-arrangements in his corner, and even in his very smell, and he looked at
-the man without taking his eyes from him.
-
-“You’ve seen a lot of trouble, sir, eh?” the little man suddenly said.
-
-And there was so much kindliness and simplicity in his singsong voice
-that Pierre tried to reply, but his jaw trembled and he felt tears
-rising to his eyes. The little fellow, giving Pierre no time to betray
-his confusion, instantly continued in the same pleasant tones:
-
-“Eh, lad, don’t fret!” said he, in the tender singsong caressing voice
-old Russian peasant women employ. “Don’t fret, friend—‘suffer an hour,
-live for an age!’ that’s how it is, my dear fellow. And here we live,
-thank heaven, without offense. Among these folk, too, there are good
-men as well as bad,” said he, and still speaking, he turned on his knees
-with a supple movement, got up, coughed, and went off to another part of
-the shed.
-
-“Eh, you rascal!” Pierre heard the same kind voice saying at the other
-end of the shed. “So you’ve come, you rascal? She remembers... Now, now,
-that’ll do!”
-
-And the soldier, pushing away a little dog that was jumping up at
-him, returned to his place and sat down. In his hands he had something
-wrapped in a rag.
-
-“Here, eat a bit, sir,” said he, resuming his former respectful tone as
-he unwrapped and offered Pierre some baked potatoes. “We had soup for
-dinner and the potatoes are grand!”
-
-Pierre had not eaten all day and the smell of the potatoes seemed
-extremely pleasant to him. He thanked the soldier and began to eat.
-
-“Well, are they all right?” said the soldier with a smile. “You should
-do like this.”
-
-He took a potato, drew out his clasp knife, cut the potato into two
-equal halves on the palm of his hand, sprinkled some salt on it from the
-rag, and handed it to Pierre.
-
-“The potatoes are grand!” he said once more. “Eat some like that!”
-
-Pierre thought he had never eaten anything that tasted better.
-
-“Oh, I’m all right,” said he, “but why did they shoot those poor
-fellows? The last one was hardly twenty.”
-
-“Tss, tt...!” said the little man. “Ah, what a sin... what a sin!” he
-added quickly, and as if his words were always waiting ready in his
-mouth and flew out involuntarily he went on: “How was it, sir, that you
-stayed in Moscow?”
-
-“I didn’t think they would come so soon. I stayed accidentally,” replied
-Pierre.
-
-“And how did they arrest you, dear lad? At your house?”
-
-“No, I went to look at the fire, and they arrested me there, and tried
-me as an incendiary.”
-
-“Where there’s law there’s injustice,” put in the little man.
-
-“And have you been here long?” Pierre asked as he munched the last of
-the potato.
-
-“I? It was last Sunday they took me, out of a hospital in Moscow.”
-
-“Why, are you a soldier then?”
-
-“Yes, we are soldiers of the Ápsheron regiment. I was dying of fever. We
-weren’t told anything. There were some twenty of us lying there. We had
-no idea, never guessed at all.”
-
-“And do you feel sad here?” Pierre inquired.
-
-“How can one help it, lad? My name is Platón, and the surname is
-Karatáev,” he added, evidently wishing to make it easier for Pierre to
-address him. “They call me ‘little falcon’ in the regiment. How is one
-to help feeling sad? Moscow—she’s the mother of cities. How can one see
-all this and not feel sad? But ‘the maggot gnaws the cabbage, yet dies
-first’; that’s what the old folks used to tell us,” he added rapidly.
-
-“What? What did you say?” asked Pierre.
-
-“Who? I?” said Karatáev. “I say things happen not as we plan but as God
-judges,” he replied, thinking that he was repeating what he had said
-before, and immediately continued:
-
-“Well, and you, have you a family estate, sir? And a house? So you have
-abundance, then? And a housewife? And your old parents, are they still
-living?” he asked.
-
-And though it was too dark for Pierre to see, he felt that a suppressed
-smile of kindliness puckered the soldier’s lips as he put these
-questions. He seemed grieved that Pierre had no parents, especially that
-he had no mother.
-
-“A wife for counsel, a mother-in-law for welcome, but there’s none as
-dear as one’s own mother!” said he. “Well, and have you little ones?” he
-went on asking.
-
-Again Pierre’s negative answer seemed to distress him, and he hastened
-to add:
-
-“Never mind! You’re young folks yet, and please God may still have some.
-The great thing is to live in harmony....”
-
-“But it’s all the same now,” Pierre could not help saying.
-
-“Ah, my dear fellow!” rejoined Karatáev, “never decline a prison or a
-beggar’s sack!”
-
-He seated himself more comfortably and coughed, evidently preparing to
-tell a long story.
-
-“Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home,” he began. “We had
-a well-to-do homestead, plenty of land, we peasants lived well and our
-house was one to thank God for. When Father and we went out mowing
-there were seven of us. We lived well. We were real peasants. It so
-happened...”
-
-And Platón Karatáev told a long story of how he had gone into someone’s
-copse to take wood, how he had been caught by the keeper, had been
-tried, flogged, and sent to serve as a soldier.
-
-“Well, lad,” and a smile changed the tone of his voice “we thought it
-was a misfortune but it turned out a blessing! If it had not been for
-my sin, my brother would have had to go as a soldier. But he, my younger
-brother, had five little ones, while I, you see, only left a wife
-behind. We had a little girl, but God took her before I went as a
-soldier. I come home on leave and I’ll tell you how it was, I look and
-see that they are living better than before. The yard full of cattle,
-the women at home, two brothers away earning wages, and only Michael the
-youngest, at home. Father, he says, ‘All my children are the same to
-me: it hurts the same whichever finger gets bitten. But if Platón hadn’t
-been shaved for a soldier, Michael would have had to go.’ called us
-all to him and, will you believe it, placed us in front of the icons.
-‘Michael,’ he says, ‘come here and bow down to his feet; and you, young
-woman, you bow down too; and you, grandchildren, also bow down before
-him! Do you understand?’ he says. That’s how it is, dear fellow. Fate
-looks for a head. But we are always judging, ‘that’s not well—that’s
-not right!’ Our luck is like water in a dragnet: you pull at it and it
-bulges, but when you’ve drawn it out it’s empty! That’s how it is.”
-
-And Platón shifted his seat on the straw.
-
-After a short silence he rose.
-
-“Well, I think you must be sleepy,” said he, and began rapidly crossing
-himself and repeating:
-
-“Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus
-Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus Christ, have
-mercy on us and save us!” he concluded, then bowed to the ground, got
-up, sighed, and sat down again on his heap of straw. “That’s the way.
-Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf,” he
-muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him.
-
-“What prayer was that you were saying?” asked Pierre.
-
-“Eh?” murmured Platón, who had almost fallen asleep. “What was I saying?
-I was praying. Don’t you pray?”
-
-“Yes, I do,” said Pierre. “But what was that you said: Frola and Lavra?”
-
-“Well, of course,” replied Platón quickly, “the horses’ saints. One must
-pity the animals too. Eh, the rascal! Now you’ve curled up and got warm,
-you daughter of a bitch!” said Karatáev, touching the dog that lay at
-his feet, and again turning over he fell asleep immediately.
-
-Sounds of crying and screaming came from somewhere in the distance
-outside, and flames were visible through the cracks of the shed, but
-inside it was quiet and dark. For a long time Pierre did not sleep, but
-lay with eyes open in the darkness, listening to the regular snoring
-of Platón who lay beside him, and he felt that the world that had been
-shattered was once more stirring in his soul with a new beauty and on
-new and unshakable foundations.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials were confined
-in the shed in which Pierre had been placed and where he remained for
-four weeks.
-
-When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all seemed misty figures to
-him except Platón Karatáev, who always remained in his mind a most
-vivid and precious memory and the personification of everything Russian,
-kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next morning at dawn
-the first impression of him, as of something round, was fully confirmed:
-Platón’s whole figure—in a French overcoat girdled with a cord, a
-soldier’s cap, and bast shoes—was round. His head was quite round, his
-back, chest, shoulders, and even his arms, which he held as if ever
-ready to embrace something, were rounded, his pleasant smile and his
-large, gentle brown eyes were also round.
-
-Platón Karatáev must have been fifty, judging by his stories of
-campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier. He did not himself
-know his age and was quite unable to determine it. But his brilliantly
-white, strong teeth which showed in two unbroken semicircles when he
-laughed—as he often did—were all sound and good, there was not a gray
-hair in his beard or on his head, and his whole body gave an impression
-of suppleness and especially of firmness and endurance.
-
-His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression of
-innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant and musical. But the chief
-peculiarity of his speech was its directness and appositeness. It was
-evident that he never considered what he had said or was going to say,
-and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation had an
-irresistible persuasiveness.
-
-His physical strength and agility during the first days of his
-imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know what fatigue and
-sickness meant. Every night before lying down, he said: “Lord, lay me
-down as a stone and raise me up as a loaf!” and every morning on getting
-up, he said: “I lay down and curled up, I get up and shake myself.” And
-indeed he only had to lie down, to fall asleep like a stone, and he
-only had to shake himself, to be ready without a moment’s delay for some
-work, just as children are ready to play directly they awake. He could
-do everything, not very well but not badly. He baked, cooked, sewed,
-planed, and mended boots. He was always busy, and only at night allowed
-himself conversation—of which he was fond—and songs. He did not sing
-like a trained singer who knows he is listened to, but like the birds,
-evidently giving vent to the sounds in the same way that one stretches
-oneself or walks about to get rid of stiffness, and the sounds were
-always high-pitched, mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his
-face at such times was very serious.
-
-Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to grow, he seemed to
-have thrown off all that had been forced upon him—everything military
-and alien to himself—and had returned to his former peasant habits.
-
-“A soldier on leave—a shirt outside breeches,” he would say.
-
-He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though he did not
-complain, and often mentioned that he had not been flogged once during
-the whole of his army service. When he related anything it was generally
-some old and evidently precious memory of his “Christian” life, as he
-called his peasant existence. The proverbs, of which his talk was full,
-were for the most part not the coarse and indecent saws soldiers
-employ, but those folk sayings which taken without a context seem so
-insignificant, but when used appositely suddenly acquire a significance
-of profound wisdom.
-
-He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a previous
-occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk and he talked well,
-adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with folk sayings which
-Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief charm of his talk lay
-in the fact that the commonest events—sometimes just such as Pierre
-had witnessed without taking notice of them—assumed in Karatáev’s a
-character of solemn fitness. He liked to hear the folk tales one of the
-soldiers used to tell of an evening (they were always the same), but
-most of all he liked to hear stories of real life. He would smile
-joyfully when listening to such stories, now and then putting in a word
-or asking a question to make the moral beauty of what he was told clear
-to himself. Karatáev had no attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre
-understood them, but loved and lived affectionately with everything life
-brought him in contact with, particularly with man—not any particular
-man, but those with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog, his
-comrades, the French, and Pierre who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt
-that in spite of Karatáev’s affectionate tenderness for him (by which
-he unconsciously gave Pierre’s spiritual life its due) he would not have
-grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to feel in
-the same way toward Karatáev.
-
-To all the other prisoners Platón Karatáev seemed a most ordinary
-soldier. They called him “little falcon” or “Platósha,” chaffed him
-good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre he always
-remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable, rounded,
-eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth.
-
-Platón Karatáev knew nothing by heart except his prayers. When he began
-to speak he seemed not to know how he would conclude.
-
-Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask him to
-repeat them, but Platón could never recall what he had said a moment
-before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of his
-favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred in
-it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of it. He
-did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from
-their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of
-an activity unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he
-regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only as
-part of a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and actions
-flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as fragrance
-exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value or significance
-of any word or deed taken separately.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-When Princess Mary heard from Nicholas that her brother was with the
-Rostóvs at Yaroslávl she at once prepared to go there, in spite of her
-aunt’s efforts to dissuade her—and not merely to go herself but to take
-her nephew with her. Whether it were difficult or easy, possible or
-impossible, she did not ask and did not want to know: it was her duty,
-not only to herself, to be near her brother who was perhaps dying, but
-to do everything possible to take his son to him, and so she prepared
-to set off. That she had not heard from Prince Andrew himself, Princess
-Mary attributed to his being too weak to write or to his considering the
-long journey too hard and too dangerous for her and his son.
-
-In a few days Princess Mary was ready to start. Her equipages were the
-huge family coach in which she had traveled to Vorónezh, a semiopen
-trap, and a baggage cart. With her traveled Mademoiselle Bourienne,
-little Nicholas and his tutor, her old nurse, three maids, Tíkhon, and a
-young footman and courier her aunt had sent to accompany her.
-
-The usual route through Moscow could not be thought of, and the
-roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to take through Lípetsk,
-Ryazán, Vladímir, and Shúya was very long and, as post horses were not
-everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazán where the French
-were said to have shown themselves was even dangerous.
-
-During this difficult journey Mademoiselle Bourienne, Dessalles, and
-Princess Mary’s servants were astonished at her energy and firmness of
-spirit. She went to bed later and rose earlier than any of them, and
-no difficulties daunted her. Thanks to her activity and energy, which
-infected her fellow travelers, they approached Yaroslávl by the end of
-the second week.
-
-The last days of her stay in Vorónezh had been the happiest of her life.
-Her love for Rostóv no longer tormented or agitated her. It filled her
-whole soul, had become an integral part of herself, and she no longer
-struggled against it. Latterly she had become convinced that she loved
-and was beloved, though she never said this definitely to herself
-in words. She had become convinced of it at her last interview with
-Nicholas, when he had come to tell her that her brother was with the
-Rostóvs. Not by a single word had Nicholas alluded to the fact that
-Prince Andrew’s relations with Natásha might, if he recovered, be
-renewed, but Princess Mary saw by his face that he knew and thought of
-this.
-
-Yet in spite of that, his relation to her—considerate, delicate, and
-loving—not only remained unchanged, but it sometimes seemed to Princess
-Mary that he was even glad that the family connection between them
-allowed him to express his friendship more freely. She knew that she
-loved for the first and only time in her life and felt that she was
-beloved, and was happy in regard to it.
-
-But this happiness on one side of her spiritual nature did not prevent
-her feeling grief for her brother with full force; on the contrary, that
-spiritual tranquility on the one side made it the more possible for her
-to give full play to her feeling for her brother. That feeling was so
-strong at the moment of leaving Vorónezh that those who saw her off, as
-they looked at her careworn, despairing face, felt sure she would fall
-ill on the journey. But the very difficulties and preoccupations of the
-journey, which she took so actively in hand, saved her for a while from
-her grief and gave her strength.
-
-As always happens when traveling, Princess Mary thought only of the
-journey itself, forgetting its object. But as she approached Yaroslávl
-the thought of what might await her there—not after many days, but that
-very evening—again presented itself to her and her agitation increased
-to its utmost limit.
-
-The courier who had been sent on in advance to find out where the
-Rostóvs were staying in Yaroslávl, and in what condition Prince Andrew
-was, when he met the big coach just entering the town gates was appalled
-by the terrible pallor of the princess’ face that looked out at him from
-the window.
-
-“I have found out everything, your excellency: the Rostóvs are staying
-at the merchant Brónnikov’s house, in the Square not far from here,
-right above the Vólga,” said the courier.
-
-Princess Mary looked at him with frightened inquiry, not understanding
-why he did not reply to what she chiefly wanted to know: how was her
-brother? Mademoiselle Bourienne put that question for her.
-
-“How is the prince?” she asked.
-
-“His excellency is staying in the same house with them.”
-
-“Then he is alive,” thought Princess Mary, and asked in a low voice:
-“How is he?”
-
-“The servants say he is still the same.”
-
-What “still the same” might mean Princess Mary did not ask, but with an
-unnoticed glance at little seven-year-old Nicholas, who was sitting in
-front of her looking with pleasure at the town, she bowed her head
-and did not raise it again till the heavy coach, rumbling, shaking and
-swaying, came to a stop. The carriage steps clattered as they were let
-down.
-
-The carriage door was opened. On the left there was water—a great
-river—and on the right a porch. There were people at the entrance:
-servants, and a rosy girl with a large plait of black hair, smiling as
-it seemed to Princess Mary in an unpleasantly affected way. (This was
-Sónya.) Princess Mary ran up the steps. “This way, this way!” said the
-girl, with the same artificial smile, and the princess found herself in
-the hall facing an elderly woman of Oriental type, who came rapidly to
-meet her with a look of emotion. This was the countess. She embraced
-Princess Mary and kissed her.
-
-“Mon enfant!” she muttered, “je vous aime et vous connais depuis
-longtemps.” *
-
- * “My child! I love you and have known you a long time.”
-
-
-Despite her excitement, Princess Mary realized that this was the
-countess and that it was necessary to say something to her. Hardly
-knowing how she did it, she contrived to utter a few polite phrases in
-French in the same tone as those that had been addressed to her, and
-asked: “How is he?”
-
-“The doctor says that he is not in danger,” said the countess, but as
-she spoke she raised her eyes with a sigh, and her gesture conveyed a
-contradiction of her words.
-
-“Where is he? Can I see him—can I?” asked the princess.
-
-“One moment, Princess, one moment, my dear! Is this his son?” said the
-countess, turning to little Nicholas who was coming in with Dessalles.
-“There will be room for everybody, this is a big house. Oh, what a
-lovely boy!”
-
-The countess took Princess Mary into the drawing room, where Sónya was
-talking to Mademoiselle Bourienne. The countess caressed the boy, and
-the old count came in and welcomed the princess. He had changed very
-much since Princess Mary had last seen him. Then he had been a brisk,
-cheerful, self-assured old man; now he seemed a pitiful, bewildered
-person. While talking to Princess Mary he continually looked round as
-if asking everyone whether he was doing the right thing. After the
-destruction of Moscow and of his property, thrown out of his accustomed
-groove he seemed to have lost the sense of his own significance and to
-feel that there was no longer a place for him in life.
-
-In spite of her one desire to see her brother as soon as possible, and
-her vexation that at the moment when all she wanted was to see him they
-should be trying to entertain her and pretending to admire her nephew,
-the princess noticed all that was going on around her and felt the
-necessity of submitting, for a time, to this new order of things which
-she had entered. She knew it to be necessary, and though it was hard for
-her she was not vexed with these people.
-
-“This is my niece,” said the count, introducing Sónya—“You don’t know
-her, Princess?”
-
-Princess Mary turned to Sónya and, trying to stifle the hostile
-feeling that arose in her toward the girl, she kissed her. But she felt
-oppressed by the fact that the mood of everyone around her was so far
-from what was in her own heart.
-
-“Where is he?” she asked again, addressing them all.
-
-“He is downstairs. Natásha is with him,” answered Sónya, flushing. “We
-have sent to ask. I think you must be tired, Princess.”
-
-Tears of vexation showed themselves in Princess Mary’s eyes. She turned
-away and was about to ask the countess again how to go to him, when
-light, impetuous, and seemingly buoyant steps were heard at the door.
-The princess looked round and saw Natásha coming in, almost running—that
-Natásha whom she had liked so little at their meeting in Moscow long
-since.
-
-But hardly had the princess looked at Natásha’s face before she realized
-that here was a real comrade in her grief, and consequently a friend.
-She ran to meet her, embraced her, and began to cry on her shoulder.
-
-As soon as Natásha, sitting at the head of Prince Andrew’s bed, heard
-of Princess Mary’s arrival, she softly left his room and hastened to her
-with those swift steps that had sounded buoyant to Princess Mary.
-
-There was only one expression on her agitated face when she ran into the
-drawing room—that of love—boundless love for him, for her, and for all
-that was near to the man she loved; and of pity, suffering for others,
-and passionate desire to give herself entirely to helping them. It was
-plain that at that moment there was in Natásha’s heart no thought of
-herself or of her own relations with Prince Andrew.
-
-Princess Mary, with her acute sensibility, understood all this at the
-first glance at Natásha’s face, and wept on her shoulder with sorrowful
-pleasure.
-
-“Come, come to him, Mary,” said Natásha, leading her into the other
-room.
-
-Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and turned to Natásha.
-She felt that from her she would be able to understand and learn
-everything.
-
-“How...” she began her question but stopped short.
-
-She felt that it was impossible to ask, or to answer, in words.
-Natásha’s face and eyes would have to tell her all more clearly and
-profoundly.
-
-Natásha was gazing at her, but seemed afraid and in doubt whether to say
-all she knew or not; she seemed to feel that before those luminous eyes
-which penetrated into the very depths of her heart, it was impossible
-not to tell the whole truth which she saw. And suddenly, Natásha’s lips
-twitched, ugly wrinkles gathered round her mouth, and covering her face
-with her hands she burst into sobs.
-
-Princess Mary understood.
-
-But she still hoped, and asked, in words she herself did not trust:
-
-“But how is his wound? What is his general condition?”
-
-“You, you... will see,” was all Natásha could say.
-
-They sat a little while downstairs near his room till they had left off
-crying and were able to go to him with calm faces.
-
-“How has his whole illness gone? Is it long since he grew worse? When
-did this happen?” Princess Mary inquired.
-
-Natásha told her that at first there had been danger from his feverish
-condition and the pain he suffered, but at Tróitsa that had passed
-and the doctor had only been afraid of gangrene. That danger had also
-passed. When they reached Yaroslávl the wound had begun to fester
-(Natásha knew all about such things as festering) and the doctor had
-said that the festering might take a normal course. Then fever set in,
-but the doctor had said the fever was not very serious.
-
-“But two days ago this suddenly happened,” said Natásha, struggling with
-her sobs. “I don’t know why, but you will see what he is like.”
-
-“Is he weaker? Thinner?” asked the princess.
-
-“No, it’s not that, but worse. You will see. O, Mary, he is too good, he
-cannot, cannot live, because...”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-When Natásha opened Prince Andrew’s door with a familiar movement and
-let Princess Mary pass into the room before her, the princess felt the
-sobs in her throat. Hard as she had tried to prepare herself, and now
-tried to remain tranquil, she knew that she would be unable to look at
-him without tears.
-
-The princess understood what Natásha had meant by the words: “two days
-ago this suddenly happened.” She understood those words to mean that he
-had suddenly softened and that this softening and gentleness were signs
-of approaching death. As she stepped to the door she already saw in
-imagination Andrew’s face as she remembered it in childhood, a gentle,
-mild, sympathetic face which he had rarely shown, and which therefore
-affected her very strongly. She was sure he would speak soft, tender
-words to her such as her father had uttered before his death, and
-that she would not be able to bear it and would burst into sobs in his
-presence. Yet sooner or later it had to be, and she went in. The sobs
-rose higher and higher in her throat as she more and more clearly
-distinguished his form and her shortsighted eyes tried to make out his
-features, and then she saw his face and met his gaze.
-
-He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a divan, surrounded by
-pillows. He was thin and pale. In one thin, translucently white hand
-he held a handkerchief, while with the other he stroked the delicate
-mustache he had grown, moving his fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at them
-as they entered.
-
-On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess Mary’s pace suddenly
-slackened, she felt her tears dry up and her sobs ceased. She suddenly
-felt guilty and grew timid on catching the expression of his face and
-eyes.
-
-“But in what am I to blame?” she asked herself. And his cold, stern look
-replied: “Because you are alive and thinking of the living, while I...”
-
-In the deep gaze that seemed to look not outwards but inwards there
-was an almost hostile expression as he slowly regarded his sister and
-Natásha.
-
-He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their wont.
-
-“How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get here?” said he in a voice
-as calm and aloof as his look.
-
-Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have struck such horror
-into Princess Mary’s heart as the tone of his voice.
-
-“And have you brought little Nicholas?” he asked in the same slow, quiet
-manner and with an obvious effort to remember.
-
-“How are you now?” said Princess Mary, herself surprised at what she was
-saying.
-
-“That, my dear, you must ask the doctor,” he replied, and again making
-an evident effort to be affectionate, he said with his lips only (his
-words clearly did not correspond to his thoughts):
-
-“Merci, chère amie, d’être venue.” *
-
- * “Thank you for coming, my dear.”
-
-
-Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made him wince just
-perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not know what to say. She now
-understood what had happened to him two days before. In his words, his
-tone, and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look could be
-felt an estrangement from everything belonging to this world, terrible
-in one who is alive. Evidently only with an effort did he understand
-anything living; but it was obvious that he failed to understand, not
-because he lacked the power to do so but because he understood something
-else—something the living did not and could not understand—and which
-wholly occupied his mind.
-
-“There, you see how strangely fate has brought us together,” said he,
-breaking the silence and pointing to Natásha. “She looks after me all
-the time.”
-
-Princess Mary heard him and did not understand how he could say such a
-thing. He, the sensitive, tender Prince Andrew, how could he say that,
-before her whom he loved and who loved him? Had he expected to live he
-could not have said those words in that offensively cold tone. If he had
-not known that he was dying, how could he have failed to pity her and
-how could he speak like that in her presence? The only explanation was
-that he was indifferent, because something else, much more important,
-had been revealed to him.
-
-The conversation was cold and disconnected and continually broke off.
-
-“Mary came by way of Ryazán,” said Natásha.
-
-Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister Mary, and only
-after calling her so in his presence did Natásha notice it herself.
-
-“Really?” he asked.
-
-“They told her that all Moscow has been burned down, and that...”
-
-Natásha stopped. It was impossible to talk. It was plain that he was
-making an effort to listen, but could not do so.
-
-“Yes, they say it’s burned,” he said. “It’s a great pity,” and he gazed
-straight before him, absently stroking his mustache with his fingers.
-
-“And so you have met Count Nicholas, Mary?” Prince Andrew suddenly said,
-evidently wishing to speak pleasantly to them. “He wrote here that he
-took a great liking to you,” he went on simply and calmly, evidently
-unable to understand all the complex significance his words had for
-living people. “If you liked him too, it would be a good thing for you
-to get married,” he added rather more quickly, as if pleased at having
-found words he had long been seeking.
-
-Princess Mary heard his words but they had no meaning for her, except as
-a proof of how far away he now was from everything living.
-
-“Why talk of me?” she said quietly and glanced at Natásha.
-
-Natásha, who felt her glance, did not look at her. All three were again
-silent.
-
-“Andrew, would you like...” Princess Mary suddenly said in a trembling
-voice, “would you like to see little Nicholas? He is always talking
-about you!”
-
-Prince Andrew smiled just perceptibly and for the first time, but
-Princess Mary, who knew his face so well, saw with horror that he did
-not smile with pleasure or affection for his son, but with quiet, gentle
-irony because he thought she was trying what she believed to be the last
-means of arousing him.
-
-“Yes, I shall be very glad to see him. Is he quite well?”
-
-When little Nicholas was brought into Prince Andrew’s room he looked at
-his father with frightened eyes, but did not cry, because no one else
-was crying. Prince Andrew kissed him and evidently did not know what to
-say to him.
-
-When Nicholas had been led away, Princess Mary again went up to her
-brother, kissed him, and unable to restrain her tears any longer began
-to cry.
-
-He looked at her attentively.
-
-“Is it about Nicholas?” he asked.
-
-Princess Mary nodded her head, weeping.
-
-“Mary, you know the Gosp...” but he broke off.
-
-“What did you say?”
-
-“Nothing. You mustn’t cry here,” he said, looking at her with the same
-cold expression.
-
-
-When Princess Mary began to cry, he understood that she was crying at
-the thought that little Nicholas would be left without a father. With
-a great effort he tried to return to life and to see things from their
-point of view.
-
-“Yes, to them it must seem sad!” he thought. “But how simple it is.
-
-“The fowls of the air sow not, neither do they reap, yet your Father
-feedeth them,” he said to himself and wished to say to Princess Mary;
-“but no, they will take it their own way, they won’t understand! They
-can’t understand that all those feelings they prize so—all our feelings,
-all those ideas that seem so important to us, are unnecessary. We cannot
-understand one another,” and he remained silent.
-
-
-Prince Andrew’s little son was seven. He could scarcely read, and knew
-nothing. After that day he lived through many things, gaining knowledge,
-observation, and experience, but had he possessed all the faculties he
-afterwards acquired, he could not have had a better or more profound
-understanding of the meaning of the scene he had witnessed between
-his father, Mary, and Natásha, than he had then. He understood it
-completely, and, leaving the room without crying, went silently up
-to Natásha who had come out with him and looked shyly at her with his
-beautiful, thoughtful eyes, then his uplifted, rosy upper lip trembled
-and leaning his head against her he began to cry.
-
-After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him and
-either sat alone or came timidly to Princess Mary, or to Natásha of whom
-he seemed even fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them quietly and
-shyly.
-
-When Princess Mary had left Prince Andrew she fully understood what
-Natásha’s face had told her. She did not speak any more to Natásha of
-hopes of saving his life. She took turns with her beside his sofa, and
-did not cry any more, but prayed continually, turning in soul to that
-Eternal and Unfathomable, whose presence above the dying man was now so
-evident.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-Not only did Prince Andrew know he would die, but he felt that he was
-dying and was already half dead. He was conscious of an aloofness from
-everything earthly and a strange and joyous lightness of existence.
-Without haste or agitation he awaited what was coming. That inexorable,
-eternal, distant, and unknown the presence of which he had felt
-continually all his life—was now near to him and, by the strange
-lightness he experienced, almost comprehensible and palpable....
-
-
-Formerly he had feared the end. He had twice experienced that terribly
-tormenting fear of death—the end—but now he no longer understood that
-fear.
-
-He had felt it for the first time when the shell spun like a top before
-him, and he looked at the fallow field, the bushes, and the sky, and
-knew that he was face to face with death. When he came to himself after
-being wounded and the flower of eternal, unfettered love had instantly
-unfolded itself in his soul as if freed from the bondage of life that
-had restrained it, he no longer feared death and ceased to think about
-it.
-
-During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial delirium he
-spent after he was wounded, the more deeply he penetrated into the new
-principle of eternal love revealed to him, the more he unconsciously
-detached himself from earthly life. To love everything and everybody and
-always to sacrifice oneself for love meant not to love anyone, not
-to live this earthly life. And the more imbued he became with that
-principle of love, the more he renounced life and the more completely he
-destroyed that dreadful barrier which—in the absence of such love—stands
-between life and death. When during those first days he remembered that
-he would have to die, he said to himself: “Well, what of it? So much the
-better!”
-
-But after the night in Mytíshchi when, half delirious, he had seen her
-for whom he longed appear before him and, having pressed her hand to his
-lips, had shed gentle, happy tears, love for a particular woman again
-crept unobserved into his heart and once more bound him to life. And
-joyful and agitating thoughts began to occupy his mind. Recalling the
-moment at the ambulance station when he had seen Kurágin, he could not
-now regain the feeling he then had, but was tormented by the question
-whether Kurágin was alive. And he dared not inquire.
-
-His illness pursued its normal physical course, but what Natásha
-referred to when she said: “This suddenly happened,” had occurred two
-days before Princess Mary arrived. It was the last spiritual struggle
-between life and death, in which death gained the victory. It was
-the unexpected realization of the fact that he still valued life as
-presented to him in the form of his love for Natásha, and a last, though
-ultimately vanquished, attack of terror before the unknown.
-
-It was evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly feverish, and his
-thoughts were preternaturally clear. Sónya was sitting by the table. He
-began to doze. Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized him.
-
-“Ah, she has come!” thought he.
-
-And so it was: in Sónya’s place sat Natásha who had just come in
-noiselessly.
-
-Since she had begun looking after him, he had always experienced this
-physical consciousness of her nearness. She was sitting in an armchair
-placed sideways, screening the light of the candle from him, and was
-knitting a stocking. She had learned to knit stockings since Prince
-Andrew had casually mentioned that no one nursed the sick so well as old
-nurses who knit stockings, and that there is something soothing in
-the knitting of stockings. The needles clicked lightly in her slender,
-rapidly moving hands, and he could clearly see the thoughtful profile
-of her drooping face. She moved, and the ball rolled off her knees. She
-started, glanced round at him, and screening the candle with her hand
-stooped carefully with a supple and exact movement, picked up the ball,
-and regained her former position.
-
-He looked at her without moving and saw that she wanted to draw a
-deep breath after stooping, but refrained from doing so and breathed
-cautiously.
-
-At the Tróitsa monastery they had spoken of the past, and he had told
-her that if he lived he would always thank God for his wound which had
-brought them together again, but after that they never spoke of the
-future.
-
-“Can it or can it not be?” he now thought as he looked at her and
-listened to the light click of the steel needles. “Can fate have brought
-me to her so strangely only for me to die?... Is it possible that the
-truth of life has been revealed to me only to show me that I have spent
-my life in falsity? I love her more than anything in the world! But what
-am I to do if I love her?” he thought, and he involuntarily groaned,
-from a habit acquired during his sufferings.
-
-On hearing that sound Natásha put down the stocking, leaned nearer to
-him, and suddenly, noticing his shining eyes, stepped lightly up to him
-and bent over him.
-
-“You are not asleep?”
-
-“No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you come in. No one
-else gives me that sense of soft tranquillity that you do... that light.
-I want to weep for joy.”
-
-Natásha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy.
-
-“Natásha, I love you too much! More than anything in the world.”
-
-“And I!”—She turned away for an instant. “Why too much?” she asked.
-
-“Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you feel in your soul, your
-whole soul—shall I live? What do you think?”
-
-“I am sure of it, sure!” Natásha almost shouted, taking hold of both his
-hands with a passionate movement.
-
-He remained silent awhile.
-
-“How good it would be!” and taking her hand he kissed it.
-
-Natásha felt happy and agitated, but at once remembered that this would
-not do and that he had to be quiet.
-
-“But you have not slept,” she said, repressing her joy. “Try to sleep...
-please!”
-
-He pressed her hand and released it, and she went back to the candle and
-sat down again in her former position. Twice she turned and looked at
-him, and her eyes met his beaming at her. She set herself a task on her
-stocking and resolved not to turn round till it was finished.
-
-Soon he really shut his eyes and fell asleep. He did not sleep long and
-suddenly awoke with a start and in a cold perspiration.
-
-As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the subject that now
-always occupied his mind—about life and death, and chiefly about death.
-He felt himself nearer to it.
-
-“Love? What is love?” he thought.
-
-“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I
-understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only
-because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to
-die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and
-eternal source.” These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But they were
-only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they
-were too one-sidedly personal and brain-spun. And there was the former
-agitation and obscurity. He fell asleep.
-
-He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really was in, but that
-he was quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and
-insignificant people appeared before him. He talked to them and
-discussed something trivial. They were preparing to go away somewhere.
-Prince Andrew dimly realized that all this was trivial and that he had
-more important cares, but he continued to speak, surprising them by
-empty witticisms. Gradually, unnoticed, all these persons began to
-disappear and a single question, that of the closed door, superseded
-all else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it. Everything
-depended on whether he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went, and
-tried to hurry, but his legs refused to move and he knew he would not be
-in time to lock the door though he painfully strained all his powers. He
-was seized by an agonizing fear. And that fear was the fear of death. It
-stood behind the door. But just when he was clumsily creeping toward
-the door, that dreadful something on the other side was already pressing
-against it and forcing its way in. Something not human—death—was
-breaking in through that door, and had to be kept out. He seized the
-door, making a final effort to hold it back—to lock it was no longer
-possible—but his efforts were weak and clumsy and the door, pushed from
-behind by that terror, opened and closed again.
-
-Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts were vain
-and both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It entered, and it was
-death, and Prince Andrew died.
-
-But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was asleep,
-and at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he awoke.
-
-“Yes, it was death! I died—and woke up. Yes, death is an awakening!” And
-all at once it grew light in his soul and the veil that had till then
-concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual vision. He felt as
-if powers till then confined within him had been liberated, and that
-strange lightness did not again leave him.
-
-When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the divan, Natásha went
-up and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer and looked at
-her strangely, not understanding.
-
-That was what had happened to him two days before Princess Mary’s
-arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting fever
-assumed a malignant character, but what the doctor said did not interest
-Natásha, she saw the terrible moral symptoms which to her were more
-convincing.
-
-From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew together with
-his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration of life it did
-not seem to him slower than an awakening from sleep compared to the
-duration of a dream.
-
-There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow
-awakening.
-
-His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. Both
-Princess Mary and Natásha, who did not leave him, felt this. They did
-not weep or shudder and during these last days they themselves felt
-that they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he had left
-them) but on what reminded them most closely of him—his body. Both felt
-this so strongly that the outward and terrible side of death did not
-affect them and they did not feel it necessary to foment their grief.
-Neither in his presence nor out of it did they weep, nor did they ever
-talk to one another about him. They felt that they could not express in
-words what they understood.
-
-They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly, deeper and deeper,
-away from them, and they both knew that this had to be so and that it
-was right.
-
-He confessed, and received communion: everyone came to take leave of
-him. When they brought his son to him, he pressed his lips to the boy’s
-and turned away, not because he felt it hard and sad (Princess Mary and
-Natásha understood that) but simply because he thought it was all that
-was required of him, but when they told him to bless the boy, he did
-what was demanded and looked round as if asking whether there was
-anything else he should do.
-
-When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving,
-occurred, Princess Mary and Natásha were present.
-
-“Is it over?” said Princess Mary when his body had for a few minutes
-lain motionless, growing cold before them. Natásha went up, looked at
-the dead eyes, and hastened to close them. She closed them but did not
-kiss them, but clung to that which reminded her most nearly of him—his
-body.
-
-“Where has he gone? Where is he now?...”
-
-When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin on a table,
-everyone came to take leave of him and they all wept.
-
-Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful perplexity.
-The countess and Sónya cried from pity for Natásha and because he was
-no more. The old count cried because he felt that before long, he, too,
-must take the same terrible step.
-
-Natásha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their own
-personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion which
-had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of the
-simple and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in their
-presence.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but
-the desire to find those causes is implanted in man’s soul. And without
-considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one
-of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the
-first approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and says:
-“This is the cause!” In historical events (where the actions of men are
-the subject of observation) the first and most primitive approximation
-to present itself was the will of the gods and, after that, the will of
-those who stood in the most prominent position—the heroes of history.
-But we need only penetrate to the essence of any historic event—which
-lies in the activity of the general mass of men who take part in it—to
-be convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the
-actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may seem
-to be a matter of indifference whether we understand the meaning of
-historical events this way or that; yet there is the same difference
-between a man who says that the people of the West moved on the East
-because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this happened because
-it had to happen, as there is between those who declared that the
-earth was stationary and that the planets moved round it and those who
-admitted that they did not know what upheld the earth, but knew there
-were laws directing its movement and that of the other planets. There
-is, and can be, no cause of an historical event except the one cause of
-all causes. But there are laws directing events, and some of these laws
-are known to us while we are conscious of others we cannot comprehend.
-The discovery of these laws is only possible when we have quite
-abandoned the attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man,
-just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was
-possible only when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the
-earth.
-
-The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodinó and the
-occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the most
-important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the Russian
-army from the Ryazána to the Kalúga road and to the Tarútino camp—the
-so-called flank march across the Krásnaya Pakhrá River. They ascribe the
-glory of that achievement of genius to different men and dispute as to
-whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians, including the French,
-acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders when they speak of
-that flank march. But it is hard to understand why military writers,
-and following them others, consider this flank march to be the profound
-conception of some one man who saved Russia and destroyed Napoleon. In
-the first place it is hard to understand where the profundity and genius
-of this movement lay, for not much mental effort was needed to see that
-the best position for an army when it is not being attacked is where
-there are most provisions; and even a dull boy of thirteen could have
-guessed that the best position for an army after its retreat from Moscow
-in 1812 was on the Kalúga road. So it is impossible to understand by
-what reasoning the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver
-was a profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just why
-they think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia and destroy
-the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded, accompanied,
-or followed by other circumstances, might have proved ruinous to the
-Russians and salutary for the French. If the position of the Russian
-army really began to improve from the time of that march, it does not at
-all follow that the march was the cause of it.
-
-That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to
-the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its
-destruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If
-Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained
-inactive? If the Russian army at Krásnaya Pakhrá had given battle as
-Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French
-attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhrá? What
-would have happened if on approaching Tarútino, Napoleon had attacked
-the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when he
-attacked them at Smolénsk? What would have happened had the French moved
-on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank march that
-brought salvation might have proved disastrous.
-
-The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying
-history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be
-attributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in
-reality, like the retreat from Filí, it did not suggest itself to anyone
-in its entirety, but resulted—moment by moment, step by step, event by
-event—from an endless number of most diverse circumstances and was only
-seen in its entirety when it had been accomplished and belonged to the
-past.
-
-At the council at Filí the prevailing thought in the minds of the
-Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely, a
-direct retreat by the Nízhni road. In proof of this there is the fact
-that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, and above
-all there is the well-known conversation after the council, between the
-commander in chief and Lanskóy, who was in charge of the commissariat
-department. Lanskóy informed the commander in chief that the army
-supplies were for the most part stored along the Oká in the Túla and
-Ryazán provinces, and that if they retreated on Nízhni the army would
-be separated from its supplies by the broad river Oká, which cannot be
-crossed early in winter. This was the first indication of the necessity
-of deviating from what had previously seemed the most natural course—a
-direct retreat on Nízhni-Nóvgorod. The army turned more to the south,
-along the Ryazán road and nearer to its supplies. Subsequently the
-inactivity of the French (who even lost sight of the Russian army),
-concern for the safety of the arsenal at Túla, and especially the
-advantages of drawing nearer to its supplies caused the army to turn
-still further south to the Túla road. Having crossed over, by a forced
-march, to the Túla road beyond the Pakhrá, the Russian commanders
-intended to remain at Podólsk and had no thought of the Tarútino
-position; but innumerable circumstances and the reappearance of French
-troops who had for a time lost touch with the Russians, and projects
-of giving battle, and above all the abundance of provisions in Kalúga
-province, obliged our army to turn still more to the south and to cross
-from the Túla to the Kalúga road and go to Tarútino, which was between
-the roads along which those supplies lay. Just as it is impossible to
-say when it was decided to abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say
-precisely when, or by whom, it was decided to move to Tarútino. Only
-when the army had got there, as the result of innumerable and varying
-forces, did people begin to assure themselves that they had desired this
-movement and long ago foreseen its result.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the advance
-of the French had ceased, the Russian army, which had been continually
-retreating straight back from the invaders, deviated from that direct
-course and, not finding itself pursued, was naturally drawn toward the
-district where supplies were abundant.
-
-If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of genius leading the
-Russian army, we picture that army without any leaders, it could not
-have done anything but make a return movement toward Moscow, describing
-an arc in the direction where most provisions were to be found and where
-the country was richest.
-
-That movement from the Nízhni to the Ryazán, Túla, and Kalúga roads was
-so natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that direction, and
-demands were sent from Petersburg for Kutúzov to take his army that
-way. At Tarútino Kutúzov received what was almost a reprimand from
-the Emperor for having moved his army along the Ryazán road, and the
-Emperor’s letter indicated to him the very position he had already
-occupied near Kalúga.
-
-Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by the
-whole campaign and by the battle of Borodinó, the Russian army—when
-the strength of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push was
-received—assumed the position natural to it.
-
-Kutúzov’s merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as it is
-called, but in the fact that he alone understood the significance of
-what had happened. He alone then understood the meaning of the French
-army’s inactivity, he alone continued to assert that the battle of
-Borodinó had been a victory, he alone—who as commander in chief might
-have been expected to be eager to attack—employed his whole strength to
-restrain the Russian army from useless engagements.
-
-The beast wounded at Borodinó was lying where the fleeing hunter had
-left him; but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and
-merely lying low, the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was heard
-to moan.
-
-The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed its
-calamitous condition was the sending of Lauriston to Kutúzov’s camp with
-overtures for peace.
-
-Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head was
-right, wrote to Kutúzov the first words that occurred to him, though
-they were meaningless.
-
-
-MONSIEUR LE PRINCE KOUTOUZOV: I am sending one of my adjutants-general
-to discuss several interesting questions with you. I beg your Highness
-to credit what he says to you, especially when he expresses the
-sentiment of esteem and special regard I have long entertained for your
-person. This letter having no other object, I pray God, monsieur le
-prince Koutouzov, to keep you in His holy and gracious protection!
-
-NAPOLEON
-
-MOSCOW, OCTOBER 30, 1812
-
-
-Kutúzov replied: “I should be cursed by posterity were I looked on as
-the initiator of a settlement of any sort. Such is the present spirit
-of my nation.” But he continued to exert all his powers to restrain his
-troops from attacking.
-
-During the month that the French troops were pillaging in Moscow and
-the Russian troops were quietly encamped at Tarútino, a change had taken
-place in the relative strength of the two armies—both in spirit and in
-number—as a result of which the superiority had passed to the Russian
-side. Though the condition and numbers of the French army were unknown
-to the Russians, as soon as that change occurred the need of attacking
-at once showed itself by countless signs. These signs were: Lauriston’s
-mission; the abundance of provisions at Tarútino; the reports coming in
-from all sides of the inactivity and disorder of the French; the flow of
-recruits to our regiments; the fine weather; the long rest the Russian
-soldiers had enjoyed, and the impatience to do what they had been
-assembled for, which usually shows itself in an army that has been
-resting; curiosity as to what the French army, so long lost sight of,
-was doing; the boldness with which our outposts now scouted close up to
-the French stationed at Tarútino; the news of easy successes gained by
-peasants and guerrilla troops over the French, the envy aroused by this;
-the desire for revenge that lay in the heart of every Russian as long as
-the French were in Moscow, and (above all) a dim consciousness in every
-soldier’s mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed and
-that the advantage was now on our side. There was a substantial change
-in the relative strength, and an advance had become inevitable. And at
-once, as a clock begins to strike and chime as soon as the minute hand
-has completed a full circle, this change was shown by an increased
-activity, whirring, and chiming in the higher spheres.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-The Russian army was commanded by Kutúzov and his staff, and also by the
-Emperor from Petersburg. Before the news of the abandonment of Moscow
-had been received in Petersburg, a detailed plan of the whole campaign
-had been drawn up and sent to Kutúzov for his guidance. Though this plan
-had been drawn up on the supposition that Moscow was still in our hands,
-it was approved by the staff and accepted as a basis for action.
-Kutúzov only replied that movements arranged from a distance were always
-difficult to execute. So fresh instructions were sent for the solution
-of difficulties that might be encountered, as well as fresh people who
-were to watch Kutúzov’s actions and report upon them.
-
-Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was now reorganized.
-The posts left vacant by Bagratión, who had been killed, and by
-Barclay, who had gone away in dudgeon, had to be filled. Very serious
-consideration was given to the question whether it would be better to
-put A in B’s place and B in D’s, or on the contrary to put D in A’s
-place, and so on—as if anything more than A’s or B’s satisfaction
-depended on this.
-
-As a result of the hostility between Kutúzov and Bennigsen, his Chief of
-Staff, the presence of confidential representatives of the Emperor, and
-these transfers, a more than usually complicated play of parties
-was going on among the staff of the army. A was undermining B, D was
-undermining C, and so on in all possible combinations and permutations.
-In all these plottings the subject of intrigue was generally the conduct
-of the war, which all these men believed they were directing; but this
-affair of the war went on independently of them, as it had to go:
-that is, never in the way people devised, but flowing always from the
-essential attitude of the masses. Only in the highest spheres did
-all these schemes, crossings, and interminglings appear to be a true
-reflection of what had to happen.
-
-
-Prince Michael Ilariónovich! (wrote the Emperor on the second of October
-in a letter that reached Kutúzov after the battle at Tarútino) Since
-September 2 Moscow has been in the hands of the enemy. Your last reports
-were written on the twentieth, and during all this time not only has
-no action been taken against the enemy or for the relief of the ancient
-capital, but according to your last report you have even retreated
-farther. Sérpukhov is already occupied by an enemy detachment and Túla
-with its famous arsenal so indispensable to the army, is in danger.
-From General Wintzingerode’s reports, I see that an enemy corps of ten
-thousand men is moving on the Petersburg road. Another corps of several
-thousand men is moving on Dmítrov. A third has advanced along the
-Vladímir road, and a fourth, rather considerable detachment is stationed
-between Rúza and Mozháysk. Napoleon himself was in Moscow as late as
-the twenty-fifth. In view of all this information, when the enemy has
-scattered his forces in large detachments, and with Napoleon and his
-Guards in Moscow, is it possible that the enemy’s forces confronting you
-are so considerable as not to allow of your taking the offensive? On the
-contrary, he is probably pursuing you with detachments, or at most with
-an army corps much weaker than the army entrusted to you. It would seem
-that, availing yourself of these circumstances, you might advantageously
-attack a weaker one and annihilate him, or at least oblige him to
-retreat, retaining in our hands an important part of the provinces now
-occupied by the enemy, and thereby averting danger from Túla and other
-towns in the interior. You will be responsible if the enemy is able to
-direct a force of any size against Petersburg to threaten this capital
-in which it has not been possible to retain many troops; for with the
-army entrusted to you, and acting with resolution and energy, you have
-ample means to avert this fresh calamity. Remember that you have still
-to answer to our offended country for the loss of Moscow. You have
-experienced my readiness to reward you. That readiness will not weaken
-in me, but I and Russia have a right to expect from you all the zeal,
-firmness, and success which your intellect, military talent, and the
-courage of the troops you command justify us in expecting.
-
-
-But by the time this letter, which proved that the real relation of
-the forces had already made itself felt in Petersburg, was dispatched,
-Kutúzov had found himself unable any longer to restrain the army he
-commanded from attacking and a battle had taken place.
-
-On the second of October a Cossack, Shapoválov, who was out scouting,
-killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded hare he made
-his way far into the forest and came upon the left flank of Murat’s
-army, encamped there without any precautions. The Cossack laughingly
-told his comrades how he had almost fallen into the hands of the French.
-A cornet, hearing the story, informed his commander.
-
-The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack officers wished
-to take advantage of this chance to capture some horses, but one of
-the superior officers, who was acquainted with the higher authorities,
-reported the incident to a general on the staff. The state of things on
-the staff had of late been exceedingly strained. Ermólov had been to
-see Bennigsen a few days previously and had entreated him to use
-his influence with the commander in chief to induce him to take the
-offensive.
-
-“If I did not know you I should think you did not want what you are
-asking for. I need only advise anything and his Highness is sure to do
-the opposite,” replied Bennigsen.
-
-The Cossack’s report, confirmed by horse patrols who were sent out, was
-the final proof that events had matured. The tightly coiled spring was
-released, the clock began to whirr and the chimes to play. Despite all
-his supposed power, his intellect, his experience, and his knowledge
-of men, Kutúzov—having taken into consideration the Cossack’s report, a
-note from Bennigsen who sent personal reports to the Emperor, the wishes
-he supposed the Emperor to hold, and the fact that all the generals
-expressed the same wish—could no longer check the inevitable movement,
-and gave the order to do what he regarded as useless and harmful—gave
-his approval, that is, to the accomplished fact.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-Bennigsen’s note and the Cossack’s information that the left flank
-of the French was unguarded were merely final indications that it was
-necessary to order an attack, and it was fixed for the fifth of October.
-
-On the morning of the fourth of October Kutúzov signed the dispositions.
-Toll read them to Ermólov, asking him to attend to the further
-arrangements.
-
-“All right—all right. I haven’t time just now,” replied Ermólov, and
-left the hut.
-
-The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in the Austerlitz
-dispositions, it was written—though not in German this time:
-
-“The First Column will march here and here,” “the Second Column will
-march there and there,” and so on; and on paper, all these columns
-arrived at their places at the appointed time and destroyed the enemy.
-Everything had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions,
-and as is always the case, not a single column reached its place at the
-appointed time.
-
-When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions had been
-prepared, an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to Ermólov
-to deal with. A young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutúzov’s orderly,
-pleased at the importance of the mission entrusted to him, went to
-Ermólov’s quarters.
-
-“Gone away,” said Ermólov’s orderly.
-
-The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom Ermólov was
-often to be found.
-
-“No, and the general’s out too.”
-
-The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else.
-
-“No, he’s gone out.”
-
-“If only they don’t make me responsible for this delay! What a nuisance
-it is!” thought the officer, and he rode round the whole camp. One man
-said he had seen Ermólov ride past with some other generals, others said
-he must have returned home. The officer searched till six o’clock in the
-evening without even stopping to eat. Ermólov was nowhere to be found
-and no one knew where he was. The officer snatched a little food at
-a comrade’s, and rode again to the vanguard to find Milorádovich.
-Milorádovich too was away, but here he was told that he had gone to a
-ball at General Kíkin’s and that Ermólov was probably there too.
-
-“But where is it?”
-
-“Why, there, over at Échkino,” said a Cossack officer, pointing to a
-country house in the far distance.
-
-“What, outside our line?”
-
-“They’ve put two regiments as outposts, and they’re having such a spree
-there, it’s awful! Two bands and three sets of singers!”
-
-The officer rode out beyond our lines to Échkino. While still at a
-distance he heard as he rode the merry sounds of a soldier’s dance song
-proceeding from the house.
-
-“In the meadows... in the meadows!” he heard, accompanied by whistling
-and the sound of a torban, drowned every now and then by shouts. These
-sounds made his spirits rise, but at the same time he was afraid that
-he would be blamed for not having executed sooner the important order
-entrusted to him. It was already past eight o’clock. He dismounted
-and went up into the porch of a large country house which had remained
-intact between the Russian and French forces. In the refreshment room
-and the hall, footmen were bustling about with wine and viands. Groups
-of singers stood outside the windows. The officer was admitted and
-immediately saw all the chief generals of the army together, and among
-them Ermólov’s big imposing figure. They all had their coats unbuttoned
-and were standing in a semicircle with flushed and animated faces,
-laughing loudly. In the middle of the room a short handsome general with
-a red face was dancing the trepák with much spirit and agility.
-
-“Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Iványch! Ha, ha, ha!”
-
-The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at such a moment
-he was doubly to blame, and he would have preferred to wait; but one of
-the generals espied him and, hearing what he had come about, informed
-Ermólov.
-
-Ermólov came forward with a frown on his face and, hearing what the
-officer had to say, took the papers from him without a word.
-
-
-“You think he went off just by chance?” said a comrade, who was on the
-staff that evening, to the officer of the Horse Guards, referring to
-Ermólov. “It was a trick. It was done on purpose to get Konovnítsyn into
-trouble. You’ll see what a mess there’ll be tomorrow.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-Next day the decrepit Kutúzov, having given orders to be called early,
-said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant consciousness of
-having to direct a battle he did not approve of, got into his calèche
-and drove from Letashóvka (a village three and a half miles from
-Tarútino) to the place where the attacking columns were to meet. He sat
-in the calèche, dozing and waking up by turns, and listening for any
-sound of firing on the right as an indication that the action had begun.
-But all was still quiet. A damp dull autumn morning was just dawning. On
-approaching Tarútino Kutúzov noticed cavalrymen leading their horses to
-water across the road along which he was driving. Kutúzov looked at
-them searchingly, stopped his carriage, and inquired what regiment they
-belonged to. They belonged to a column that should have been far in
-front and in ambush long before then. “It may be a mistake,” thought
-the old commander in chief. But a little further on he saw infantry
-regiments with their arms piled and the soldiers, only partly dressed,
-eating their rye porridge and carrying fuel. He sent for an officer. The
-officer reported that no order to advance had been received.
-
-“How! Not rec...” Kutúzov began, but checked himself immediately and
-sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his calèche, he waited with
-drooping head and breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down. When
-Eýkhen, the officer of the general staff whom he had summoned, appeared,
-Kutúzov went purple in the face, not because that officer was to blame
-for the mistake, but because he was an object of sufficient importance
-for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and panting the old man fell
-into that state of fury in which he sometimes used to roll on the
-ground, and he fell upon Eýkhen, threatening him with his hands,
-shouting and loading him with gross abuse. Another man, Captain Brózin,
-who happened to turn up and who was not at all to blame, suffered the
-same fate.
-
-“What sort of another blackguard are you? I’ll have you shot!
-Scoundrels!” yelled Kutúzov in a hoarse voice, waving his arms and
-reeling.
-
-He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, a Serene
-Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever had
-in Russia, to be placed in this position—made the laughingstock of the
-whole army! “I needn’t have been in such a hurry to pray about today,
-or have kept awake thinking everything over all night,” thought he to
-himself. “When I was a chit of an officer no one would have dared to
-mock me so... and now!” He was in a state of physical suffering as if
-from corporal punishment, and could not avoid expressing it by cries of
-anger and distress. But his strength soon began to fail him, and looking
-about him, conscious of having said much that was amiss, he again got
-into his calèche and drove back in silence.
-
-His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he
-listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermólov did not come to see
-him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen, Konovnítsyn,
-and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should be executed next
-day. And once more Kutúzov had to consent.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the evening
-and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with dark purple
-clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy, and the troops
-advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of the artillery
-could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk out loud, to
-smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried to prevent their
-horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking heightened its charm
-and they marched gaily. Some columns, supposing they had reached their
-destination, halted, piled arms, and settled down on the cold ground,
-but the majority marched all night and arrived at places where they
-evidently should not have been.
-
-Only Count Orlóv-Denísov with his Cossacks (the least important
-detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time. This
-detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path leading from
-the village of Stromílova to Dmítrovsk.
-
-Toward dawn, Count Orlóv-Denísov, who had dozed off, was awakened by a
-deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a Polish
-sergeant of Poniatowski’s corps, who explained in Polish that he had
-come over because he had been slighted in the service: that he ought
-long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver than any of
-them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them out. He said that
-Murat was spending the night less than a mile from where they were,
-and that if they would let him have a convoy of a hundred men he would
-capture him alive. Count Orlóv-Denísov consulted his fellow officers.
-
-The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go and
-everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and arguing,
-Major-General Grékov with two Cossack regiments decided to go with the
-Polish sergeant.
-
-“Now, remember,” said Count Orlóv-Denísov to the sergeant at parting,
-“if you have been lying I’ll have you hanged like a dog; but if it’s
-true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!”
-
-Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and rode
-away with Grékov whose men had quickly assembled. They disappeared into
-the forest, and Count Orlóv-Denísov, having seen Grékov off, returned,
-shivering from the freshness of the early dawn and excited by what he
-had undertaken on his own responsibility, and began looking at the enemy
-camp, now just visible in the deceptive light of dawn and the dying
-campfires. Our columns ought to have begun to appear on an open
-declivity to his right. He looked in that direction, but though the
-columns would have been visible quite far off, they were not to be seen.
-It seemed to the count that things were beginning to stir in the French
-camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant confirmed this.
-
-“Oh, it is really too late,” said Count Orlóv, looking at the camp.
-
-As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before
-our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the
-sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian
-attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which
-he would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a
-commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!
-
-“I am sure that rascal was lying,” said the count.
-
-“They can still be called back,” said one of his suite, who like Count
-Orlóv felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the enemy’s
-camp.
-
-“Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?”
-
-“Will you have them fetched back?”
-
-“Fetch them back, fetch them back!” said Count Orlóv with sudden
-determination, looking at his watch. “It will be too late. It is quite
-light.”
-
-And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grékov. When Grékov
-returned, Count Orlóv-Denísov, excited both by the abandoned attempt and
-by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not appear, as
-well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance. All his men
-felt the same excitement.
-
-“Mount!” he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and
-crossed themselves.... “Forward, with God’s aid!”
-
-“Hurrah-ah-ah!” reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack companies,
-trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if poured out
-of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.
-
-One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw the
-Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just waking
-up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses.
-
-Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind and
-around them, they would have captured Murat and everything there.
-That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to make the
-Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners. None of them
-listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and thirty-eight guns were
-taken on the spot, besides standards and (what seemed most important to
-the Cossacks) horses, saddles, horsecloths, and the like. All this had
-to be dealt with, the prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided—not
-without some shouting and even a little fighting among themselves—and it
-was on this that the Cossacks all busied themselves.
-
-The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover themselves: they
-formed into detachments and began firing. Orlóv-Denísov, still waiting
-for the other columns to arrive, advanced no further.
-
-Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that “the First
-Column will march” and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,
-commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due order
-and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their appointed
-places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully, began to halt;
-murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and finally a
-backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about, shouted, grew
-angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and were late, gave
-vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and went forward,
-simply to get somewhere. “We shall get somewhere or other!” And they did
-indeed get somewhere, though not to their right places; a few eventually
-even got to their right place, but too late to be of any use and only
-in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this battle played the part of
-Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped assiduously from place to place,
-finding everything upside down everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovút’s
-corps in a wood when it was already broad daylight, though the corps
-should long before have joined Orlóv-Denísov. Excited and vexed by the
-failure and supposing that someone must be responsible for it, Toll
-galloped up to the commander of the corps and began upbraiding him
-severely, saying that he ought to be shot. General Bagovút, a fighting
-old soldier of placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay,
-confusion, and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody’s surprise
-and quite contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things
-to Toll.
-
-“I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men as
-well as anybody,” he said, and advanced with a single division.
-
-Coming out onto a field under the enemy’s fire, this brave general went
-straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering in his
-agitation whether going into action now, with a single division, would
-be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets were just what he
-needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets killed him, and other
-bullets killed many of his men. And his division remained under fire for
-some time quite uselessly.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the French from the front,
-but Kutúzov accompanied that column. He well knew that nothing but
-confusion would come of this battle undertaken against his will, and as
-far as was in his power held the troops back. He did not advance.
-
-He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering
-suggestions that they should attack.
-
-“The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don’t see that we are
-unable to execute complicated maneuvers,” said he to Milorádovich who
-asked permission to advance.
-
-“We couldn’t take Murat prisoner this morning or get to the place in
-time, and nothing can be done now!” he replied to someone else.
-
-When Kutúzov was informed that at the French rear—where according to the
-reports of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody—there were now
-two battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermólov who was
-behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous day.
-
-“You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds,
-but as soon as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy,
-forewarned, takes measures accordingly.”
-
-Ermólov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these words.
-He understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that Kutúzov
-would content himself with that hint.
-
-“He’s having a little fun at my expense,” said Ermólov softly, nudging
-with his knee Raévski who was at his side.
-
-Soon after this, Ermólov moved up to Kutúzov and respectfully remarked:
-
-“It is not too late yet, your Highness—the enemy has not gone away—if
-you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so much as see
-a little smoke.”
-
-Kutúzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat’s troops
-were in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every hundred paces he
-halted for three quarters of an hour.
-
-The whole battle consisted in what Orlóv-Denísov’s Cossacks had done:
-the rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.
-
-In consequence of this battle Kutúzov received a diamond decoration,
-and Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also
-received pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various grades,
-and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.
-
-“That’s how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!” said the
-Russian officers and generals after the Tarútino battle, letting it be
-understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that
-we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today. But
-people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking about
-or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle—Tarútino, Borodinó, or
-Austerlitz—takes place as those who planned it anticipated. That is an
-essential condition.
-
-A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than during
-a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence the course
-taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in advance and
-never coincides with the direction of any one force.
-
-If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a given
-body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one of those
-forces, but will always be a mean—what in mechanics is represented by
-the diagonal of a parallelogram of forces.
-
-If in the descriptions given by historians, especially French ones, we
-find their wars and battles carried out in accordance with previously
-formed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that those descriptions
-are false.
-
-The battle of Tarútino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had in
-view—to lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the
-dispositions; nor that which Count Orlóv-Denísov may have had in view—to
-take Murat prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying the whole
-corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor the aim of
-the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish himself; nor
-that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than he got, and so on. But
-if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and what all the
-Russians of that day desired—to drive the French out of Russia and
-destroy their army—it is quite clear that the battle of Tarútino, just
-because of its incongruities, was exactly what was wanted at that stage
-of the campaign. It would be difficult and even impossible to imagine
-any result more opportune than the actual outcome of this battle. With
-a minimum of effort and insignificant losses, despite the greatest
-confusion, the most important results of the whole campaign were
-attained: the transition from retreat to advance, an exposure of the
-weakness of the French, and the administration of that shock which
-Napoleon’s army had only awaited to begin its flight.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa; there
-can be no doubt about the victory for the battlefield remains in the
-hands of the French. The Russians retreat and abandon their ancient
-capital. Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and
-incalculable wealth, is in Napoleon’s hands. The Russian army, only half
-the strength of the French, does not make a single attempt to attack for
-a whole month. Napoleon’s position is most brilliant. He can either fall
-on the Russian army with double its strength and destroy it; negotiate
-an advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal make a menacing move on
-Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse, return to Smolénsk or
-Vílna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special genius would seem to be
-required to retain the brilliant position the French held at that time.
-For that, only very simple and easy steps were necessary: not to allow
-the troops to loot, to prepare winter clothing—of which there was
-sufficient in Moscow for the whole army—and methodically to collect the
-provisions, of which (according to the French historians) there were
-enough in Moscow to supply the whole army for six months. Yet Napoleon,
-that greatest of all geniuses, who the historians declare had control of
-the army, took none of these steps.
-
-He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used his
-power to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses open
-to him. Of all that Napoleon might have done: wintering in Moscow,
-advancing on Petersburg or on Nízhni-Nóvgorod, or retiring by a more
-northerly or more southerly route (say by the road Kutúzov afterwards
-took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can be imagined than what he
-actually did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting the troops
-plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a garrison behind
-him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutúzov without joining battle,
-turned to the right and reached Málo-Yaroslávets, again without
-attempting to break through and take the road Kutúzov took, but retiring
-instead to Mozháysk along the devastated Smolénsk road. Nothing more
-stupid than that could have been devised, or more disastrous for the
-army, as the sequel showed. Had Napoleon’s aim been to destroy his army,
-the most skillful strategist could hardly have devised any series
-of actions that would so completely have accomplished that purpose,
-independently of anything the Russian army might do.
-
-Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he destroyed his
-army because he wished to, or because he was very stupid, would be as
-unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to Moscow because he
-wished to and because he was very clever and a genius.
-
-In both cases his personal activity, having no more force than the
-personal activity of any soldier, merely coincided with the laws that
-guided the event.
-
-The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon’s faculties as having
-weakened in Moscow, and do so only because the results did not justify
-his actions. He employed all his ability and strength to do the best he
-could for himself and his army, as he had done previously and as he did
-subsequently in 1813. His activity at that time was no less astounding
-than it was in Egypt, in Italy, in Austria, and in Prussia. We do not
-know for certain in how far his genius was genuine in Egypt—where forty
-centuries looked down upon his grandeur—for his great exploits there are
-all told us by Frenchmen. We cannot accurately estimate his genius in
-Austria or Prussia, for we have to draw our information from French
-or German sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole corps
-without fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans
-to recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on
-in Germany. But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his genius
-in order to hide our shame. We have paid for the right to look at the
-matter plainly and simply, and we will not abandon that right.
-
-His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as
-elsewhere. Order after order and plan after plan were issued by him
-from the time he entered Moscow till the time he left it. The absence
-of citizens and of a deputation, and even the burning of Moscow, did not
-disconcert him. He did not lose sight either of the welfare of his
-army or of the doings of the enemy, or of the welfare of the people
-of Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or of diplomatic
-considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated peace.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately on his entry into
-Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the movements
-of the Russian army, sent army corps out along the different roads, and
-charged Murat to find Kutúzov. Then he gave careful directions about the
-fortification of the Krémlin, and drew up a brilliant plan for a future
-campaign over the whole map of Russia.
-
-With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain Yákovlev,
-who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how to get out of
-Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and his magnanimity,
-and having written a letter to the Emperor Alexander in which he
-considered it his duty to inform his Friend and Brother that Rostopchín
-had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he dispatched Yákovlev to
-Petersburg.
-
-Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to Tutólmin, he
-dispatched that old man also to Petersburg to negotiate.
-
-With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires he gave orders
-to find and execute the incendiaries. And the scoundrel Rostopchín was
-punished by an order to burn down his houses.
-
-With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was granted a
-constitution. A municipality was established and the following
-announcement issued:
-
-
-INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!
-
-Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King
-desires to arrest their course. Terrible examples have taught you how he
-punishes disobedience and crime. Strict measures have been taken to
-put an end to disorder and to re-establish public security. A
-paternal administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form your
-municipality or city government. It will take care of you, of your
-needs, and of your welfare. Its members will be distinguished by a red
-ribbon worn across the shoulder, and the mayor of the city will wear
-a white belt as well. But when not on duty they will only wear a red
-ribbon round the left arm.
-
-The city police is established on its former footing, and better order
-already prevails in consequence of its activity. The government has
-appointed two commissaries general, or chiefs of police, and twenty
-commissaries or captains of wards have been appointed to the different
-wards of the city. You will recognize them by the white ribbon they will
-wear on the left arm. Several churches of different denominations are
-open, and divine service is performed in them unhindered. Your fellow
-citizens are returning every day to their homes and orders have been
-given that they should find in them the help and protection due to
-their misfortunes. These are the measures the government has adopted to
-re-establish order and relieve your condition. But to achieve this
-aim it is necessary that you should add your efforts and should, if
-possible, forget the misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain
-the hope of a less cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and
-ignominious death awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or
-on what remains of your property, and finally that you should not doubt
-that these will be safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest
-and most just of monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation you
-may be, re-establish public confidence, the source of the welfare of
-a state, live like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to
-another, unite to defeat the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the
-military and civil authorities, and your tears will soon cease to flow!
-
-
-With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed that all the
-troops in turn should enter Moscow à la maraude * to obtain provisions
-for themselves, so that the army might have its future provided for.
-
- * As looters.
-
-With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to be brought back
-and services to be again performed in the churches.
-
-With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army, the following was
-placarded everywhere:
-
-PROCLAMATION
-
-You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and workmen whom
-misfortune has driven from the city, and you scattered tillers of
-the soil, still kept out in the fields by groundless fear, listen!
-Tranquillity is returning to this capital and order is being restored in
-it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from their hiding places
-on finding that they are respected. Any violence to them or to their
-property is promptly punished. His Majesty the Emperor and King protects
-them, and considers no one among you his enemy except those who disobey
-his orders. He desires to end your misfortunes and restore you to your
-homes and families. Respond, therefore, to his benevolent intentions
-and come to us without fear. Inhabitants, return with confidence to your
-abodes! You will soon find means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen
-and industrious artisans, return to your work, your houses, your shops,
-where the protection of guards awaits you! You shall receive proper pay
-for your work. And lastly you too, peasants, come from the forests where
-you are hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear, in full
-assurance that you will find protection! Markets are established in the
-city where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the products of
-the soil. The government has taken the following steps to ensure freedom
-of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants, husbandmen, and those
-living in the neighborhood of Moscow may without any danger bring their
-supplies of all kinds to two appointed markets, of which one is on
-the Mokhováya Street and the other at the Provision Market. (2) Such
-supplies will be bought from them at such prices as seller and buyer may
-agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a fair price he will be
-free to take his goods back to his village and no one may hinder him
-under any pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday of each week are appointed
-as the chief market days and to that end a sufficient number of troops
-will be stationed along the highroads on Tuesdays and Saturdays at such
-distances from the town as to protect the carts. (4) Similar measures
-will be taken that peasants with their carts and horses may meet with no
-hindrance on their return journey. (5) Steps will immediately be taken
-to re-establish ordinary trading.
-
-Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and artisans,
-to whatever nation you belong, you are called on to carry out the
-paternal intentions of His Majesty the Emperor and King and to
-co-operate with him for the public welfare! Lay your respect and
-confidence at his feet and do not delay to unite with us!
-
-
-With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of the people,
-reviews were constantly held and rewards distributed. The Emperor
-rode through the streets to comfort the inhabitants, and, despite his
-preoccupation with state affairs, himself visited the theaters that were
-established by his order.
-
-In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads,
-Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma
-Mère to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining
-tender filial affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He
-visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by him
-to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutólmin. Then, as
-Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in forged
-Russian money which he had prepared: “Raising the use of these means
-by an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let relief
-be distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food was too
-precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part enemies,
-Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to purchase food
-from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them.”
-
-With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being issued
-to inflict severe punishment for the nonperformance of military duties
-and to suppress robbery.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and plans—which were
-not at all worse than others issued in similar circumstances—did not
-affect the essence of the matter but, like the hands of a clock detached
-from the mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless way without
-engaging the cogwheels.
-
-With reference to the military side—the plan of campaign—that work of
-genius of which Thiers remarks that, “His genius never devised anything
-more profound, more skillful, or more admirable,” and enters into a
-polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius must be referred
-not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of October—that plan never was or
-could be executed, for it was quite out of touch with the facts of the
-case. The fortifying of the Krémlin, for which la Mosquée (as Napoleon
-termed the church of Basil the Beatified) was to have been razed to
-the ground, proved quite useless. The mining of the Krémlin only helped
-toward fulfilling Napoleon’s wish that it should be blown up when he
-left Moscow—as a child wants the floor on which he has hurt himself to
-be beaten. The pursuit of the Russian army, about which Napoleon was so
-concerned, produced an unheard-of result. The French generals lost touch
-with the Russian army of sixty thousand men, and according to Thiers it
-was only eventually found, like a lost pin, by the skill—and apparently
-the genius—of Murat.
-
-With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon’s arguments as to his
-magnanimity and justice, both to Tutólmin and to Yákovlev (whose chief
-concern was to obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless;
-Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply to their
-embassage.
-
-With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the supposed
-incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down.
-
-With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a
-municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain
-people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of
-preserving order looted Moscow or saved their own property from being
-looted.
-
-With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had so easily been
-settled by Napoleon’s visit to a mosque, no results were achieved.
-Two or three priests who were found in Moscow did try to carry out
-Napoleon’s wish, but one of them was slapped in the face by a French
-soldier while conducting service, and a French official reported of
-another that: “The priest whom I found and invited to say Mass cleaned
-and locked up the church. That night the doors were again broken
-open, the padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and other disorders
-perpetrated.”
-
-With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious workmen and
-to peasants evoked no response. There were no industrious workmen, and
-the peasants caught the commissaries who ventured too far out of town
-with the proclamation and killed them.
-
-As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people and the troops,
-these did not meet with success either. The theaters set up in the
-Krémlin and in Posnyákov’s house were closed again at once because the
-actors and actresses were robbed.
-
-Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as
-well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The
-French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the
-paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to the
-unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.
-
-But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness of the orders given
-by the authorities at that time was Napoleon’s attempt to stop the
-looting and re-establish discipline.
-
-This is what the army authorities were reporting:
-
-“Looting continues in the city despite the decrees against it. Order
-is not yet restored and not a single merchant is carrying on trade in a
-lawful manner. The sutlers alone venture to trade, and they sell stolen
-goods.”
-
-“The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged by soldiers of
-the 3rd Corps who, not satisfied with taking from the unfortunate
-inhabitants hiding in the cellars the little they have left, even have
-the ferocity to wound them with their sabers, as I have repeatedly
-witnessed.”
-
-“Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and pillaging—October
-9.”
-
-“Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of thieves in our
-district who ought to be arrested by a strong force—October 11.”
-
-“The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the strict orders to
-stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards are continually seen returning
-to the Krémlin. Among the Old Guard disorder and pillage were renewed
-more violently than ever yesterday evening, last night, and today. The
-Emperor sees with regret that the picked soldiers appointed to guard his
-person, who should set an example of discipline, carry disobedience to
-such a point that they break into the cellars and stores containing army
-supplies. Others have disgraced themselves to the extent of disobeying
-sentinels and officers, and have abused and beaten them.”
-
-“The Grand Marshal of the palace,” wrote the governor, “complains
-bitterly that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to
-commit nuisances in all the courtyards and even under the very windows
-of the Emperor.”
-
-That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot the
-provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated and
-perished with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it did not
-go away.
-
-It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused by the
-capture of transport trains on the Smolénsk road, and by the battle of
-Tarútino. The news of that battle of Tarútino, unexpectedly received
-by Napoleon at a review, evoked in him a desire to punish the Russians
-(Thiers says), and he issued the order for departure which the whole
-army was demanding.
-
-Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they had
-stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away his own personal trésor, but on
-seeing the baggage trains that impeded the army, he was (Thiers says)
-horror-struck. And yet with his experience of war he did not order all
-the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with those of a
-certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He gazed at the calèches and
-carriages in which soldiers were riding and remarked that it was a very
-good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry provisions, the
-sick, and the wounded.
-
-The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal which
-feels it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To study the
-skillful tactics and aims of Napoleon and his army from the time it
-entered Moscow till it was destroyed is like studying the dying leaps
-and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very often a wounded animal,
-hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the hunter’s gun, runs forward and
-back again, and hastens its own end. Napoleon, under pressure from his
-whole army, did the same thing. The rustle of the battle of Tarútino
-frightened the beast, and it rushed forward onto the hunter’s gun,
-reached him, turned back, and finally—like any wild beast—ran back along
-the most disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent was
-familiar.
-
-During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have been
-the leader of all these movements—as the figurehead of a ship may seem
-to a savage to guide the vessel—acted like a child who, holding a couple
-of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving it.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of the
-shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little
-blue-gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped about
-him. This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside Karatáev at
-night; it sometimes made excursions into the town but always returned
-again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it still belonged to
-nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor; the soldier who
-told stories called it Femgálka; Karatáev and others called it Gray, or
-sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name, or even of a breed or
-any definite color did not seem to trouble the blue-gray dog in the
-least. Its furry tail stood up firm and round as a plume, its bandy legs
-served it so well that it would often gracefully lift a hind leg and run
-very easily and quickly on three legs, as if disdaining to use all
-four. Everything pleased it. Now it would roll on its back, yelping with
-delight, now bask in the sun with a thoughtful air of importance, and
-now frolic about playing with a chip of wood or a straw.
-
-Pierre’s attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the only
-remnant of his former clothing), a pair of soldier’s trousers which by
-Karatáev’s advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and
-a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this
-time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of
-solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache
-covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested
-with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes
-was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The former
-slackness which had shown itself even in his eyes was now replaced by an
-energetic readiness for action and resistance. His feet were bare.
-
-Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles and horsemen
-were passing that morning, then into the distance across the river, then
-at the dog who was pretending to be in earnest about biting him,
-and then at his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in various
-positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he looked at his
-bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction flitted across his face.
-The sight of them reminded him of all he had experienced and learned
-during these weeks and this recollection was pleasant to him.
-
-For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts in
-the mornings—what is called an “old wives’ summer.”
-
-In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly
-pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in
-the air.
-
-On everything—far and near—lay the magic crystal glitter seen only at
-that time of autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance,
-with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare trees,
-the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green church spire,
-and the corners of the white house in the distance, all stood out in the
-transparent air in most delicate outline and with unnatural clearness.
-Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a half-burned mansion
-occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still showing dark green
-beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled house—which in dull
-weather was repulsively ugly—seemed quietly beautiful now, in the clear,
-motionless brilliance.
-
-A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a skullcap on
-his head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from behind a corner of
-the shed and approached Pierre with a friendly wink.
-
-“What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!” (Their name for Pierre.) “Eh? Just like
-spring!”
-
-And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his pipe,
-though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it.
-
-“To be on the march in such weather...” he began.
-
-Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the corporal told
-him that nearly all the troops were starting and there ought to be an
-order about the prisoners that day. Sokolóv, one of the soldiers in the
-shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the corporal that something
-should be done about him. The corporal replied that Pierre need not
-worry about that as they had an ambulance and a permanent hospital and
-arrangements would be made for the sick, and that in general everything
-that could happen had been foreseen by the authorities.
-
-“Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the captain,
-you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to the captain
-when he makes his round, he will do anything for you.”
-
-(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with Pierre
-and showed him all sorts of favors.)
-
-“‘You see, St. Thomas,’ he said to me the other day. ‘Monsieur Kiril is
-a man of education, who speaks French. He is a Russian seigneur who has
-had misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what’s what.... If he wants
-anything and asks me, he won’t get a refusal. When one has studied, you
-see, one likes education and well-bred people.’ It is for your sake I
-mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not been for you
-that affair would have ended ill.”
-
-And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The affair
-he had alluded to had happened a few days before—a fight between the
-prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had succeeded in
-pacifying his comrades.) Some of the prisoners who had heard Pierre
-talking to the corporal immediately asked what the Frenchman had said.
-While Pierre was repeating what he had been told about the army leaving
-Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier came up to the door of
-the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his fingers to his forehead by way
-of greeting, he asked Pierre whether the soldier Platoche to whom he had
-given a shirt to sew was in that shed.
-
-A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to them,
-which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into boots and
-shirts for them.
-
-“Ready, ready, dear fellow!” said Karatáev, coming out with a neatly
-folded shirt.
-
-Karatáev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at work,
-was wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot. His
-hair was bound round, workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree bast,
-and his round face seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.
-
-“A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday and here it is,
-ready,” said Platón, smiling and unfolding the shirt he had sewn.
-
-The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his
-hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had
-a long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin bare
-body, but no shirt. He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking on
-would laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly. None
-of the prisoners said a word.
-
-“See, it fits well!” Platón kept repeating, pulling the shirt straight.
-
-The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without raising
-his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams.
-
-“You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper
-tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse,” said
-Platón with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his work.
-
-“It’s good, quite good, thank you,” said the Frenchman, in French, “but
-there must be some linen left over.”
-
-“It will fit better still when it sets to your body,” said Karatáev,
-still admiring his handiwork. “You’ll be nice and comfortable....”
-
-“Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?” said the
-Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note and
-gave it to Karatáev. “But give me the pieces that are over.”
-
-Pierre saw that Platón did not want to understand what the Frenchman
-was saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karatáev thanked the
-Frenchman for the money and went on admiring his own work. The Frenchman
-insisted on having the pieces returned that were left over and asked
-Pierre to translate what he said.
-
-“What does he want the bits for?” said Karatáev. “They’d make fine leg
-bands for us. Well, never mind.”
-
-And Karatáev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression, took
-a small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the
-Frenchman without looking at him. “Oh dear!” muttered Karatáev and went
-away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment, then
-looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre’s look had told him
-something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky voice:
-
-“Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!” And handing back the odd
-bits he turned and went out.
-
-“There, look at that,” said Karatáev, swaying his head. “People said
-they were not Christians, but they too have souls. It’s what the old
-folk used to say: ‘A sweating hand’s an open hand, a dry hand’s close.’
-He’s naked, but yet he’s given it back.”
-
-Karatáev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the
-pieces.
-
-“But they’ll make grand leg bands, dear friend,” he said, and went back
-into the shed.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and though
-the French had offered to move him from the men’s to the officers’ shed,
-he had stayed in the shed where he was first put.
-
-In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the extreme
-limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his physical
-strength and health, of which he had till then been unconscious, and
-thanks especially to the fact that the privations came so gradually that
-it was impossible to say when they began, he endured his position
-not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this time he obtained the
-tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly striven in vain to reach.
-He had long sought in different ways that tranquillity of mind, that
-inner harmony which had so impressed him in the soldiers at the battle
-of Borodinó. He had sought it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the
-dissipations of town life, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice,
-and in romantic love for Natásha; he had sought it by reasoning—and all
-these quests and experiments had failed him. And now without thinking
-about it he had found that peace and inner harmony only through the
-horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in
-Karatáev.
-
-Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as it
-were forever washed away from his imagination and memory the agitating
-thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important. It did
-not now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or politics, or
-Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things were no business
-of his, and that he was not called on to judge concerning them and
-therefore could not do so. “Russia and summer weather are not bound
-together,” he thought, repeating words of Karatáev’s which he found
-strangely consoling. His intention of killing Napoleon and his
-calculations of the cabalistic number of the beast of the Apocalypse now
-seemed to him meaningless and even ridiculous. His anger with his wife
-and anxiety that his name should not be smirched now seemed not merely
-trivial but even amusing. What concern was it of his that somewhere or
-other that woman was leading the life she preferred? What did it matter
-to anybody, and especially to him, whether or not they found out that
-their prisoner’s name was Count Bezúkhov?
-
-He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and quite
-agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew’s thoughts somewhat
-differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that happiness could
-only be negative, but had said it with a shade of bitterness and irony
-as though he was really saying that all desire for positive happiness is
-implanted in us merely to torment us and never be satisfied. But Pierre
-believed it without any mental reservation. The absence of suffering,
-the satisfaction of one’s needs and consequent freedom in the choice of
-one’s occupation, that is, of one’s way of life, now seemed to Pierre to
-be indubitably man’s highest happiness. Here and now for the first time
-he fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat,
-drinking when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of
-warmth when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to
-talk and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one’s needs—good
-food, cleanliness, and freedom—now that he was deprived of all this,
-seemed to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice
-of occupation, that is, of his way of life—now that that was so
-restricted—seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a
-superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one’s
-needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation—such freedom as
-his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in his
-own life—is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly difficult
-and destroys the desire and possibility of having an occupation.
-
-All Pierre’s daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free. Yet
-subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke with
-enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable, strong,
-joyful sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind and inner
-freedom which he experienced only during those weeks.
-
-When on the first day he got up early, went out of the shed at dawn, and
-saw the cupolas and crosses of the New Convent of the Virgin still dark
-at first, the hoarfrost on the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills, and the
-wooded banks above the winding river vanishing in the purple distance,
-when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the noise of the
-crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when afterwards light
-gleamed from the east and the sun’s rim appeared solemnly from behind a
-cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the hoarfrost, the distance and the
-river, all began to sparkle in the glad light—Pierre felt a new joy and
-strength in life such as he had never before known. And this not only
-stayed with him during the whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in
-strength as the hardships of his position increased.
-
-That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything was still
-further strengthened in him by the high opinion his fellow prisoners
-formed of him soon after his arrival at the shed. With his knowledge
-of languages, the respect shown him by the French, his simplicity, his
-readiness to give anything asked of him (he received the allowance
-of three rubles a week made to officers); with his strength, which he
-showed to the soldiers by pressing nails into the walls of the hut; his
-gentleness to his companions, and his capacity for sitting still and
-thinking without doing anything (which seemed to them incomprehensible),
-he appeared to them a rather mysterious and superior being. The very
-qualities that had been a hindrance, if not actually harmful, to him in
-the world he had lived in—his strength, his disdain for the comforts of
-life, his absent-mindedness and simplicity—here among these people gave
-him almost the status of a hero. And Pierre felt that their opinion
-placed responsibilities upon him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and seventh
-of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts loaded, and troops
-and baggage trains started.
-
-At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing shakos
-and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in front
-of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses sounded all
-along the lines.
-
-In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only awaited
-the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolóv, pale and thin with dark
-shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot and not dressed.
-His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his face, gazed inquiringly
-at his comrades who were paying no attention to him, and he moaned
-regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so much his sufferings that
-caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as his fear and grief at being
-left alone.
-
-Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes Karatáev had
-made for him from some leather a French soldier had torn off a tea chest
-and brought to have his boots mended with, went up to the sick man and
-squatted down beside him.
-
-“You know, Sokolóv, they are not all going away! They have a hospital
-here. You may be better off than we others,” said Pierre.
-
-“O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!” moaned the man in a
-louder voice.
-
-“I’ll go and ask them again directly,” said Pierre, rising and going to
-the door of the shed.
-
-Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him a
-pipe the day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal and
-soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had metal
-straps, and these changed their familiar faces.
-
-The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The prisoners
-had to be counted before being let out.
-
-“Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?...” Pierre began.
-
-But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal
-he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that
-moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of drums
-was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at Pierre’s
-words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door. The shed
-became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two sides drowned
-the sick man’s groans.
-
-“There it is!... It again!...” said Pierre to himself, and an
-involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal’s changed face,
-in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise of the
-drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which compelled
-people against their will to kill their fellow men—that force the effect
-of which he had witnessed during the executions. To fear or to try to
-escape that force, to address entreaties or exhortations to those who
-served as its tools, was useless. Pierre knew this now. One had to wait
-and endure. He did not again go to the sick man, nor turn to look at
-him, but stood frowning by the door of the hut.
-
-When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one
-another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed
-his way forward and approached that very captain who as the corporal had
-assured him was ready to do anything for him. The captain was also in
-marching kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which Pierre
-had recognized in the corporal’s words and in the roll of the drums.
-
-“Pass on, pass on!” the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and
-looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.
-
-Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.
-
-“What now?” the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing
-Pierre.
-
-Pierre told him about the sick man.
-
-“He’ll manage to walk, devil take him!” said the captain. “Pass on, pass
-on!” he continued without looking at Pierre.
-
-“But he is dying,” Pierre again began.
-
-“Be so good...” shouted the captain, frowning angrily.
-
-“Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam...” rattled the drums, and Pierre understood
-that this mysterious force completely controlled these men and that it
-was now useless to say any more.
-
-The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to march
-in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among them, and
-about three hundred men.
-
-The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all strangers to
-Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at him and at his
-shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him walked a fat major
-with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing a Kazán dressing
-gown tied round with a towel, and who evidently enjoyed the respect of
-his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in which he clasped his tobacco
-pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing gown and held the stem of his
-pipe firmly with the other. Panting and puffing, the major grumbled and
-growled at everybody because he thought he was being pushed and that
-they were all hurrying when they had nowhere to hurry to and were
-all surprised at something when there was nothing to be surprised at.
-Another, a thin little officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing
-where they were now being taken and how far they would get that day. An
-official in felt boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from
-side to side and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his
-observations as to what had been burned down and what this or that part
-of the city was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent
-was a Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was
-mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.
-
-“What are you disputing about?” said the major angrily. “What does it
-matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it’s burned
-down, and there’s an end of it.... What are you pushing for? Isn’t the
-road wide enough?” said he, turning to a man behind him who was not
-pushing him at all.
-
-“Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?” the prisoners on one side and another
-were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. “All beyond the
-river, and Zúbova, and in the Krémlin.... Just look! There’s not half of
-it left. Yes, I told you—the whole quarter beyond the river, and so it
-is.”
-
-“Well, you know it’s burned, so what’s the use of talking?” said the
-major.
-
-As they passed near a church in the Khamóvniki (one of the few unburned
-quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly started to one
-side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.
-
-“Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And
-smeared with something!”
-
-Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked these
-exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the palings
-surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw better
-than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set upright
-against the palings with its face smeared with soot.
-
-“Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!...” the convoy
-guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh virulence,
-drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who were gazing at
-the dead man.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-Through the cross streets of the Khamóvniki quarter the prisoners
-marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons
-belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they
-came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with
-private vehicles.
-
-At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get across.
-From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving baggage
-trains before and behind them. To the right, where the Kalúga road turns
-near Neskúchny, endless rows of troops and carts stretched away into
-the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais’ corps which had started
-before any of the others. Behind, along the riverside and across the
-Stone Bridge, were Ney’s troops and transport.
-
-Davout’s troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing the
-Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kalúga road.
-But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais’
-train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the Kalúga road when
-the vanguard of Ney’s army was already emerging from the Great Ordýnka
-Street.
-
-When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few steps
-forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles and men
-crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few hundred paces
-that separated the bridge from the Kalúga road, taking more than an
-hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the streets of the
-Transmoskvá ward and the Kalúga road converge, and the prisoners jammed
-close together had to stand for some hours at that crossway. From all
-sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard the rattle of wheels, the
-tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger and abuse. Pierre stood
-pressed against the wall of a charred house, listening to that noise
-which mingled in his imagination with the roll of the drums.
-
-To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the wall of
-the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.
-
-“What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They’ve loaded goods even on
-the cannon! Look there, those are furs!” they exclaimed. “Just see what
-the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one has behind
-in the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some icons, by
-heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has loaded
-himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they’ve even grabbed those
-chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks.... Heavens!
-They’re fighting.”
-
-“That’s right, hit him on the snout—on his snout! Like this, we
-shan’t get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be
-Napoleon’s own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown! It’s
-like a portable house.... That fellow’s dropped his sack and doesn’t see
-it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not bad-looking either!
-Yes, I dare say, that’s the way they’ll let you pass.... Just look,
-there’s no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven, so they are! In
-carriages—see how comfortably they’ve settled themselves!”
-
-Again, as at the church in Khamóvniki, a wave of general curiosity
-bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to
-his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted their
-curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts, closely
-squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in glaring
-colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices.
-
-From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the mysterious
-force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful: neither the corpse
-smeared with soot for fun nor these women hurrying away nor the burned
-ruins of Moscow. All that he now witnessed scarcely made an impression
-on him—as if his soul, making ready for a hard struggle, refused to
-receive impressions that might weaken it.
-
-The women’s vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts, soldiers,
-wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers, ammunition carts,
-more soldiers, and now and then women.
-
-Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.
-
-All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some invisible
-power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came flowing from
-the different streets with one and the same desire to get on quickly;
-they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to fight, white
-teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of abuse flew from
-side to side, and all the faces bore the same swaggeringly resolute
-and coldly cruel expression that had struck Pierre that morning on the
-corporal’s face when the drums were beating.
-
-It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the escort
-collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way in among
-the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all sides, emerged
-onto the Kalúga road.
-
-They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the sun
-began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men
-began to prepare for their night’s rest. They all appeared angry and
-dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could
-be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran
-into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole. Several
-soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat the
-carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others fought among
-themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly wounded on the head
-by a sword.
-
-It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid fields
-in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and the same
-feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and eagerness to push on
-that had seized them at the start. Once at a standstill they all seemed
-to understand that they did not yet know where they were going, and that
-much that was painful and difficult awaited them on this journey.
-
-During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than they
-had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the first time
-received horseflesh for their meat ration.
-
-From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what seemed like
-personal spite against each of the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to
-their former friendly relations.
-
-This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of
-prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one Russian
-soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had escaped. Pierre saw
-a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for straying too far from
-the road, and heard his friend the captain reprimand and threaten to
-court-martial a noncommissioned officer on account of the escape of the
-Russian. To the noncommissioned officer’s excuse that the prisoner was
-ill and could not walk, the officer replied that the order was to shoot
-those who lagged behind. Pierre felt that that fatal force which had
-crushed him during the executions, but which he had not felt during his
-imprisonment, now again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but
-he felt that in proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush
-him, there grew and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent
-of it.
-
-He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with his
-comrades.
-
-Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen in
-Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of the
-order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in reaction
-against the worsening of their position they were all particularly
-animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences, of amusing
-scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and avoided all talk of
-their present situation.
-
-The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in the
-sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon from the
-rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely in the gray
-haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night had not yet
-come. Pierre got up and left his new companions, crossing between the
-campfires to the other side of the road where he had been told the
-common soldier prisoners were stationed. He wanted to talk to them. On
-the road he was stopped by a French sentinel who ordered him back.
-
-Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an
-unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him and
-dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of the
-cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought. Suddenly he
-burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured laughter, so loud that
-men from various sides turned with surprise to see what this strange and
-evidently solitary laughter could mean.
-
-“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: “The soldier
-did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me captive.
-What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!...” and he laughed
-till tears started to his eyes.
-
-A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing at
-all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther away from
-the inquisitive man, and looked around him.
-
-The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the
-crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the
-red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the light
-sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen
-before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still, beyond
-those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless distance
-lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the twinkling
-stars in its faraway depths. “And all that is me, all that is within me,
-and it is all I!” thought Pierre. “And they caught all that and put it
-into a shed boarded up with planks!” He smiled, and went and lay down to
-sleep beside his companions.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutúzov with a letter
-from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow, though
-Napoleon was already not far from Kutúzov on the old Kalúga road.
-Kutúzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one formerly
-brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no question of peace.
-
-Soon after that a report was received from Dórokhov’s guerrilla
-detachment operating to the left of Tarútino that troops of Broussier’s
-division had been seen at Formínsk and that being separated from the
-rest of the French army they might easily be destroyed. The soldiers and
-officers again demanded action. Generals on the staff, excited by the
-memory of the easy victory at Tarútino, urged Kutúzov to carry out
-Dórokhov’s suggestion. Kutúzov did not consider any offensive necessary.
-The result was a compromise which was inevitable: a small detachment was
-sent to Formínsk to attack Broussier.
-
-By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most
-difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhtúrov—that same modest
-little Dokhtúrov whom no one had described to us as drawing up plans
-of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering crosses on
-batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was spoken of as
-undecided and undiscerning—but whom we find commanding wherever the
-position was most difficult all through the Russo-French wars from
-Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he remained last at the
-Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what was possible when all
-were flying and perishing and not a single general was left in the rear
-guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolénsk with twenty thousand men
-to defend the town against Napoleon’s whole army. In Smolénsk, at the
-Malákhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in a paroxysm of fever before he
-was awakened by the bombardment of the town—and Smolénsk held out all
-day long. At the battle of Borodinó, when Bagratión was killed and nine
-tenths of the men of our left flank had fallen and the full force of the
-French artillery fire was directed against it, the man sent there was
-this same irresolute and undiscerning Dokhtúrov—Kutúzov hastening to
-rectify a mistake he had made by sending someone else there first.
-And the quiet little Dokhtúrov rode thither, and Borodinó became the
-greatest glory of the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to
-us in verse and prose, but of Dokhtúrov scarcely a word has been said.
-
-It was Dokhtúrov again whom they sent to Formínsk and from there to
-Málo-Yaroslávets, the place where the last battle with the French was
-fought and where the obvious disintegration of the French army began;
-and we are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of the
-campaign, but of Dokhtúrov nothing or very little is said and that
-dubiously. And this silence about Dokhtúrov is the clearest testimony to
-his merit.
-
-It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a
-machine to imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance
-and is interfering with its action and tossing about in it is its most
-important part. The man who does not understand the construction of
-the machine cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which
-revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine, and
-not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working.
-
-On the tenth of October when Dokhtúrov had gone halfway to Formínsk and
-stopped at the village of Aristóvo, preparing faithfully to execute the
-orders he had received, the whole French army having, in its convulsive
-movement, reached Murat’s position apparently in order to give
-battle—suddenly without any reason turned off to the left onto the new
-Kalúga road and began to enter Formínsk, where only Broussier had
-been till then. At that time Dokhtúrov had under his command, besides
-Dórokhov’s detachment, the two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and
-Seslávin.
-
-On the evening of October 11 Seslávin came to the Aristóvo headquarters
-with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner said that the
-troops that had entered Formínsk that day were the vanguard of the whole
-army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army had left Moscow four
-days previously. That same evening a house serf who had come from
-Bórovsk said he had seen an immense army entering the town. Some
-Cossacks of Dokhtúrov’s detachment reported having sighted the French
-Guards marching along the road to Bórovsk. From all these reports it was
-evident that where they had expected to meet a single division there
-was now the whole French army marching from Moscow in an unexpected
-direction—along the Kalúga road. Dokhtúrov was unwilling to undertake
-any action, as it was not clear to him now what he ought to do. He had
-been ordered to attack Formínsk. But only Broussier had been there at
-that time and now the whole French army was there. Ermólov wished to act
-on his own judgment, but Dokhtúrov insisted that he must have Kutúzov’s
-instructions. So it was decided to send a dispatch to the staff.
-
-For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovítinov, was chosen, who
-was to explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering
-a written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovítinov, having received the
-dispatch and verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff
-accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four days.
-Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour and a
-half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovítinov reached Litashëvka after
-one o’clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle fence
-hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he entered
-a dark passage.
-
-“The general on duty, quick! It’s very important!” said he to someone
-who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.
-
-“He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third night
-he has not slept,” said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper. “You should
-wake the captain first.”
-
-“But this is very important, from General Dokhtúrov,” said
-Bolkhovítinov, entering the open door which he had found by feeling in
-the dark.
-
-The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.
-
-“Your honor, your honor! A courier.”
-
-“What? What’s that? From whom?” came a sleepy voice.
-
-“From Dokhtúrov and from Alexéy Petróvich. Napoleon is at Formínsk,”
-said Bolkhovítinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but
-guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnítsyn.
-
-The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.
-
-“I don’t like waking him,” he said, fumbling for something. “He is very
-ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor.”
-
-“Here is the dispatch,” said Bolkhovítinov. “My orders are to give it at
-once to the general on duty.”
-
-“Wait a moment, I’ll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you
-always hide it?” said the voice of the man who was stretching himself,
-to the orderly. (This was Shcherbínin, Konovnítsyn’s adjutant.) “I’ve
-found it, I’ve found it!” he added.
-
-The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbínin was fumbling for
-something on the candlestick.
-
-“Oh, the nasty beasts!” said he with disgust.
-
-By the light of the sparks Bolkhovítinov saw Shcherbínin’s youthful face
-as he held the candle, and the face of another man who was still asleep.
-This was Konovnítsyn.
-
-When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned
-up, first blue and then red, Shcherbínin lit the tallow candle, from
-the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were
-running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovítinov was bespattered
-all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it with his sleeve.
-
-“Who gave the report?” inquired Shcherbínin, taking the envelope.
-
-“The news is reliable,” said Bolkhovítinov. “Prisoners, Cossacks, and
-the scouts all say the same thing.”
-
-“There’s nothing to be done, we’ll have to wake him,” said Shcherbínin,
-rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay covered by a
-greatcoat. “Peter Petróvich!” said he. (Konovnítsyn did not stir.) “To
-the General Staff!” he said with a smile, knowing that those words would
-be sure to arouse him.
-
-And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On
-Konovnítsyn’s handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever,
-there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote
-from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and his face assumed
-its habitual calm and firm appearance.
-
-“Well, what is it? From whom?” he asked immediately but without hurry,
-blinking at the light.
-
-While listening to the officer’s report Konovnítsyn broke the seal and
-read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his legs in
-their woolen stockings to the earthen floor and began putting on his
-boots. Then he took off his nightcap, combed his hair over his temples,
-and donned his cap.
-
-“Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness.”
-
-Konovnítsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of great
-importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or ask
-himself whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest him. He
-regarded the whole business of the war not with his intelligence or his
-reason but by something else. There was within him a deep unexpressed
-conviction that all would be well, but that one must not trust to this
-and still less speak about it, but must only attend to one’s own work.
-And he did his work, giving his whole strength to the task.
-
-Peter Petróvich Konovnítsyn, like Dokhtúrov, seems to have been included
-merely for propriety’s sake in the list of the so-called heroes of
-1812—the Barclays, Raévskis, Ermólovs, Plátovs, and Milorádoviches. Like
-Dokhtúrov he had the reputation of being a man of very limited capacity
-and information, and like Dokhtúrov he never made plans of battle but
-was always found where the situation was most difficult. Since his
-appointment as general on duty he had always slept with his door open,
-giving orders that every messenger should be allowed to wake him up. In
-battle he was always under fire, so that Kutúzov reproved him for it and
-feared to send him to the front, and like Dokhtúrov he was one of those
-unnoticed cogwheels that, without clatter or noise, constitute the most
-essential part of the machine.
-
-Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnítsyn
-frowned—partly from an increased pain in his head and partly at the
-unpleasant thought that occurred to him, of how all that nest of
-influential men on the staff would be stirred up by this news,
-especially Bennigsen, who ever since Tarútino had been at daggers
-drawn with Kutúzov; and how they would make suggestions, quarrel, issue
-orders, and rescind them. And this premonition was disagreeable to him
-though he knew it could not be helped.
-
-And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news, immediately
-began to expound his plans to a general sharing his quarters, until
-Konovnítsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded him that they must
-go to see his Highness.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-Kutúzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often fell
-asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at night, lying on his bed
-without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking.
-
-So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred head on
-his plump hand, with his one eye open, meditating and peering into the
-darkness.
-
-Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor and had more
-influence than anyone else on the staff, had begun to avoid him, Kutúzov
-was more at ease as to the possibility of himself and his troops being
-obliged to take part in useless aggressive movements. The lesson of the
-Tarútino battle and of the day before it, which Kutúzov remembered with
-pain, must, he thought, have some effect on others too.
-
-“They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive.
-Patience and time are my warriors, my champions,” thought Kutúzov. He
-knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall
-of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree
-is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an experienced sportsman
-he knew that the beast was wounded, and wounded as only the whole
-strength of Russia could have wounded it, but whether it was mortally
-wounded or not was still an undecided question. Now by the fact of
-Lauriston and Barthélemi having been sent, and by the reports of the
-guerrillas, Kutúzov was almost sure that the wound was mortal. But he
-needed further proofs and it was necessary to wait.
-
-“They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall
-see! Continual maneuvers, continual advances!” thought he. “What for?
-Only to distinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are
-like children from whom one can’t get any sensible account of what has
-happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But
-that’s not what is needed now.
-
-“And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to
-them that when they have thought of two or three contingencies” (he
-remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) “they have
-foreseen everything. But the contingencies are endless.”
-
-The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodinó was
-mortal or not had hung over Kutúzov’s head for a whole month. On the one
-hand the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutúzov felt assured
-with all his being that the terrible blow into which he and all the
-Russians had put their whole strength must have been mortal. But in any
-case proofs were needed; he had waited a whole month for them and grew
-more impatient the longer he waited. Lying on his bed during those
-sleepless nights he did just what he reproached those younger generals
-for doing. He imagined all sorts of possible contingencies, just like
-the younger men, but with this difference, that he saw thousands of
-contingencies instead of two or three and based nothing on them. The
-longer he thought the more contingencies presented themselves. He
-imagined all sorts of movements of the Napoleonic army as a whole or
-in sections—against Petersburg, or against him, or to outflank him.
-He thought too of the possibility (which he feared most of all) that
-Napoleon might fight him with his own weapon and remain in Moscow
-awaiting him. Kutúzov even imagined that Napoleon’s army might turn back
-through Medýn and Yukhnóv, but the one thing he could not foresee was
-what happened—the insane, convulsive stampede of Napoleon’s army during
-its first eleven days after leaving Moscow: a stampede which made
-possible what Kutúzov had not yet even dared to think of—the complete
-extermination of the French. Dórokhov’s report about Broussier’s
-division, the guerrillas’ reports of distress in Napoleon’s army, rumors
-of preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that
-the French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But these were
-only suppositions, which seemed important to the younger men but not to
-Kutúzov. With his sixty years’ experience he knew what value to attach
-to rumors, knew how apt people who desire anything are to group all news
-so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he knew how readily
-in such cases they omit all that makes for the contrary. And the more
-he desired it the less he allowed himself to believe it. This question
-absorbed all his mental powers. All else was to him only life’s
-customary routine. To such customary routine belonged his conversations
-with the staff, the letters he wrote from Tarútino to Madame de Staël,
-the reading of novels, the distribution of awards, his correspondence
-with Petersburg, and so on. But the destruction of the French, which he
-alone foresaw, was his heart’s one desire.
-
-On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on his arm and
-thinking of that.
-
-There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll,
-Konovnítsyn, and Bolkhovítinov.
-
-“Eh, who’s there? Come in, come in! What news?” the field marshal called
-out to them.
-
-While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the substance
-of the news.
-
-“Who brought it?” asked Kutúzov with a look which, when the candle was
-lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.
-
-“There can be no doubt about it, your Highness.”
-
-“Call him in, call him here.”
-
-Kutúzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big paunch
-resting against the other which was doubled under him. He screwed up his
-seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more carefully, as if wishing to
-read in his face what preoccupied his own mind.
-
-“Tell me, tell me, friend,” said he to Bolkhovítinov in his low, aged
-voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his chest,
-“come nearer—nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That Napoleon
-has left Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?”
-
-Bolkhovítinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he had
-been told to report.
-
-“Speak quicker, quicker! Don’t torture me!” Kutúzov interrupted him.
-
-Bolkhovítinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting
-instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutúzov checked
-him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered and
-wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side of
-the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there.
-
-“O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer...” said he in a
-tremulous voice with folded hands. “Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O
-Lord!” and he wept.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all
-Kutúzov’s activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by
-authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks,
-maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhtúrov went to
-Málo-Yaroslávets, but Kutúzov lingered with the main army and gave
-orders for the evacuation of Kalúga—a retreat beyond which town seemed
-to him quite possible.
-
-Everywhere Kutúzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for his
-retreat fled in the opposite direction.
-
-Napoleon’s historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at Tarútino
-and Málo-Yaroslávets, and make conjectures as to what would have
-happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich southern
-provinces.
-
-But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from advancing
-into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did not bar his
-way), the historians forget that nothing could have saved his army, for
-then already it bore within itself the germs of inevitable ruin. How
-could that army—which had found abundant supplies in Moscow and had
-trampled them underfoot instead of keeping them, and on arriving at
-Smolénsk had looted provisions instead of storing them—how could that
-army recuperate in Kalúga province, which was inhabited by Russians such
-as those who lived in Moscow, and where fire had the same property of
-consuming what was set ablaze?
-
-That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodinó
-and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were, the
-chemical elements of dissolution.
-
-The members of what had once been an army—Napoleon himself and all his
-soldiers fled—without knowing whither, each concerned only to make his
-escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the hopelessness of
-which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.
-
-So it came about that at the council at Málo-Yaroslávets, when the
-generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all
-mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier
-Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing
-needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not
-even Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all
-recognized.
-
-But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away, there
-still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must flee. An
-external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this shock came in
-due time. It was what the French called “le hourra de l’Empereur.”
-
-The day after the council at Málo-Yaroslávets Napoleon rode out early in
-the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of marshals and
-an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and the scene of the
-previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks on the prowl for
-booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly captured him. If the
-Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what saved him was the very
-thing that was destroying the French army, the booty on which the
-Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarútino they went after plunder, leaving the
-men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed after the plunder and Napoleon
-managed to escape.
-
-When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor himself
-in the midst of his army, it was clear that there was nothing for it but
-to fly as fast as possible along the nearest, familiar road. Napoleon
-with his forty-year-old stomach understood that hint, not feeling his
-former agility and boldness, and under the influence of the fright
-the Cossacks had given him he at once agreed with Mouton and issued
-orders—as the historians tell us—to retreat by the Smolénsk road.
-
-That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated, does
-not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces which
-influenced the whole army and directed it along the Mozháysk (that is,
-the Smolénsk) road acted simultaneously on him also.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to go
-a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him at the
-end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a promised
-land to have the strength to move.
-
-The promised land for the French during their advance had been Moscow,
-during their retreat it was their native land. But that native land
-was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is absolutely
-necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to himself: “Today I
-shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I shall rest and
-spend the night,” and during the first day’s journey that resting place
-eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his hopes and desires. And
-the impulses felt by a single person are always magnified in a crowd.
-
-For the French retreating along the old Smolénsk road, the final
-goal—their native land—was too remote, and their immediate goal
-was Smolénsk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously
-intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that
-much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolénsk, nor that they were
-told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon himself,
-knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this alone could
-give them strength to move on and endure their present privations. So
-both those who knew and those who did not know deceived themselves, and
-pushed on to Smolénsk as to a promised land.
-
-Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising energy
-and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on. Besides the
-common impulse which bound the whole crowd of French into one mass and
-supplied them with a certain energy, there was another cause binding
-them together—their great numbers. As with the physical law of gravity,
-their enormous mass drew the individual human atoms to itself. In their
-hundreds of thousands they moved like a whole nation.
-
-Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a prisoner
-to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one hand the force
-of this common attraction to Smolénsk, their goal, drew each of them in
-the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender
-to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every
-convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the
-slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur. Their
-very numbers and their crowded and swift movement deprived them of that
-possibility and rendered it not only difficult but impossible for the
-Russians to stop this movement, to which the French were directing all
-their energies. Beyond a certain limit no mechanical disruption of the
-body could hasten the process of decomposition.
-
-A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a certain
-limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt the snow. On
-the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the remaining snow
-becomes.
-
-Of the Russian commanders Kutúzov alone understood this. When the flight
-of the French army along the Smolénsk road became well defined, what
-Konovnítsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of October began
-to occur. The superior officers all wanted to distinguish themselves,
-to cut off, to seize, to capture, and to overthrow the French, and all
-clamored for action.
-
-Kutúzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited in the
-case of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack.
-
-He could not tell them what we say now: “Why fight, why block the road,
-losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate wretches? What
-is the use of that, when a third of their army has melted away on the
-road from Moscow to Vyázma without any battle?” But drawing from his
-aged wisdom what they could understand, he told them of the golden
-bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him, flinging themselves on,
-rending and exulting over the dying beast.
-
-Ermólov, Milorádovich, Plátov, and others in proximity to the French
-near Vyázma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up two
-French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutúzov they
-sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.
-
-And try as Kutúzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked,
-trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to the
-attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lost thousands
-of men.
-
-But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army,
-closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily melting
-away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolénsk.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-The Battle of Borodinó, with the occupation of Moscow that followed it
-and the flight of the French without further conflicts, is one of the
-most instructive phenomena in history.
-
-All historians agree that the external activity of states and nations
-in their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars, and that as a
-direct result of greater or less success in war the political strength
-of states and nations increases or decreases.
-
-Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or emperor,
-having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his enemy’s
-army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten thousand men, and
-subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several millions, all
-the facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm the truth of the
-statement that the greater or lesser success of one army against another
-is the cause, or at least an essential indication, of an increase or
-decrease in the strength of the nation—even though it is unintelligible
-why the defeat of an army—a hundredth part of a nation—should oblige
-that whole nation to submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the
-rights of the conquering nation have increased to the detriment of the
-defeated. An army has suffered defeat, and at once a people loses its
-rights in proportion to the severity of the reverse, and if its army
-suffers a complete defeat the nation is quite subjugated.
-
-So according to history it has been found from the most ancient times,
-and so it is to our own day. All Napoleon’s wars serve to confirm this
-rule. In proportion to the defeat of the Austrian army Austria loses
-its rights, and the rights and the strength of France increase. The
-victories of the French at Jena and Auerstädt destroy the independent
-existence of Prussia.
-
-But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow is
-taken and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia that
-ceases to exist, but the French army of six hundred thousand, and
-then Napoleonic France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules of
-history: to say that the field of battle at Borodinó remained in the
-hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were other battles
-that destroyed Napoleon’s army, is impossible.
-
-After the French victory at Borodinó there was no general engagement nor
-any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist. What
-does this mean? If it were an example taken from the history of China,
-we might say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which is the
-historians’ usual expedient when anything does not fit their standards);
-if the matter concerned some brief conflict in which only a small number
-of troops took part, we might treat it as an exception; but this event
-occurred before our fathers’ eyes, and for them it was a question of the
-life or death of their fatherland, and it happened in the greatest of
-all known wars.
-
-The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodinó to the
-expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does not
-produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of conquest;
-it proved that the force which decides the fate of peoples lies not in
-the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in something else.
-
-The French historians, describing the condition of the French army
-before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in order in the Grand Army,
-except the cavalry, the artillery, and the transport—there was no forage
-for the horses or the cattle. That was a misfortune no one could remedy,
-for the peasants of the district burned their hay rather than let the
-French have it.
-
-The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the peasants
-Karp and Vlas (who after the French had evacuated Moscow drove in their
-carts to pillage the town, and in general personally failed to manifest
-any heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable multitude of such
-peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for the high price offered
-them, but burned it instead.
-
-Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with rapiers
-according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The fencing has
-gone on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants, feeling himself
-wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke but concerns his
-life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first cudgel that comes to
-hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine that the combatant who
-so sensibly employed the best and simplest means to attain his end was
-at the same time influenced by traditions of chivalry and, desiring to
-conceal the facts of the case, insisted that he had gained his victory
-with the rapier according to all the rules of art. One can imagine what
-confusion and obscurity would result from such an account of the duel.
-
-The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of fencing was
-the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier and snatched up
-the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to explain the matter
-according to the rules of fencing are the historians who have described
-the event.
-
-After the burning of Smolénsk a war began which did not follow any
-previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the
-retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodinó and the renewed
-retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the seizure of
-transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures from the rules.
-
-Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing
-attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent’s rapier saw a cudgel
-raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutúzov and to
-the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to all
-the rules—as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite of the
-complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the rules, in
-spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it seemed rather
-disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to assume a pose en
-quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and to make an adroit
-thrust en prime, and so on—the cudgel of the people’s war was lifted
-with all its menacing and majestic strength, and without consulting
-anyone’s tastes or rules and regardless of anything else, it rose and
-fell with stupid simplicity, but consistently, and belabored the French
-till the whole invasion had perished.
-
-And it is well for a people who do not—as the French did in 1813—salute
-according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt of their
-rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their magnanimous conqueror,
-but at the moment of trial, without asking what rules others have
-adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick up the first cudgel
-that comes to hand and strike with it till the feeling of resentment and
-revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of contempt and compassion.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the so-called
-laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men pressed
-together in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars that take on a
-national character. In such actions, instead of two crowds opposing
-each other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away when attacked by
-stronger forces, but again attack when opportunity offers. This was done
-by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain tribes in the Caucasus, and
-by the Russians in 1812.
-
-People have called this kind of war “guerrilla warfare” and assume that
-by so calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a war does
-not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a well-known rule
-of tactics which is accepted as infallible. That rule says that an
-attacker should concentrate his forces in order to be stronger than his
-opponent at the moment of conflict.
-
-Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly infringes
-that rule.
-
-This contradiction arises from the fact that military science assumes
-the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers. Military
-science says that the more troops the greater the strength. Les gros
-bataillons ont toujours raison. *
-
- * Large battalions are always victorious.
-
-For military science to say this is like defining momentum in mechanics
-by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are equal or unequal
-to each other simply because the masses involved are equal or unequal.
-
-Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.
-
-In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass
-and some unknown x.
-
-Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the fact
-that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and that
-small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the existence
-of this unknown factor and tries to discover it—now in a geometric
-formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most usually, in the
-genius of the commanders. But the assignment of these various meanings
-to the factor does not yield results which accord with the historic
-facts.
-
-Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to gratify
-the “heroes”) of the efficacy of the directions issued in wartime by
-commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.
-
-That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the
-greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the men
-composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are not,
-fighting under the command of a genius, in two—or three-line formation,
-with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a minute. Men
-who want to fight will always put themselves in the most advantageous
-conditions for fighting.
-
-The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass gives
-the resulting force. To define and express the significance of this
-unknown factor—the spirit of an army—is a problem for science.
-
-This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to substitute
-for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that force becomes
-apparent—such as the commands of the general, the equipment employed,
-and so on—mistaking these for the real significance of the factor,
-and if we recognize this unknown quantity in its entirety as being
-the greater or lesser desire to fight and to face danger. Only then,
-expressing known historic facts by equations and comparing the relative
-significance of this factor, can we hope to define the unknown.
-
-Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions, or
-divisions, conquer—that is, kill or take captive—all the others, while
-themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and on the other
-fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to the fifteen, and
-therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This equation does not
-give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us a ratio between two
-unknowns. And by bringing variously selected historic units (battles,
-campaigns, periods of war) into such equations, a series of numbers
-could be obtained in which certain laws should exist and might be
-discovered.
-
-The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when attacking, and
-in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms the truth that the
-strength of an army depends on its spirit. To lead men forward under
-fire more discipline (obtainable only by movement in masses) is needed
-than is needed to resist attacks. But this rule which leaves out of
-account the spirit of the army continually proves incorrect and is in
-particularly striking contrast to the facts when some strong rise or
-fall in the spirit of the troops occurs, as in all national wars.
-
-The French, retreating in 1812—though according to tactics they should
-have separated into detachments to defend themselves—congregated into
-a mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen that only the mass
-held the army together. The Russians, on the contrary, ought according
-to tactics to have attacked in mass, but in fact they split up
-into small units, because their spirit had so risen that separate
-individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the French without needing
-any compulsion to induce them to expose themselves to hardships and
-dangers.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into
-Smolénsk.
-
-Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by the
-government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders, and foragers had
-been destroyed by the Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off
-as instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death. Denís Davýdov,
-with his Russian instinct, was the first to recognize the value of
-this terrible cudgel which regardless of the rules of military science
-destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit for taking the first
-step toward regularizing this method of warfare.
-
-On August 24 Davýdov’s first partisan detachment was formed and then
-others were recognized. The further the campaign progressed the more
-numerous these detachments became.
-
-The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They gathered the
-fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from that withered tree—the
-French army—and sometimes shook that tree itself. By October, when
-the French were fleeing toward Smolénsk, there were hundreds of such
-companies, of various sizes and characters. There were some that adopted
-all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs, and the
-comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack cavalry. There were
-also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and groups of peasants and
-landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan commanded one party which
-captured several hundred prisoners in the course of a month; and there
-was Vasílisa, the wife of a village elder, who slew hundreds of the
-French.
-
-The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of
-October. Its first period had passed: when the partisans themselves,
-amazed at their own boldness, feared every minute to be surrounded
-and captured by the French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling,
-hardly daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the end
-of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it had become
-clear to all what could be ventured against the French and what could
-not. Now only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and moving
-according to rules at a distance from the French, still regarded many
-things as impossible. The small bands that had started their activities
-long before and had already observed the French closely considered
-things possible which the commanders of the big detachments did not dare
-to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants who crept in among the French
-now considered everything possible.
-
-On October 22, Denísov (who was one of the irregulars) was with his
-group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early morning he
-and his party had been on the move. All day long he had been watching
-from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French convoy of
-cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the rest of the
-army, which—as was learned from spies and prisoners—was moving under a
-strong escort to Smolénsk. Besides Denísov and Dólokhov (who also led
-a small party and moved in Denísov’s vicinity), the commanders of some
-large divisions with staffs also knew of this convoy and, as Denísov
-expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for it. Two of the commanders
-of large parties—one a Pole and the other a German—sent invitations
-to Denísov almost simultaneously, requesting him to join up with their
-divisions to attack the convoy.
-
-“No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself,” said Denísov on reading
-these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite his heartfelt
-desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general, he had to forgo
-that pleasure because he was already under the command of the Polish
-general. To the Polish general he replied to the same effect, informing
-him that he was already under the command of the German.
-
-Having arranged matters thus, Denísov and Dólokhov intended, without
-reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that
-convoy with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from
-the village of Mikúlino to that of Shámshevo. To the left of the road
-between Mikúlino and Shámshevo there were large forests, extending in
-some places up to the road itself though in others a mile or more back
-from it. Through these forests Denísov and his party rode all day,
-sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to the very
-edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That morning,
-Cossacks of Denísov’s party had seized and carried off into the forest
-two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck in the mud not
-far from Mikúlino where the forest ran close to the road. Since then,
-and until evening, the party had watched the movements of the French
-without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach Shámshevo
-quietly without alarming them and then, after joining Dólokhov who was
-to come that evening to a consultation at a watchman’s hut in the forest
-less than a mile from Shámshevo, to surprise the French at dawn, falling
-like an avalanche on their heads from two sides, and rout and capture
-them all at one blow.
-
-In their rear, more than a mile from Mikúlino where the forest came
-right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any fresh
-columns of French should show themselves.
-
-Beyond Shámshevo, Dólokhov was to observe the road in the same way, to
-find out at what distance there were other French troops. They reckoned
-that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Denísov had two hundred, and
-Dólokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of numbers did not
-deter Denísov. All that he now wanted to know was what troops these were
-and to learn that he had to capture a “tongue”—that is, a man from
-the enemy column. That morning’s attack on the wagons had been made so
-hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all been killed; only a
-little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he was a straggler he
-could tell them nothing definite about the troops in that column.
-
-Denísov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear of
-putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tíkhon Shcherbáty, a
-peasant of his party, to Shámshevo to try and seize at least one of the
-French quartermasters who had been sent on in advance.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both
-the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and then
-suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.
-
-Denísov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain ran down
-was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides. Like his horse,
-which turned its head and laid its ears back, he shrank from the driving
-rain and gazed anxiously before him. His thin face with its short, thick
-black beard looked angry.
-
-Beside Denísov rode an esaul, * Denísov’s fellow worker, also in felt
-cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.
-
- * A captain of Cossacks.
-
-Esaul Lováyski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow,
-pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm
-self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to
-say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first
-glance at the esaul and Denísov one saw that the latter was wet and
-uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the
-esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always
-and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was one
-with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold strength.
-
-A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and
-wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.
-
-A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghíz mount with an enormous
-tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a blue
-French overcoat.
-
-Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform and
-blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on to the
-hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed about him
-with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that morning.
-
-Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars in
-threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in French
-greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The horses,
-being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether chestnut or bay.
-Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes, looked strangely
-thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles, reins, were all wet,
-slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the fallen leaves that strewed
-the road. The men sat huddled up trying not to stir, so as to warm the
-water that had trickled to their bodies and not admit the fresh cold
-water that was leaking in under their seats, their knees, and at the
-back of their necks. In the midst of the outspread line of Cossacks two
-wagons, drawn by French horses and by saddled Cossack horses that had
-been hitched on in front, rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and
-splashed through the water that lay in the ruts.
-
-Denísov’s horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and bumped
-his rider’s knee against a tree.
-
-“Oh, the devil!” exclaimed Denísov angrily, and showing his teeth he
-struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and his
-comrades with mud.
-
-Denísov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from hunger
-(none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more because he
-still had no news from Dólokhov and the man sent to capture a “tongue”
-had not returned.
-
-“There’ll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as today.
-It’s too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it off till
-another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will snatch the prey
-from under our noses,” thought Denísov, continually peering forward,
-hoping to see a messenger from Dólokhov.
-
-On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to the
-right, Denísov stopped.
-
-“There’s someone coming,” said he.
-
-The esaul looked in the direction Denísov indicated.
-
-“There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not presupposable
-that it is the lieutenant colonel himself,” said the esaul, who was fond
-of using words the Cossacks did not know.
-
-The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer
-visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary
-gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and
-drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him,
-standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young
-lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to Denísov
-and handed him a sodden envelope.
-
-“From the general,” said the officer. “Please excuse its not being quite
-dry.”
-
-Denísov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.
-
-“There, they kept telling us: ‘It’s dangerous, it’s dangerous,’”
-said the officer, addressing the esaul while Denísov was reading the
-dispatch. “But Komaróv and I”—he pointed to the Cossack—“were prepared.
-We have each of us two pistols.... But what’s this?” he asked, noticing
-the French drummer boy. “A prisoner? You’ve already been in action? May
-I speak to him?”
-
-“Wostóv! Pétya!” exclaimed Denísov, having run through the dispatch.
-“Why didn’t you say who you were?” and turning with a smile he held out
-his hand to the lad.
-
-The officer was Pétya Rostóv.
-
-All the way Pétya had been preparing himself to behave with Denísov as
-befitted a grown-up man and an officer—without hinting at their previous
-acquaintance. But as soon as Denísov smiled at him Pétya brightened
-up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner he had been
-rehearsing, and began telling him how he had already been in a battle
-near Vyázma and how a certain hussar had distinguished himself there.
-
-“Well, I am glad to see you,” Denísov interrupted him, and his face
-again assumed its anxious expression.
-
-“Michael Feoklítych,” said he to the esaul, “this is again fwom that
-German, you know. He”—he indicated Pétya—“is serving under him.”
-
-And Denísov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a
-repetition of the German general’s demand that he should join forces
-with him for an attack on the transport.
-
-“If we don’t take it tomowwow, he’ll snatch it fwom under our noses,” he
-added.
-
-While Denísov was talking to the esaul, Pétya—abashed by Denísov’s
-cold tone and supposing that it was due to the condition of his
-trousers—furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat so
-that no one should notice it, while maintaining as martial an air as
-possible.
-
-“Will there be any orders, your honor?” he asked Denísov, holding his
-hand at the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general for
-which he had prepared himself, “or shall I remain with your honor?”
-
-“Orders?” Denísov repeated thoughtfully. “But can you stay till
-tomowwow?”
-
-“Oh, please... May I stay with you?” cried Pétya.
-
-“But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?” asked
-Denísov.
-
-Pétya blushed.
-
-“He gave me no instructions. I think I could?” he returned, inquiringly.
-
-“Well, all wight,” said Denísov.
-
-And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting place
-arranged near the watchman’s hut in the forest, and told the officer on
-the Kirghíz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant) to go and
-find out where Dólokhov was and whether he would come that evening.
-Denísov himself intended going with the esaul and Pétya to the edge of
-the forest where it reached out to Shámshevo, to have a look at the part
-of the French bivouac they were to attack next day.
-
-“Well, old fellow,” said he to the peasant guide, “lead us to
-Shámshevo.”
-
-Denísov, Pétya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and the
-hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to the
-edge of the forest.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from
-the trees. Denísov, the esaul, and Pétya rode silently, following the
-peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned toes
-and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet leaves,
-silently led them to the edge of the forest.
-
-He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to where
-the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree that
-had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously to
-them with his hand.
-
-Denísov and Pétya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant was
-standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest, on a
-downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a steep
-ravine, was a small village and a landowner’s house with a broken roof.
-In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well, by the pond,
-over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill from the
-bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred yards
-away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist. Their
-un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining uphill with the
-carts, and their calls to one another, could be clearly heard.
-
-“Bwing the prisoner here,” said Denísov in a low voice, not taking his
-eyes off the French.
-
-A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to Denísov.
-Pointing to the French troops, Denísov asked him what these and those
-of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his pockets and
-lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denísov in affright, but in spite of
-an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused answers, merely
-assenting to everything Denísov asked him. Denísov turned away from him
-frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his own conjectures to him.
-
-Pétya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, now
-at Denísov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village and
-along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.
-
-“Whether Dólokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?” said Denísov with
-a merry sparkle in his eyes.
-
-“It is a very suitable spot,” said the esaul.
-
-“We’ll send the infantwy down by the swamps,” Denísov continued.
-“They’ll cweep up to the garden; you’ll wide up fwom there with the
-Cossacks”—he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village—“and I
-with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot...”
-
-“The hollow is impassable—there’s a swamp there,” said the esaul. “The
-horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left....”
-
-While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded
-from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared, then
-another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French voices
-shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment Denísov and the
-esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought they were the cause
-of the firing and shouting. But the firing and shouting did not relate
-to them. Down below, a man wearing something red was running through the
-marsh. The French were evidently firing and shouting at him.
-
-“Why, that’s our Tíkhon,” said the esaul.
-
-“So it is! It is!”
-
-“The wascal!” said Denísov.
-
-“He’ll get away!” said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.
-
-The man whom they called Tíkhon, having run to the stream, plunged in
-so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared for an
-instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet, and ran on.
-The French who had been pursuing him stopped.
-
-“Smart, that!” said the esaul.
-
-“What a beast!” said Denísov with his former look of vexation. “What has
-he been doing all this time?”
-
-“Who is he?” asked Pétya.
-
-“He’s our plastún. I sent him to capture a ‘tongue.’”
-
-“Oh, yes,” said Pétya, nodding at the first words Denísov uttered as if
-he understood it all, though he really did not understand anything of
-it.
-
-Tíkhon Shcherbáty was one of the most indispensable men in their band.
-He was a peasant from Pokróvsk, near the river Gzhat. When Denísov had
-come to Pokróvsk at the beginning of his operations and had as usual
-summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew about the French,
-the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied, as all village
-elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything of them. But
-when Denísov explained that his purpose was to kill the French, and
-asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied that some
-“more-orderers” had really been at their village, but that Tíkhon
-Shcherbáty was the only man who dealt with such matters. Denísov had
-Tíkhon called and, having praised him for his activity, said a few words
-in the elder’s presence about loyalty to the Tsar and the country and
-the hatred of the French that all sons of the fatherland should cherish.
-
-“We don’t do the French any harm,” said Tíkhon, evidently frightened by
-Denísov’s words. “We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you know!
-We killed a score or so of ‘more-orderers,’ but we did no harm else....”
-
-Next day when Denísov had left Pokróvsk, having quite forgotten about
-this peasant, it was reported to him that Tíkhon had attached himself
-to their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it. Denísov gave
-orders to let him do so.
-
-Tíkhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching water,
-flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking and aptitude
-for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for booty and always
-brought back French clothing and weapons, and when told to would bring
-in French captives also. Denísov then relieved him from drudgery and
-began taking him with him when he went out on expeditions and had him
-enrolled among the Cossacks.
-
-Tíkhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging
-behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried
-rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf uses
-its teeth, with equal ease picking fleas out of its fur or crunching
-thick bones. Tíkhon with equal accuracy would split logs with blows at
-arm’s length, or holding the head of the ax would cut thin little pegs
-or carve spoons. In Denísov’s party he held a peculiar and exceptional
-position. When anything particularly difficult or nasty had to be
-done—to push a cart out of the mud with one’s shoulders, pull a horse
-out of a swamp by its tail, skin it, slink in among the French, or walk
-more than thirty miles in a day—everybody pointed laughingly at Tíkhon.
-
-“It won’t hurt that devil—he’s as strong as a horse!” they said of him.
-
-Once a Frenchman Tíkhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at him
-and shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which Tíkhon
-treated only with internal and external applications of vodka) was the
-subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment—jokes in which
-Tíkhon readily joined.
-
-“Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?” the Cossacks would banter
-him. And Tíkhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended to be
-angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only effect
-of this incident on Tíkhon was that after being wounded he seldom
-brought in prisoners.
-
-He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found more
-opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more Frenchmen,
-and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the Cossacks and hussars
-and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been sent by Denísov
-overnight to Shámshevo to capture a “tongue.” But whether because he
-had not been content to take only one Frenchman or because he had slept
-through the night, he had crept by day into some bushes right among the
-French and, as Denísov had witnessed from above, had been detected by
-them.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-After talking for some time with the esaul about next day’s attack,
-which now, seeing how near they were to the French, he seemed to have
-definitely decided on, Denísov turned his horse and rode back.
-
-“Now, my lad, we’ll go and get dwy,” he said to Pétya.
-
-As they approached the watchhouse Denísov stopped, peering into the
-forest. Among the trees a man with long legs and long, swinging arms,
-wearing a short jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazán hat, was approaching
-with long, light steps. He had a musketoon over his shoulder and an ax
-stuck in his girdle. When he espied Denísov he hastily threw something
-into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its floppy brim, and
-approached his commander. It was Tíkhon. His wrinkled and pockmarked
-face and narrow little eyes beamed with self-satisfied merriment. He
-lifted his head high and gazed at Denísov as if repressing a laugh.
-
-“Well, where did you disappear to?” inquired Denísov.
-
-“Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen,” answered Tíkhon
-boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice.
-
-“Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass! Well, why
-haven’t you taken one?”
-
-“Oh, I took one all right,” said Tíkhon.
-
-“Where is he?”
-
-“You see, I took him first thing at dawn,” Tíkhon continued, spreading
-out his flat feet with outturned toes in their bast shoes. “I took him
-into the forest. Then I see he’s no good and think I’ll go and fetch a
-likelier one.”
-
-“You see?... What a wogue—it’s just as I thought,” said Denísov to the
-esaul. “Why didn’t you bwing that one?”
-
-“What was the good of bringing him?” Tíkhon interrupted hastily and
-angrily—“that one wouldn’t have done for you. As if I don’t know what
-sort you want!”
-
-“What a bwute you are!... Well?”
-
-“I went for another one,” Tíkhon continued, “and I crept like this
-through the wood and lay down.” (He suddenly lay down on his stomach
-with a supple movement to show how he had done it.) “One turned up and
-I grabbed him, like this.” (He jumped up quickly and lightly.) “‘Come
-along to the colonel,’ I said. He starts yelling, and suddenly there
-were four of them. They rushed at me with their little swords. So I went
-for them with my ax, this way: ‘What are you up to?’ says I. ‘Christ
-be with you!’” shouted Tíkhon, waving his arms with an angry scowl and
-throwing out his chest.
-
-“Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels through the
-puddles!” said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes.
-
-Pétya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained from
-laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from Tíkhon’s face to the esaul’s
-and Denísov’s, unable to make out what it all meant.
-
-“Don’t play the fool!” said Denísov, coughing angrily. “Why didn’t you
-bwing the first one?”
-
-Tíkhon scratched his back with one hand and his head with the other,
-then suddenly his whole face expanded into a beaming, foolish grin,
-disclosing a gap where he had lost a tooth (that was why he was called
-Shcherbáty—the gap-toothed). Denísov smiled, and Pétya burst into a peal
-of merry laughter in which Tíkhon himself joined.
-
-“Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing,” said Tíkhon. “The clothes
-on him—poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your honor! Why,
-he says: ‘I’m a general’s son myself, I won’t go!’ he says.”
-
-“You are a bwute!” said Denísov. “I wanted to question...”
-
-“But I questioned him,” said Tíkhon. “He said he didn’t know much.
-‘There are a lot of us,’ he says, ‘but all poor stuff—only soldiers in
-name,’ he says. ‘Shout loud at them,’ he says, ‘and you’ll take
-them all,’” Tíkhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into
-Denísov’s eyes.
-
-“I’ll give you a hundwed sharp lashes—that’ll teach you to play the
-fool!” said Denísov severely.
-
-“But why are you angry?” remonstrated Tíkhon, “just as if I’d never seen
-your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I’ll fetch you any of
-them you want—three if you like.”
-
-“Well, let’s go,” said Denísov, and rode all the way to the watchhouse
-in silence and frowning angrily.
-
-Tíkhon followed behind and Pétya heard the Cossacks laughing with him
-and at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the bushes.
-
-When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tíkhon’s words and smile
-had passed and Pétya realized for a moment that this Tíkhon had killed a
-man, he felt uneasy. He looked round at the captive drummer boy and felt
-a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted only a moment. He felt
-it necessary to hold his head higher, to brace himself, and to question
-the esaul with an air of importance about tomorrow’s undertaking, that
-he might not be unworthy of the company in which he found himself.
-
-The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denísov on the way with the
-news that Dólokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.
-
-Denísov at once cheered up and, calling Pétya to him, said: “Well, tell
-me about yourself.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-Pétya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow, joined
-his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general commanding a
-large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his commission,
-and especially since he had joined the active army and taken part in
-the battle of Vyázma, Pétya had been in a constant state of blissful
-excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual ecstatic hurry not to
-miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was highly delighted
-with what he saw and experienced in the army, but at the same time
-it always seemed to him that the really heroic exploits were being
-performed just where he did not happen to be. And he was always in a
-hurry to get where he was not.
-
-When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish to send
-somebody to Denísov’s detachment, Pétya begged so piteously to be sent
-that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he recalled
-Pétya’s mad action at the battle of Vyázma, where instead of riding by
-the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had galloped to the
-advanced line under the fire of the French and had there twice fired
-his pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade his taking part in any
-action whatever of Denísov’s. That was why Pétya had blushed and grown
-confused when Denísov asked him whether he could stay. Before they had
-ridden to the outskirts of the forest Pétya had considered he must carry
-out his instructions strictly and return at once. But when he saw the
-French and saw Tíkhon and learned that there would certainly be an
-attack that night, he decided, with the rapidity with which young people
-change their views, that the general, whom he had greatly respected till
-then, was a rubbishy German, that Denísov was a hero, the esaul a hero,
-and Tíkhon a hero too, and that it would be shameful for him to leave
-them at a moment of difficulty.
-
-It was already growing dusk when Denísov, Pétya, and the esaul rode up
-to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be seen, and
-Cossacks and hussars who had rigged up rough shelters in the glade and
-were kindling glowing fires in a hollow of the forest where the French
-could not see the smoke. In the passage of the small watchhouse a
-Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping some mutton. In the room
-three officers of Denísov’s band were converting a door into a tabletop.
-Pétya took off his wet clothes, gave them to be dried, and at once began
-helping the officers to fix up the dinner table.
-
-In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread on it. On the
-table were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt.
-
-Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory mutton
-with his hands, down which the grease trickled, Pétya was in an ecstatic
-childish state of love for all men, and consequently of confidence that
-others loved him in the same way.
-
-“So then what do you think, Vasíli Dmítrich?” said he to Denísov. “It’s
-all right my staying a day with you?” And not waiting for a reply he
-answered his own question: “You see I was told to find out—well, I am
-finding out.... Only do let me into the very... into the chief... I
-don’t want a reward.... But I want...”
-
-Pétya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head and
-flourishing his arms.
-
-“Into the vewy chief...” Denísov repeated with a smile.
-
-“Only, please let me command something, so that I may really command...”
-Pétya went on. “What would it be to you?... Oh, you want a knife?” he
-said, turning to an officer who wished to cut himself a piece of mutton.
-
-And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer admired it.
-
-“Please keep it. I have several like it,” said Pétya, blushing.
-“Heavens! I was quite forgetting!” he suddenly cried. “I have some
-raisins, fine ones; you know, seedless ones. We have a new sutler and
-he has such capital things. I bought ten pounds. I am used to something
-sweet. Would you like some?...” and Pétya ran out into the passage to
-his Cossack and brought back some bags which contained about five pounds
-of raisins. “Have some, gentlemen, have some!”
-
-“You want a coffeepot, don’t you?” he asked the esaul. “I bought a
-capital one from our sutler! He has splendid things. And he’s very
-honest, that’s the chief thing. I’ll be sure to send it to you. Or
-perhaps your flints are giving out, or are worn out—that happens
-sometimes, you know. I have brought some with me, here they are”—and he
-showed a bag—“a hundred flints. I bought them very cheap. Please take as
-many as you want, or all if you like....”
-
-Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much, Pétya stopped and
-blushed.
-
-He tried to remember whether he had not done anything else that was
-foolish. And running over the events of the day he remembered the French
-drummer boy. “It’s capital for us here, but what of him? Where have they
-put him? Have they fed him? Haven’t they hurt his feelings?” he thought.
-But having caught himself saying too much about the flints, he was now
-afraid to speak out.
-
-“I might ask,” he thought, “but they’ll say: ‘He’s a boy himself and so
-he pities the boy.’ I’ll show them tomorrow whether I’m a boy. Will it
-seem odd if I ask?” Pétya thought. “Well, never mind!” and immediately,
-blushing and looking anxiously at the officers to see if they appeared
-ironical, he said:
-
-“May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and give him something to
-eat?... Perhaps...”
-
-“Yes, he’s a poor little fellow,” said Denísov, who evidently saw
-nothing shameful in this reminder. “Call him in. His name is Vincent
-Bosse. Have him fetched.”
-
-“I’ll call him,” said Pétya.
-
-“Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow,” Denísov repeated.
-
-Pétya was standing at the door when Denísov said this. He slipped in
-between the officers, came close to Denísov, and said:
-
-“Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how splendid!”
-
-And having kissed Denísov he ran out of the hut.
-
-“Bosse! Vincent!” Pétya cried, stopping outside the door.
-
-“Who do you want, sir?” asked a voice in the darkness.
-
-Pétya replied that he wanted the French lad who had been captured that
-day.
-
-“Ah, Vesénny?” said a Cossack.
-
-Vincent, the boy’s name, had already been changed by the Cossacks into
-Vesénny (vernal) and into Vesénya by the peasants and soldiers. In both
-these adaptations the reference to spring (vesná) matched the impression
-made by the young lad.
-
-“He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesénya!
-Vesénya!—Vesénny!” laughing voices were heard calling to one another in
-the darkness.
-
-“He’s a smart lad,” said an hussar standing near Pétya. “We gave him
-something to eat a while ago. He was awfully hungry!”
-
-The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was heard in the
-darkness, and the drummer boy came to the door.
-
-“Ah, c’est vous!” said Pétya. “Voulez-vous manger? N’ayez pas peur, on
-ne vous fera pas de mal,” * he added shyly and affectionately, touching
-the boy’s hand. “Entrez, entrez.” *(2)
-
- * “Ah, it’s you! Do you want something to eat? Don’t be
- afraid, they won’t hurt you.”
-
- * (2) “Come in, come in.”
-
-
-“Merci, monsieur,” * said the drummer boy in a trembling almost childish
-voice, and he began scraping his dirty feet on the threshold.
-
- * “Thank you, sir.”
-
-
-There were many things Pétya wanted to say to the drummer boy, but did
-not dare to. He stood irresolutely beside him in the passage. Then in
-the darkness he took the boy’s hand and pressed it.
-
-“Come in, come in!” he repeated in a gentle whisper. “Oh, what can I do
-for him?” he thought, and opening the door he let the boy pass in first.
-
-When the boy had entered the hut, Pétya sat down at a distance from
-him, considering it beneath his dignity to pay attention to him. But
-he fingered the money in his pocket and wondered whether it would seem
-ridiculous to give some to the drummer boy.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-The arrival of Dólokhov diverted Pétya’s attention from the drummer boy,
-to whom Denísov had had some mutton and vodka given, and whom he had had
-dressed in a Russian coat so that he might be kept with their band and
-not sent away with the other prisoners. Pétya had heard in the army many
-stories of Dólokhov’s extraordinary bravery and of his cruelty to the
-French, so from the moment he entered the hut Pétya did not take his
-eyes from him, but braced himself up more and more and held his head
-high, that he might not be unworthy even of such company.
-
-Dólokhov’s appearance amazed Pétya by its simplicity.
-
-Denísov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon of Nicholas the
-Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his way of speaking and everything he
-did indicated his unusual position. But Dólokhov, who in Moscow had worn
-a Persian costume, had now the appearance of a most correct officer of
-the Guards. He was clean-shaven and wore a Guardsman’s padded coat with
-an Order of St. George at his buttonhole and a plain forage cap set
-straight on his head. He took off his wet felt cloak in a corner of
-the room, and without greeting anyone went up to Denísov and began
-questioning him about the matter in hand. Denísov told him of the
-designs the large detachments had on the transport, of the message Pétya
-had brought, and his own replies to both generals. Then he told him all
-he knew of the French detachment.
-
-“That’s so. But we must know what troops they are and their numbers,”
-said Dólokhov. “It will be necessary to go there. We can’t start the
-affair without knowing for certain how many there are. I like to work
-accurately. Here now—wouldn’t one of these gentlemen like to ride over
-to the French camp with me? I have brought a spare uniform.”
-
-“I, I... I’ll go with you!” cried Pétya.
-
-“There’s no need for you to go at all,” said Denísov, addressing
-Dólokhov, “and as for him, I won’t let him go on any account.”
-
-“I like that!” exclaimed Pétya. “Why shouldn’t I go?”
-
-“Because it’s useless.”
-
-“Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I shall go, and that’s
-all. You’ll take me, won’t you?” he said, turning to Dólokhov.
-
-“Why not?” Dólokhov answered absently, scrutinizing the face of the
-French drummer boy. “Have you had that youngster with you long?” he
-asked Denísov.
-
-“He was taken today but he knows nothing. I’m keeping him with me.”
-
-“Yes, and where do you put the others?” inquired Dólokhov.
-
-“Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them,” shouted Denísov,
-suddenly flushing. “And I say boldly that I have not a single man’s life
-on my conscience. Would it be difficult for you to send thirty or
-thwee hundwed men to town under escort, instead of staining—I speak
-bluntly—staining the honor of a soldier?”
-
-“That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this young count of
-sixteen,” said Dólokhov with cold irony, “but it’s time for you to drop
-it.”
-
-“Why, I’ve not said anything! I only say that I’ll certainly go with
-you,” said Pétya shyly.
-
-“But for you and me, old fellow, it’s time to drop these amenities,”
-continued Dólokhov, as if he found particular pleasure in speaking of
-this subject which irritated Denísov. “Now, why have you kept this lad?”
-he went on, swaying his head. “Because you are sorry for him! Don’t we
-know those ‘receipts’ of yours? You send a hundred men away, and thirty
-get there. The rest either starve or get killed. So isn’t it all the
-same not to send them?”
-
-The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly.
-
-“That’s not the point. I’m not going to discuss the matter. I do not
-wish to take it on my conscience. You say they’ll die. All wight. Only
-not by my fault!”
-
-Dólokhov began laughing.
-
-“Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over? But if
-they did catch me they’d string me up to an aspen tree, and with all
-your chivalry just the same.” He paused. “However, we must get to work.
-Tell the Cossack to fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms in it.
-Well, are you coming with me?” he asked Pétya.
-
-“I? Yes, yes, certainly!” cried Pétya, blushing almost to tears and
-glancing at Denísov.
-
-While Dólokhov had been disputing with Denísov what should be done with
-prisoners, Pétya had once more felt awkward and restless; but again he
-had no time to grasp fully what they were talking about. “If grown-up,
-distinguished men think so, it must be necessary and right,” thought he.
-“But above all Denísov must not dare to imagine that I’ll obey him and
-that he can order me about. I will certainly go to the French camp with
-Dólokhov. If he can, so can I!”
-
-And to all Denísov’s persuasions, Pétya replied that he too was
-accustomed to do everything accurately and not just anyhow, and that he
-never considered personal danger.
-
-“For you’ll admit that if we don’t know for sure how many of them there
-are... hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are only two
-of us. Besides, I want to go very much and certainly will go, so don’t
-hinder me,” said he. “It will only make things worse....”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-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.
-
-“He’ll make them get a move on, those fellows!” said another, laughing.
-
-Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the sound of
-Dólokhov’s and Pétya’s steps as they advanced to the fire leading their
-horses.
-
-“Bonjour, messieurs!” * said Dólokhov loudly and clearly.
-
- * “Good day, gentlemen.”
-
-
-There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond the fire,
-and one tall, long-necked officer, walking round the fire, came up to
-Dólokhov.
-
-“Is that you, Clément?” he asked. “Where the devil...?” But, noticing
-his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dólokhov as a
-stranger, asking what he could do for him.
-
-Dólokhov said that he and his companion were trying to overtake their
-regiment, and addressing the company in general asked whether they knew
-anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything, and Pétya
-thought the officers were beginning to look at him and Dólokhov with
-hostility and suspicion. For some seconds all were silent.
-
-“If you were counting on the evening soup, you have come too late,” said
-a voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh.
-
-Dólokhov replied that they were not hungry and must push on farther that
-night.
-
-He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring the pot and
-squatted down on his heels by the fire beside the officer with the long
-neck. That officer did not take his eyes from Dólokhov and again asked
-to what regiment he belonged. Dólokhov, as if he had not heard the
-question, did not reply, but lighting a short French pipe which he took
-from his pocket began asking the officer in how far the road before them
-was safe from Cossacks.
-
-“Those brigands are everywhere,” replied an officer from behind the
-fire.
-
-Dólokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger only to stragglers
-such as his companion and himself, “but probably they would not dare to
-attack large detachments?” he added inquiringly. No one replied.
-
-“Well, now he’ll come away,” Pétya thought every moment as he stood by
-the campfire listening to the talk.
-
-But Dólokhov restarted the conversation which had dropped and began
-putting direct questions as to how many men there were in the battalion,
-how many battalions, and how many prisoners. Asking about the Russian
-prisoners with that detachment, Dólokhov said:
-
-“A horrid business dragging these corpses about with one! It would be
-better to shoot such rabble,” and burst into loud laughter, so strange
-that Pétya thought the French would immediately detect their disguise,
-and involuntarily took a step back from the campfire.
-
-No one replied a word to Dólokhov’s laughter, and a French officer whom
-they could not see (he lay wrapped in a greatcoat) rose and whispered
-something to a companion. Dólokhov got up and called to the soldier who
-was holding their horses.
-
-“Will they bring our horses or not?” thought Pétya, instinctively
-drawing nearer to Dólokhov.
-
-The horses were brought.
-
-“Good evening, gentlemen,” said Dólokhov.
-
-Pétya wished to say “Good night” but could not utter a word. The
-officers were whispering together. Dólokhov was a long time mounting
-his horse which would not stand still, then he rode out of the yard at a
-footpace. Pétya rode beside him, longing to look round to see whether or
-not the French were running after them, but not daring to.
-
-Coming out onto the road Dólokhov did not ride back across the open
-country, but through the village. At one spot he stopped and listened.
-“Do you hear?” he asked. Pétya recognized the sound of Russian voices
-and saw the dark figures of Russian prisoners round their campfires.
-When they had descended to the bridge Pétya and Dólokhov rode past the
-sentinel, who without saying a word paced morosely up and down it, then
-they descended into the hollow where the Cossacks awaited them.
-
-“Well now, good-by. Tell Denísov, ‘at the first shot at daybreak,’” said
-Dólokhov and was about to ride away, but Pétya seized hold of him.
-
-“Really!” he cried, “you are such a hero! Oh, how fine, how splendid!
-How I love you!”
-
-“All right, all right!” said Dólokhov. But Pétya did not let go of him
-and Dólokhov saw through the gloom that Pétya was bending toward him and
-wanted to kiss him. Dólokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his horse, and
-vanished into the darkness.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-Having returned to the watchman’s hut, Pétya found Denísov in the
-passage. He was awaiting Pétya’s return in a state of agitation,
-anxiety, and self-reproach for having let him go.
-
-“Thank God!” he exclaimed. “Yes, thank God!” he repeated, listening to
-Pétya’s rapturous account. “But, devil take you, I haven’t slept because
-of you! Well, thank God. Now lie down. We can still get a nap before
-morning.”
-
-“But... no,” said Pétya, “I don’t want to sleep yet. Besides I know
-myself, if I fall asleep it’s finished. And then I am used to not
-sleeping before a battle.”
-
-He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of his
-expedition and vividly picturing to himself what would happen next day.
-
-Then, noticing that Denísov was asleep, he rose and went out of doors.
-
-It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but drops were still
-falling from the trees. Near the watchman’s hut the black shapes of the
-Cossacks’ shanties and of horses tethered together could be seen. Behind
-the hut the dark shapes of the two wagons with their horses beside them
-were discernible, and in the hollow the dying campfire gleamed red.
-Not all the Cossacks and hussars were asleep; here and there, amid the
-sounds of falling drops and the munching of the horses near by, could be
-heard low voices which seemed to be whispering.
-
-Pétya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up to the wagons.
-Someone was snoring under them, and around them stood saddled horses
-munching their oats. In the dark Pétya recognized his own horse, which
-he called “Karabákh” though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to it.
-
-“Well, Karabákh! We’ll do some service tomorrow,” said he, sniffing its
-nostrils and kissing it.
-
-“Why aren’t you asleep, sir?” said a Cossack who was sitting under a
-wagon.
-
-“No, ah... Likhachëv—isn’t that your name? Do you know I have only just
-come back! We’ve been into the French camp.”
-
-And Pétya gave the Cossack a detailed account not only of his ride but
-also of his object, and why he considered it better to risk his life
-than to act “just anyhow.”
-
-“Well, you should get some sleep now,” said the Cossack.
-
-“No, I am used to this,” said Pétya. “I say, aren’t the flints in your
-pistols worn out? I brought some with me. Don’t you want any? You can
-have some.”
-
-The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get a closer look at
-Pétya.
-
-“Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately,” said Pétya.
-“Some fellows do things just anyhow, without preparation, and then
-they’re sorry for it afterwards. I don’t like that.”
-
-“Just so,” said the Cossack.
-
-“Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will you sharpen my
-saber for me? It’s got bl...” (Pétya feared to tell a lie, and the saber
-never had been sharpened.) “Can you do it?”
-
-“Of course I can.”
-
-Likhachëv got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Pétya heard the warlike
-sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat on its
-edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon.
-
-“I say! Are the lads asleep?” asked Pétya.
-
-“Some are, and some aren’t—like us.”
-
-“Well, and that boy?”
-
-“Vesénny? Oh, he’s thrown himself down there in the passage. Fast asleep
-after his fright. He was that glad!”
-
-After that Pétya remained silent for a long time, listening to the
-sounds. He heard footsteps in the darkness and a black figure appeared.
-
-“What are you sharpening?” asked a man coming up to the wagon.
-
-“Why, this gentleman’s saber.”
-
-“That’s right,” said the man, whom Pétya took to be an hussar. “Was the
-cup left here?”
-
-“There, by the wheel!”
-
-The hussar took the cup.
-
-“It must be daylight soon,” said he, yawning, and went away.
-
-Pétya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denísov’s
-guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon
-captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under
-it Likhachëv was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark
-blotch to the right was the watchman’s hut, and the red blotch below to
-the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had come
-for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew nor
-waited to know anything of all this. He was in a fairy kingdom where
-nothing resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really be the
-watchman’s hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very depths of
-the earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be the eye of an
-enormous monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a wagon, but it might
-very well be that he was not sitting on a wagon but on a terribly high
-tower from which, if he fell, he would have to fall for a whole day or a
-whole month, or go on falling and never reach the bottom. Perhaps it
-was just the Cossack, Likhachëv, who was sitting under the wagon, but it
-might be the kindest, bravest, most wonderful, most splendid man in the
-world, whom no one knew of. It might really have been that the hussar
-came for water and went back into the hollow, but perhaps he had simply
-vanished—disappeared altogether and dissolved into nothingness.
-
-Nothing Pétya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was in a
-fairy kingdom where everything was possible.
-
-He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth.
-It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly
-sailing as if unveiling the stars. Sometimes it looked as if the clouds
-were passing, and a clear black sky appeared. Sometimes it seemed as
-if the black spaces were clouds. Sometimes the sky seemed to be rising
-high, high overhead, and then it seemed to sink so low that one could
-touch it with one’s hand.
-
-Pétya’s eyes began to close and he swayed a little.
-
-The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The horses neighed and
-jostled one another. Someone snored.
-
-“Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg...” hissed the saber against the whetstone,
-and suddenly Pétya heard an harmonious orchestra playing some unknown,
-sweetly solemn hymn. Pétya was as musical as Natásha and more so than
-Nicholas, but had never learned music or thought about it, and so the
-melody that unexpectedly came to his mind seemed to him particularly
-fresh and attractive. The music became more and more audible. The melody
-grew and passed from one instrument to another. And what was played was
-a fugue—though Pétya had not the least conception of what a fugue is.
-Each instrument—now resembling a violin and now a horn, but better
-and clearer than violin or horn—played its own part, and before it had
-finished the melody merged with another instrument that began almost the
-same air, and then with a third and a fourth; and they all blended into
-one and again became separate and again blended, now into solemn church
-music, now into something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant.
-
-“Oh—why, that was in a dream!” Pétya said to himself, as he lurched
-forward. “It’s in my ears. But perhaps it’s music of my own. Well, go
-on, my music! Now!...”
-
-He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a distance, sounds
-fluttered, grew into harmonies, separated, blended, and again all
-mingled into the same sweet and solemn hymn. “Oh, this is delightful!
-As much as I like and as I like!” said Pétya to himself. He tried to
-conduct that enormous orchestra.
-
-“Now softly, softly die away!” and the sounds obeyed him. “Now fuller,
-more joyful. Still more and more joyful!” And from an unknown depth rose
-increasingly triumphant sounds. “Now voices join in!” ordered Pétya. And
-at first from afar he heard men’s voices and then women’s. The voices
-grew in harmonious triumphant strength, and Pétya listened to their
-surpassing beauty in awe and joy.
-
-With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song, the drip from the
-trees, and the hissing of the saber, “Ozheg-zheg-zheg...” and again the
-horses jostled one another and neighed, not disturbing the choir but
-joining in it.
-
-Pétya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself all the
-time, wondered at his enjoyment and regretted that there was no one to
-share it. He was awakened by Likhachëv’s kindly voice.
-
-“It’s ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half with it!”
-
-Pétya woke up.
-
-“It’s getting light, it’s really getting light!” he exclaimed.
-
-The horses that had previously been invisible could now be seen to their
-very tails, and a watery light showed itself through the bare branches.
-Pétya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket and gave it
-to Likhachëv; then he flourished the saber, tested it, and sheathed
-it. The Cossacks were untying their horses and tightening their saddle
-girths.
-
-“And here’s the commander,” said Likhachëv.
-
-Denísov came out of the watchman’s hut and, having called Pétya, gave
-orders to get ready.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness, tightened
-their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denísov stood by the
-watchman’s hut giving final orders. The infantry of the detachment
-passed along the road and quickly disappeared amid the trees in the mist
-of early dawn, hundreds of feet splashing through the mud. The esaul
-gave some orders to his men. Pétya held his horse by the bridle,
-impatiently awaiting the order to mount. His face, having been bathed
-in cold water, was all aglow, and his eyes were particularly brilliant.
-Cold shivers ran down his spine and his whole body pulsed rhythmically.
-
-“Well, is ev’wything weady?” asked Denísov. “Bwing the horses.”
-
-The horses were brought. Denísov was angry with the Cossack because the
-saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted. Pétya put his
-foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to nip his leg, but
-Pétya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious of his own weight and,
-turning to look at the hussars starting in the darkness behind him, rode
-up to Denísov.
-
-“Vasíli Dmítrich, entrust me with some commission! Please... for God’s
-sake...!” said he.
-
-Denísov seemed to have forgotten Pétya’s very existence. He turned to
-glance at him.
-
-“I ask one thing of you,” he said sternly, “to obey me and not shove
-yourself forward anywhere.”
-
-He did not say another word to Pétya but rode in silence all the way.
-When they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably growing
-light over the field. Denísov talked in whispers with the esaul and
-the Cossacks rode past Pétya and Denísov. When they had all ridden by,
-Denísov touched his horse and rode down the hill. Slipping onto their
-haunches and sliding, the horses descended with their riders into the
-ravine. Pétya rode beside Denísov, the pulsation of his body constantly
-increasing. It was getting lighter and lighter, but the mist still hid
-distant objects. Having reached the valley, Denísov looked back and
-nodded to a Cossack beside him.
-
-“The signal!” said he.
-
-The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant the tramp
-of horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from various sides,
-and then more shots.
-
-At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Pétya lashed his
-horse and loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denísov who
-shouted at him. It seemed to Pétya that at the moment the shot was
-fired it suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge.
-Cossacks were galloping along the road in front of him. On the bridge
-he collided with a Cossack who had fallen behind, but he galloped on.
-In front of him soldiers, probably Frenchmen, were running from right
-to left across the road. One of them fell in the mud under his horse’s
-feet.
-
-Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From the midst
-of that crowd terrible screams arose. Pétya galloped up, and the
-first thing he saw was the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman,
-clutching the handle of a lance that had been aimed at him.
-
-“Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!” shouted Pétya, and giving rein to his
-excited horse he galloped forward along the village street.
-
-He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged
-Russian prisoners, who had come running from both sides of the road,
-were shouting something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking
-Frenchman, in a blue overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red face,
-had been defending himself against the hussars. When Pétya galloped
-up the Frenchman had already fallen. “Too late again!” flashed through
-Pétya’s mind and he galloped on to the place from which the rapid firing
-could be heard. The shots came from the yard of the landowner’s house
-he had visited the night before with Dólokhov. The French were making
-a stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden thickly overgrown with
-bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who crowded at the gateway.
-Through the smoke, as he approached the gate, Pétya saw Dólokhov, whose
-face was of a pale-greenish tint, shouting to his men. “Go round! Wait
-for the infantry!” he exclaimed as Pétya rode up to him.
-
-“Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!” shouted Pétya, and without pausing a moment
-galloped to the place whence came the sounds of firing and where the
-smoke was thickest.
-
-A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others plashed
-against something. The Cossacks and Dólokhov galloped after Pétya into
-the gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke some of the
-French threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes to meet the
-Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward the pond. Pétya was
-galloping along the courtyard, but instead of holding the reins he waved
-both his arms about rapidly and strangely, slipping farther and farther
-to one side in his saddle. His horse, having galloped up to a campfire
-that was smoldering in the morning light, stopped suddenly, and Pétya
-fell heavily on to the wet ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and
-legs jerked rapidly though his head was quite motionless. A bullet had
-pierced his skull.
-
-After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out of the house
-with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced that
-they surrendered, Dólokhov dismounted and went up to Pétya, who lay
-motionless with outstretched arms.
-
-“Done for!” he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet Denísov
-who was riding toward him.
-
-“Killed?” cried Denísov, recognizing from a distance the unmistakably
-lifeless attitude—very familiar to him—in which Pétya’s body was lying.
-
-“Done for!” repeated Dólokhov as if the utterance of these words
-afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the prisoners, who
-were surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried up. “We won’t take them!” he
-called out to Denísov.
-
-Denísov did not reply; he rode up to Pétya, dismounted, and with
-trembling hands turned toward himself the bloodstained, mud-bespattered
-face which had already gone white.
-
-“I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones... take them all!” he
-recalled Pétya’s words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise at the
-sound, like the yelp of a dog, with which Denísov turned away, walked to
-the wattle fence, and seized hold of it.
-
-Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denísov and Dólokhov was Pierre
-Bezúkhov.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been
-issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners
-among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party was
-no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it had left
-Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled the first
-stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other half had gone
-on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had marched in
-front of the prisoners was left; they had all disappeared. The artillery
-the prisoners had seen in front of them during the first days was
-now replaced by Marshal Junot’s enormous baggage train, convoyed by
-Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a cavalry baggage train.
-
-From Vyázma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in three
-columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder that Pierre
-had noticed at their first halting place after leaving Moscow had now
-reached the utmost limit.
-
-The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead
-horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments
-continually changed about, now joining the moving column, now again
-lagging behind it.
-
-Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the
-soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run
-headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and
-abused each other for their causeless panic.
-
-These three groups traveling together—the cavalry stores, the convoy of
-prisoners, and Junot’s baggage train—still constituted a separate and
-united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly melting away.
-
-Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred and
-twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been
-captured or left behind. Some of Junot’s wagons also had been captured
-or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers
-from Davout’s corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned that
-a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than to the
-prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had been
-shot by the marshal’s own order because a silver spoon belonging to the
-marshal had been found in his possession.
-
-The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three hundred
-and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a hundred now
-remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort than even the
-cavalry saddles or Junot’s baggage. They understood that the saddles and
-Junot’s spoon might be of some use, but that cold and hungry soldiers
-should have to stand and guard equally cold and hungry Russians who
-froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case the order was to
-shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but revolting. And the
-escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition they themselves were in,
-of giving way to the pity they felt for the prisoners and so rendering
-their own plight still worse, treated them with particular moroseness
-and severity.
-
-At Dorogobúzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the
-prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores, several
-of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away, but were
-recaptured by the French and shot.
-
-The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer prisoners
-should be kept separate from the rest, had long since been abandoned.
-All who could walk went together, and after the third stage Pierre had
-rejoined Karatáev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that had chosen
-Karatáev for its master.
-
-On the third day after leaving Moscow Karatáev again fell ill with the
-fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he grew
-gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know why, but
-since Karatáev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an effort to
-go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning with which
-Karatáev generally lay down at the halting places, and when he smelled
-the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than before, Pierre
-moved farther away and did not think about him.
-
-While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect
-but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for
-happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple
-human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from
-superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had
-learned still another new, consolatory truth—that nothing in this world
-is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man
-can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he
-need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom
-have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the
-person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as
-he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled
-while the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing
-shoes he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet
-that were covered with sores—his footgear having long since fallen to
-pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife—of his own free
-will as it had seemed to him—he had been no more free than now when they
-locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself subsequently
-termed his sufferings, but which at the time he scarcely felt, the worst
-was the state of his bare, raw, and scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh
-was appetizing and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder
-they used instead of salt was even pleasant; there was no great cold,
-it was always warm walking in the daytime, and at night there were the
-campfires; the lice that devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing
-that was at first hard to bear was his feet.
-
-After the second day’s march Pierre, having examined his feet by the
-campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when
-everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up,
-walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more
-terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now,
-but thought of other things.
-
-Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the
-saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing
-to another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows
-superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain limit.
-
-He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who lagged
-behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did not
-think of Karatáev who grew weaker every day and evidently would soon
-have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about himself. The
-harder his position became and the more terrible the future, the more
-independent of that position in which he found himself were the joyful
-and comforting thoughts, memories, and imaginings that came to him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was going uphill along
-the muddy, slippery road, looking at his feet and at the roughness of
-the way. Occasionally he glanced at the familiar crowd around him and
-then again at his feet. The former and the latter were alike familiar
-and his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran merrily along the side
-of the road, sometimes in proof of its agility and self-satisfaction
-lifting one hind leg and hopping along on three, and then again going on
-all four and rushing to bark at the crows that sat on the carrion. The
-dog was merrier and sleeker than it had been in Moscow. All around lay
-the flesh of different animals—from men to horses—in various stages of
-decomposition; and as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the
-dog could eat all it wanted.
-
-It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment it
-might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began raining
-harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed the water,
-which ran along the ruts in streams.
-
-Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps in
-threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally addressing the
-rain, he repeated: “Now then, now then, go on! Pelt harder!”
-
-It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and
-deep within him his soul was occupied with something important and
-comforting. This something was a most subtle spiritual deduction from a
-conversation with Karatáev the day before.
-
-At their yesterday’s halting place, feeling chilly by a dying campfire,
-Pierre had got up and gone to the next one, which was burning better.
-There Platón Karatáev was sitting covered up—head and all—with his
-greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling the soldiers in his
-effective and pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre knew. It
-was already past midnight, the hour when Karatáev was usually free of
-his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the fire and
-heard Platón’s voice enfeebled by illness, and saw his pathetic face
-brightly lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful prick at his heart. His
-feeling of pity for this man frightened him and he wished to go away,
-but there was no other fire, and Pierre sat down, trying not to look at
-Platón.
-
-“Well, how are you?” he asked.
-
-“How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won’t grant us death,” replied
-Platón, and at once resumed the story he had begun.
-
-“And so, brother,” he continued, with a smile on his pale emaciated face
-and a particularly happy light in his eyes, “you see, brother...”
-
-Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karatáev had told it
-to him alone some half-dozen times and always with a specially joyful
-emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre now listened to that tale as to
-something new, and the quiet rapture Karatáev evidently felt as he told
-it communicated itself also to Pierre. The story was of an old merchant
-who lived a good and God-fearing life with his family, and who went once
-to the Nízhni fair with a companion—a rich merchant.
-
-Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next morning his
-companion was found robbed and with his throat cut. A bloodstained knife
-was found under the old merchant’s pillow. He was tried, knouted, and
-his nostrils having been torn off, “all in due form” as Karatáev put it,
-he was sent to hard labor in Siberia.
-
-“And so, brother” (it was at this point that Pierre came up), “ten years
-or more passed by. The old man was living as a convict, submitting as
-he should and doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God for death. Well, one
-night the convicts were gathered just as we are, with the old man among
-them. And they began telling what each was suffering for, and how they
-had sinned against God. One told how he had taken a life, another had
-taken two, a third had set a house on fire, while another had simply
-been a vagrant and had done nothing. So they asked the old man: ‘What
-are you being punished for, Daddy?’—‘I, my dear brothers,’ said he, ‘am
-being punished for my own and other men’s sins. But I have not killed
-anyone or taken anything that was not mine, but have only helped my
-poorer brothers. I was a merchant, my dear brothers, and had much
-property. ‘And he went on to tell them all about it in due order. ‘I
-don’t grieve for myself,’ he says, ‘God, it seems, has chastened me.
-Only I am sorry for my old wife and the children,’ and the old man began
-to weep. Now it happened that in the group was the very man who had
-killed the other merchant. ‘Where did it happen, Daddy?’ he said. ‘When,
-and in what month?’ He asked all about it and his heart began to ache.
-So he comes up to the old man like this, and falls down at his feet!
-‘You are perishing because of me, Daddy,’ he says. ‘It’s quite true,
-lads, that this man,’ he says, ‘is being tortured innocently and for
-nothing! I,’ he says, ‘did that deed, and I put the knife under your
-head while you were asleep. Forgive me, Daddy,’ he says, ‘for Christ’s
-sake!’”
-
-Karatáev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire, and he drew
-the logs together.
-
-“And the old man said, ‘God will forgive you, we are all sinners in His
-sight. I suffer for my own sins,’ and he wept bitter tears. Well,
-and what do you think, dear friends?” Karatáev continued, his face
-brightening more and more with a rapturous smile as if what he now had
-to tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of his story:
-“What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer confessed to the
-authorities. ‘I have taken six lives,’ he says (he was a great sinner),
-‘but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Don’t let him suffer
-because of me.’ So he confessed and it was all written down and the
-papers sent off in due form. The place was a long way off, and while
-they were judging, what with one thing and another, filling in the
-papers all in due form—the authorities I mean—time passed. The affair
-reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar’s decree came: to set the
-merchant free and give him a compensation that had been awarded. The
-paper arrived and they began to look for the old man. ‘Where is the old
-man who has been suffering innocently and in vain? A paper has come from
-the Tsar!’ so they began looking for him,” here Karatáev’s lower jaw
-trembled, “but God had already forgiven him—he was dead! That’s how it
-was, dear fellows!” Karatáev concluded and sat for a long time silent,
-gazing before him with a smile.
-
-And Pierre’s soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story itself
-but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that lit up
-Karatáev’s face as he told it, and the mystic significance of that joy.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-“À vos places!” * suddenly cried a voice.
-
- * “To your places.”
-
-
-A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of something
-joyful and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the
-prisoners. From all sides came shouts of command, and from the left came
-smartly dressed cavalrymen on good horses, passing the prisoners at a
-trot. The expression on all faces showed the tension people feel at the
-approach of those in authority. The prisoners thronged together and were
-pushed off the road. The convoy formed up.
-
-“The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The Duke!” and hardly had the
-sleek cavalry passed, before a carriage drawn by six gray horses rattled
-by. Pierre caught a glimpse of a man in a three-cornered hat with a
-tranquil look on his handsome, plump, white face. It was one of the
-marshals. His eye fell on Pierre’s large and striking figure, and in
-the expression with which he frowned and looked away Pierre thought he
-detected sympathy and a desire to conceal that sympathy.
-
-The general in charge of the stores galloped after the carriage with a
-red and frightened face, whipping up his skinny horse. Several officers
-formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their faces all
-looked excited and worried.
-
-“What did he say? What did he say?” Pierre heard them ask.
-
-While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had huddled together in a
-crowd, and Pierre saw Karatáev whom he had not yet seen that morning.
-He sat in his short overcoat leaning against a birch tree. On his face,
-besides the look of joyful emotion it had worn yesterday while telling
-the tale of the merchant who suffered innocently, there was now an
-expression of quiet solemnity.
-
-Karatáev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes now filled with
-tears, evidently wishing him to come near that he might say something to
-him. But Pierre was not sufficiently sure of himself. He made as if he
-did not notice that look and moved hastily away.
-
-When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked round. Karatáev
-was still sitting at the side of the road under the birch tree and two
-Frenchmen were talking over his head. Pierre did not look round again
-but went limping up the hill.
-
-From behind, where Karatáev had been sitting, came the sound of a shot.
-Pierre heard it plainly, but at that moment he remembered that he
-had not yet finished reckoning up how many stages still remained to
-Smolénsk—a calculation he had begun before the marshal went by. And he
-again started reckoning. Two French soldiers ran past Pierre, one of
-whom carried a lowered and smoking gun. They both looked pale, and
-in the expression on their faces—one of them glanced timidly at
-Pierre—there was something resembling what he had seen on the face of
-the young soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and
-remembered that, two days before, that man had burned his shirt while
-drying it at the fire and how they had laughed at him.
-
-Behind him, where Karatáev had been sitting, the dog began to howl.
-“What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?” thought Pierre.
-
-His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside him, avoided looking
-back at the place where the shot had been fired and the dog was howling,
-just as Pierre did, but there was a set look on all their faces.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-The stores, the prisoners, and the marshal’s baggage train stopped at
-the village of Shámshevo. The men crowded together round the campfires.
-Pierre went up to the fire, ate some roast horseflesh, lay down with his
-back to the fire, and immediately fell asleep. He again slept as he had
-done at Mozháysk after the battle of Borodinó.
-
-Again real events mingled with dreams and again someone, he or another,
-gave expression to his thoughts, and even to the same thoughts that had
-been expressed in his dream at Mozháysk.
-
-“Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that
-movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness
-of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed
-than all else is to love this life in one’s sufferings, in innocent
-sufferings.”
-
-“Karatáev!” came to Pierre’s mind.
-
-And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly old man
-who had given him geography lessons in Switzerland. “Wait a bit,” said
-the old man, and showed Pierre a globe. This globe was alive—a vibrating
-ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface consisted of drops
-closely pressed together, and all these drops moved and changed places,
-sometimes several of them merging into one, sometimes one dividing
-into many. Each drop tried to spread out and occupy as much space as
-possible, but others striving to do the same compressed it, sometimes
-destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it.
-
-“That is life,” said the old teacher.
-
-“How simple and clear it is,” thought Pierre. “How is it I did not know
-it before?”
-
-“God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect
-Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from the
-surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. There now, Karatáev
-has spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?” said the
-teacher.
-
-“Do you understand, damn you?” shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.
-
-He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a Russian
-soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting a piece
-of meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and his sinewy,
-hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned the ramrod. His
-brown morose face with frowning brows was clearly visible by the glow of
-the charcoal.
-
-“It’s all the same to him,” he muttered, turning quickly to a soldier
-who stood behind him. “Brigand! Get away!”
-
-And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre, who turned
-away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner, the Russian soldier the
-Frenchman had pushed away, was sitting near the fire patting something
-with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the blue-gray dog,
-sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail.
-
-“Ah, he’s come?” said Pierre. “And Plat—” he began, but did not finish.
-
-Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his fancy—of
-the look Platón had given him as he sat under the tree, of the shot
-heard from that spot, of the dog’s howl, of the guilty faces of the two
-Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and smoking gun, and of
-Karatáev’s absence at this halt—and he was on the point of realizing
-that Karatáev had been killed, but just at that instant, he knew not
-why, the recollection came to his mind of a summer evening he had spent
-with a beautiful Polish lady on the veranda of his house in Kiev. And
-without linking up the events of the day or drawing a conclusion
-from them, Pierre closed his eyes, seeing a vision of the country in
-summertime mingled with memories of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating
-globe, and he sank into water so that it closed over his head.
-
-Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and rapid firing.
-French soldiers were running past him.
-
-“The Cossacks!” one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of
-Russians surrounded Pierre.
-
-For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him. All
-around he heard his comrades sobbing with joy.
-
-“Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!” old soldiers exclaimed, weeping, as
-they embraced Cossacks and hussars.
-
-The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered them
-clothes, another boots, and a third bread. Pierre sobbed as he sat
-among them and could not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier who
-approached him, and kissed him, weeping.
-
-Dólokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a crowd
-of disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited by all that had
-happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed
-Dólokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched them
-with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent. On the
-opposite side stood Dólokhov’s Cossack, counting the prisoners and
-marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate.
-
-“How many?” Dólokhov asked the Cossack.
-
-“The second hundred,” replied the Cossack.
-
-“Filez, filez!” * Dólokhov kept saying, having adopted this expression
-from the French, and when his eyes met those of the prisoners they
-flashed with a cruel light.
-
- * “Get along, get along!”
-
-
-Denísov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some Cossacks
-who were carrying the body of Pétya Rostóv to a hole that had been dug
-in the garden.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts began, the flight of
-the French assumed a still more tragic character, with men freezing,
-or roasting themselves to death at the campfires, while carriages
-with people dressed in furs continued to drive past, carrying away the
-property that had been stolen by the Emperor, kings, and dukes; but
-the process of the flight and disintegration of the French army went on
-essentially as before.
-
-From Moscow to Vyázma the French army of seventy-three thousand men not
-reckoning the Guards (who did nothing during the whole war but pillage)
-was reduced to thirty-six thousand, though not more than five thousand
-had fallen in battle. From this beginning the succeeding terms of the
-progression could be determined mathematically. The French army melted
-away and perished at the same rate from Moscow to Vyázma, from Vyázma
-to Smolénsk, from Smolénsk to the Berëzina, and from the Berëzina to
-Vílna—independently of the greater or lesser intensity of the cold, the
-pursuit, the barring of the way, or any other particular conditions.
-Beyond Vyázma the French army instead of moving in three columns huddled
-together into one mass, and so went on to the end. Berthier wrote to his
-Emperor (we know how far commanding officers allow themselves to diverge
-from the truth in describing the condition of an army) and this is what
-he said:
-
-
-I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the condition of the various
-corps I have had occasion to observe during different stages of the last
-two or three days’ march. They are almost disbanded. Scarcely a quarter
-of the soldiers remain with the standards of their regiments, the others
-go off by themselves in different directions hoping to find food and
-escape discipline. In general they regard Smolénsk as the place where
-they hope to recover. During the last few days many of the men have been
-seen to throw away their cartridges and their arms. In such a state
-of affairs, whatever your ultimate plans may be, the interest of Your
-Majesty’s service demands that the army should be rallied at Smolénsk
-and should first of all be freed from ineffectives, such as dismounted
-cavalry, unnecessary baggage, and artillery material that is no longer
-in proportion to the present forces. The soldiers, who are worn out with
-hunger and fatigue, need these supplies as well as a few days’ rest.
-Many have died these last days on the road or at the bivouacs. This
-state of things is continually becoming worse and makes one fear that
-unless a prompt remedy is applied the troops will no longer be under
-control in case of an engagement.
-
-November 9: twenty miles from Smolénsk.
-
-
-After staggering into Smolénsk which seemed to them a promised land, the
-French, searching for food, killed one another, sacked their own stores,
-and when everything had been plundered fled farther.
-
-They all went without knowing whither or why they were going. Still less
-did that genius, Napoleon, know it, for no one issued any orders to
-him. But still he and those about him retained their old habits: wrote
-commands, letters, reports, and orders of the day; called one another
-sire, mon cousin, prince d’Eckmühl, roi de Naples, and so on. But these
-orders and reports were only on paper, nothing in them was acted upon
-for they could not be carried out, and though they entitled one
-another Majesties, Highnesses, or Cousins, they all felt that they were
-miserable wretches who had done much evil for which they had now to
-pay. And though they pretended to be concerned about the army, each
-was thinking only of himself and of how to get away quickly and save
-himself.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-The movements of the Russian and French armies during the campaign
-from Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian
-blindman’s bluff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of
-them occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his
-whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into
-a tight place he runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to
-escape runs straight into his opponent’s arms.
-
-At first while they were still moving along the Kalúga road, Napoleon’s
-armies made their presence known, but later when they reached the
-Smolénsk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell tight—and often
-thinking they were escaping ran right into the Russians.
-
-Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the Russian pursuit
-and the consequent exhaustion of the horses, the chief means of
-approximately ascertaining the enemy’s position—by cavalry scouting—was
-not available. Besides, as a result of the frequent and rapid change of
-position by each army, even what information was obtained could not be
-delivered in time. If news was received one day that the enemy had been
-in a certain position the day before, by the third day when something
-could have been done, that army was already two days’ march farther on
-and in quite another position.
-
-One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolénsk there were several
-different roads available for the French, and one would have thought
-that during their stay of four days they might have learned where
-the enemy was, might have arranged some more advantageous plan and
-undertaken something new. But after a four days’ halt the mob, with no
-maneuvers or plans, again began running along the beaten track, neither
-to the right nor to the left but along the old—the worst—road, through
-Krásnoe and Orshá.
-
-Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French separated
-in their flight and spread out over a distance of twenty-four hours. In
-front of them all fled the Emperor, then the kings, then the dukes. The
-Russian army, expecting Napoleon to take the road to the right beyond
-the Dnieper—which was the only reasonable thing for him to do—themselves
-turned to the right and came out onto the highroad at Krásnoe. And here
-as in a game of blindman’s buff the French ran into our vanguard. Seeing
-their enemy unexpectedly the French fell into confusion and stopped
-short from the sudden fright, but then they resumed their flight,
-abandoning their comrades who were farther behind. Then for three days
-separate portions of the French army—first Murat’s (the vice-king’s),
-then Davout’s, and then Ney’s—ran, as it were, the gauntlet of the
-Russian army. They abandoned one another, abandoned all their heavy
-baggage, their artillery, and half their men, and fled, getting past the
-Russians by night by making semicircles to the right.
-
-Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of
-Smolénsk which were in nobody’s way, because despite the unfortunate
-plight of the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor
-against which they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of ten
-thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orshá with only one thousand men left,
-having abandoned all the rest and all his cannon, and having crossed the
-Dnieper at night by stealth at a wooded spot.
-
-From Orshá they fled farther along the road to Vílna, still playing
-at blindman’s buff with the pursuing army. At the Berëzina they again
-became disorganized, many were drowned and many surrendered, but those
-who got across the river fled farther. Their supreme chief donned a
-fur coat and, having seated himself in a sleigh, galloped on alone,
-abandoning his companions. The others who could do so drove away too,
-leaving those who could not to surrender or die.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which they did
-all they could to destroy themselves. From the time they turned onto
-the Kalúga road to the day their leader fled from the army, none of the
-movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might have thought that
-regarding this period of the campaign the historians, who attributed
-the actions of the mass to the will of one man, would have found it
-impossible to make the story of the retreat fit their theory. But
-no! Mountains of books have been written by the historians about this
-campaign, and everywhere are described Napoleon’s arrangements, the
-maneuvers, and his profound plans which guided the army, as well as the
-military genius shown by his marshals.
-
-The retreat from Málo-Yaroslávets when he had a free road into a
-well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along
-which Kutúzov afterwards pursued him—this unnecessary retreat along
-a devastated road—is explained to us as being due to profound
-considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for
-his retreat from Smolénsk to Orshá. Then his heroism at Krásnoe is
-described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle
-and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch stick
-and said:
-
-“J’ai assez fait l’empereur; il est temps de faire le général,” * but
-nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the
-scattered fragments of the army he left behind.
-
- * “I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act
- the general.”
-
-
-Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals, especially
-of Ney—a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he made his way by
-night around through the forest and across the Dnieper and escaped to
-Orshá, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths of his men.
-
-And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic
-army is presented to us by the historians as something great and
-characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in
-ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child
-is taught to be ashamed of—even that act finds justification in the
-historians’ language.
-
-When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical
-ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all
-that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving
-conception of “greatness.” “Greatness,” it seems, excludes the standards
-of right and wrong. For the “great” man nothing is wrong, there is no
-atrocity for which a “great” man can be blamed.
-
-“C’est grand!” * say the historians, and there no longer exists either
-good or evil but only “grand” and “not grand.” Grand is good, not
-grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of some
-special animals called “heroes.” And Napoleon, escaping home in a warm
-fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his comrades
-but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que c’est
-grand, *(2) and his soul is tranquil.
-
- * “It is great.”
-
- * (2) That it is great.
-
-“Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n’y
-a qu’un pas,” * said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been
-repeating: “Sublime! Grand! Napoléon le Grand!” Du sublime au ridicule
-il n’y a qu’un pas.
-
- * “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.”
-
-
-And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with
-the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one’s own nothingness
-and immeasurable meanness.
-
-For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human
-actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity,
-goodness, and truth are absent.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign
-of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret,
-dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is
-that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three armies
-surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered French, hungry
-and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as the historians relate)
-the aim of the Russians was to stop the French, to cut them off, and
-capture them all?
-
-How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than the
-French had given battle at Borodinó, did not achieve its purpose when it
-had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim was to capture
-them? Can the French be so enormously superior to us that when we had
-surrounded them with superior forces we could not beat them? How could
-that happen?
-
-History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questions
-says that this occurred because Kutúzov and Tormásov and Chichagóv, and
-this man and that man, did not execute such and such maneuvers....
-
-But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were
-guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried and
-punished? But even if we admitted that Kutúzov, Chichagóv, and others
-were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still incomprehensible
-why, the position of the Russian army being what it was at Krásnoe and
-at the Berëzina (in both cases we had superior forces), the French army
-with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not captured, if that was what
-the Russians aimed at.
-
-The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military
-historians (to the effect that Kutúzov hindered an attack) is unfounded,
-for we know that he could not restrain the troops from attacking at
-Vyázma and Tarútino.
-
-Why was the Russian army—which with inferior forces had withstood the
-enemy in full strength at Borodinó—defeated at Krásnoe and the Berëzina
-by the disorganized crowds of the French when it was numerically
-superior?
-
-If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing
-Napoleon and his marshals—and that aim was not merely frustrated but all
-attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled—then this last period
-of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the French to be a
-series of victories, and quite wrongly considered victorious by Russian
-historians.
-
-The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims
-of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical
-rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit
-that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for
-Napoleon and defeats for Kutúzov.
-
-But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a
-conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of French
-victories brought the French complete destruction, while the series
-of Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the
-liberation of their country.
-
-The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the historians
-studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns and the generals,
-from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth, have attributed to this
-last period of the war of 1812 an aim that never existed, namely that of
-cutting off and capturing Napoleon with his marshals and his army.
-
-There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have been
-senseless and its attainment quite impossible.
-
-It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon’s disorganized
-army was flying from Russia with all possible speed, that is to say, was
-doing just what every Russian desired. So what was the use of performing
-various operations on the French who were running away as fast as they
-possibly could?
-
-Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men whose
-whole energy was directed to flight.
-
-Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one’s own troops in
-order to destroy the French army, which without external interference
-was destroying itself at such a rate that, though its path was not
-blocked, it could not carry across the frontier more than it actually
-did in December, namely a hundredth part of the original army.
-
-Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive the
-Emperor, kings, and dukes—whose capture would have been in the highest
-degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit diplomatists of
-the time (Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized. Still more senseless
-would have been the wish to capture army corps of the French, when our
-own army had melted away to half before reaching Krásnoe and a whole
-division would have been needed to convoy the corps of prisoners, and
-when our men were not always getting full rations and the prisoners
-already taken were perishing of hunger.
-
-All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon and his
-army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving out of
-his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he had planted, should
-run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. The only thing to be said
-in excuse of that gardener would be that he was very angry. But not even
-that could be said for those who drew up this project, for it was not
-they who had suffered from the trampled beds.
-
-But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would have
-been senseless, it was impossible.
-
-It was impossible first because—as experience shows that a three-mile
-movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with the plans—the
-probability of Chichagóv, Kutúzov, and Wittgenstein effecting a junction
-on time at an appointed place was so remote as to be tantamount to
-impossibility, as in fact thought Kutúzov, who when he received the plan
-remarked that diversions planned over great distances do not yield the
-desired results.
-
-Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with which
-Napoleon’s army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than the
-Russians possessed would have been required.
-
-Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term “to cut off” has no
-meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army. To cut off
-an army—to bar its road—is quite impossible, for there is always plenty
-of room to avoid capture and there is the night when nothing can be
-seen, as the military scientists might convince themselves by the
-example of Krásnoe and of the Berëzina. It is only possible to capture
-prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it is only possible
-to catch a swallow if it settles on one’s hand. Men can only be taken
-prisoners if they surrender according to the rules of strategy and
-tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troops quite rightly did not
-consider that this suited them, since death by hunger and cold awaited
-them in flight or captivity alike.
-
-Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the world
-began has a war been fought under such conditions as those that obtained
-in 1812, and the Russian army in its pursuit of the French strained its
-strength to the utmost and could not have done more without destroying
-itself.
-
-During the movement of the Russian army from Tarútino to Krásnoe it
-lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to the
-population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of the army
-without a battle.
-
-And it is of this period of the campaign—when the army lacked boots
-and sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and
-was camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees
-of frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and
-the rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot be
-maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where
-discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but for
-months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and
-cold, when half the army perished in a single month—it is of this period
-of the campaign that the historians tell us how Milorádovich should have
-made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormásov to another place,
-and Chichagóv should have crossed (more than knee-deep in snow) to
-somewhere else, and how so-and-so “routed” and “cut off” the French and
-so on and so on.
-
-The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should have been
-done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not to blame
-because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed that they should
-do what was impossible.
-
-All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between the
-facts and the historical accounts only arises because the historians
-dealing with the matter have written the history of the beautiful words
-and sentiments of various generals, and not the history of the events.
-
-To them the words of Milorádovich seem very interesting, and so do their
-surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but the question
-of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals and in graves
-does not even interest them, for it does not come within the range of
-their investigation.
-
-Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans and
-consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who took a
-direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed insoluble
-easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.
-
-The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in
-the imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it was
-senseless and unattainable.
-
-The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion. That aim
-was attained in the first place of itself, as the French ran away,
-and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight. Secondly it was
-attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying the French, and
-thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was following the French,
-ready to use its strength in case their movement stopped.
-
-The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the
-experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a
-menace than to strike the running animal on the head.
-
-
-
-
-
-BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror: substance
-similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it is a
-beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides this horror at
-the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritual wound, which
-like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes heals, but always
-aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.
-
-After Prince Andrew’s death Natásha and Princess Mary alike felt this.
-Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing cloud of
-death that overhung them, they dared not look life in the face. They
-carefully guarded their open wounds from any rough and painful contact.
-Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the street, a summons to
-dinner, the maid’s inquiry what dress to prepare, or worse still any
-word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed an insult, painfully
-irritated the wound, interrupting that necessary quiet in which
-they both tried to listen to the stern and dreadful choir that still
-resounded in their imagination, and hindered their gazing into those
-mysterious limitless vistas that for an instant had opened out before
-them.
-
-Only when alone together were they free from such outrage and pain.
-They spoke little even to one another, and when they did it was of very
-unimportant matters.
-
-Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the possibility of
-a future seemed to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully did
-they avoid anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them that
-what they had lived through and experienced could not be expressed in
-words, and that any reference to the details of his life infringed the
-majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been accomplished before
-their eyes.
-
-Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of everything
-that might lead up to the subject—this halting on all sides at the
-boundary of what they might not mention—brought before their minds with
-still greater purity and clearness what they were both feeling.
-
-But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
-Princess Mary, in her position as absolute and independent arbiter of
-her own fate and guardian and instructor of her nephew, was the first to
-be called back to life from that realm of sorrow in which she had dwelt
-for the first fortnight. She received letters from her relations to
-which she had to reply; the room in which little Nicholas had been put
-was damp and he began to cough; Alpátych came to Yaroslávl with reports
-on the state of their affairs and with advice and suggestions that they
-should return to Moscow to the house on the Vozdvízhenka Street, which
-had remained uninjured and needed only slight repairs. Life did not
-stand still and it was necessary to live. Hard as it was for Princess
-Mary to emerge from the realm of secluded contemplation in which she
-had lived till then, and sorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave
-Natásha alone, yet the cares of life demanded her attention and she
-involuntarily yielded to them. She went through the accounts with
-Alpátych, conferred with Dessalles about her nephew, and gave orders and
-made preparations for the journey to Moscow.
-
-Natásha remained alone and, from the time Princess Mary began making
-preparations for departure, held aloof from her too.
-
-Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natásha go with her to Moscow,
-and both parents gladly accepted this offer, for they saw their daughter
-losing strength every day and thought that a change of scene and the
-advice of Moscow doctors would be good for her.
-
-“I am not going anywhere,” Natásha replied when this was proposed to
-her. “Do please just leave me alone!” And she ran out of the room, with
-difficulty refraining from tears of vexation and irritation rather than
-of sorrow.
-
-After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone in her grief,
-Natásha spent most of the time in her room by herself, sitting huddled
-up feet and all in the corner of the sofa, tearing and twisting
-something with her slender nervous fingers and gazing intently and
-fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. This solitude exhausted
-and tormented her but she was in absolute need of it. As soon as anyone
-entered she got up quickly, changed her position and expression, and
-picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting impatiently for the
-intruder to go.
-
-She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate that
-on which—with a terrible questioning too great for her strength—her
-spiritual gaze was fixed.
-
-One day toward the end of December Natásha, pale and thin, dressed in a
-black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a knot, was
-crouched feet and all in the corner of her sofa, nervously crumpling and
-smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked at a corner of the
-door.
-
-She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone—to the other side
-of life. And that other side of life, of which she had never before
-thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away and improbable,
-was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible than this side of
-life, where everything was either emptiness and desolation or suffering
-and indignity.
-
-She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could not imagine him
-otherwise than as he had been here. She now saw him again as he had been
-at Mytíshchi, at Tróitsa, and at Yaroslávl.
-
-She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and her own, and
-sometimes devised other words they might have spoken.
-
-There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak, leaning
-his head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his
-shoulders raised. His lips are firmly closed, his eyes glitter, and a
-wrinkle comes and goes on his pale forehead. One of his legs twitches
-just perceptibly, but rapidly. Natásha knows that he is struggling with
-terrible pain. “What is that pain like? Why does he have that pain? What
-does he feel? How does it hurt him?” thought Natásha. He noticed her
-watching him, raised his eyes, and began to speak seriously:
-
-“One thing would be terrible,” said he: “to bind oneself forever to a
-suffering man. It would be continual torture.” And he looked searchingly
-at her. Natásha as usual answered before she had time to think what she
-would say. She said: “This can’t go on—it won’t. You will get well—quite
-well.”
-
-She now saw him from the commencement of that scene and relived what she
-had then felt. She recalled his long sad and severe look at those words
-and understood the meaning of the rebuke and despair in that protracted
-gaze.
-
-“I agreed,” Natásha now said to herself, “that it would be dreadful if
-he always continued to suffer. I said it then only because it would have
-been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently. He thought it
-would be dreadful for me. He then still wished to live and feared death.
-And I said it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not say what I meant.
-I thought quite differently. Had I said what I thought, I should have
-said: even if he had to go on dying, to die continually before my eyes,
-I should have been happy compared with what I am now. Now there is
-nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No, he did not and never will know
-it. And now it will never, never be possible to put it right.” And
-now he again seemed to be saying the same words to her, only in her
-imagination Natásha this time gave him a different answer. She stopped
-him and said: “Terrible for you, but not for me! You know that for me
-there is nothing in life but you, and to suffer with you is the greatest
-happiness for me,” and he took her hand and pressed it as he had
-pressed it that terrible evening four days before his death. And in her
-imagination she said other tender and loving words which she might have
-said then but only spoke now: “I love thee!... thee! I love, love...”
-she said, convulsively pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a
-desperate effort....
-
-She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in her
-eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this.
-Again everything was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again with a
-strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. And now, now
-it seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But at the instant
-when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing itself to her a
-loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on her ears. Dunyásha,
-her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a frightened look
-on her face and showing no concern for her mistress.
-
-“Come to your Papa at once, please!” said she with a strange, excited
-look. “A misfortune... about Peter Ilýnich... a letter,” she finished
-with a sob.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natásha was feeling a
-special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of
-them—her father, mother, and Sónya—were so near to her, so familiar, so
-commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult to the
-world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not merely
-indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard
-Dunyásha’s words about Peter Ilýnich and a misfortune, but did not grasp
-them.
-
-“What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to them? They just live
-their own old, quiet, and commonplace life,” thought Natásha.
-
-As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly coming out of
-her mother’s room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He
-had evidently run out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were
-choking him. When he saw Natásha he waved his arms despairingly and
-burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round face.
-
-“Pe... Pétya... Go, go, she... is calling...” and weeping like a child
-and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he almost fell into
-it, covering his face with his hands.
-
-Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through Natásha’s whole being.
-Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache as if
-something was being torn inside her and she were dying. But the pain
-was immediately followed by a feeling of release from the oppressive
-constraint that had prevented her taking part in life. The sight of her
-father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that she heard through the
-door, made her immediately forget herself and her own grief.
-
-She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm, pointing to her
-mother’s door. Princess Mary, pale and with quivering chin, came out
-from that room and taking Natásha by the arm said something to her.
-Natásha neither saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid steps, pausing
-at the door for an instant as if struggling with herself, and then ran
-to her mother.
-
-The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and awkward position,
-stretching out and beating her head against the wall. Sónya and the
-maids were holding her arms.
-
-“Natásha! Natásha!...” cried the countess. “It’s not true... it’s not
-true... He’s lying... Natásha!” she shrieked, pushing those around her
-away. “Go away, all of you; it’s not true! Killed!... ha, ha, ha!...
-It’s not true!”
-
-Natásha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her mother, embraced
-her, and with unexpected strength raised her, turned her face toward
-herself, and clung to her.
-
-“Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy,” she kept on
-whispering, not pausing an instant.
-
-She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly with her,
-demanded a pillow and hot water, and unfastened and tore open her
-mother’s dress.
-
-“My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!...” she whispered
-incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and feeling her own
-irrepressible and streaming tears tickling her nose and cheeks.
-
-The countess pressed her daughter’s hand, closed her eyes, and became
-quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up with unaccustomed swiftness,
-glanced vacantly around her, and seeing Natásha began to press her
-daughter’s head with all her strength. Then she turned toward her
-daughter’s face which was wincing with pain and gazed long at it.
-
-“Natásha, you love me?” she said in a soft trustful whisper. “Natásha,
-you would not deceive me? You’ll tell me the whole truth?”
-
-Natásha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her look there was
-nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.
-
-“My darling Mummy!” she repeated, straining all the power of her love to
-find some way of taking on herself the excess of grief that crushed her
-mother.
-
-And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother, refusing to
-believe that she could live when her beloved boy was killed in the bloom
-of life, escaped from reality into a world of delirium.
-
-Natásha did not remember how that day passed nor that night, nor the
-next day and night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother. Her
-persevering and patient love seemed completely to surround the countess
-every moment, not explaining or consoling, but recalling her to life.
-
-During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a few minutes,
-and Natásha rested her head on the arm of her chair and closed her eyes,
-but opened them again on hearing the bedstead creak. The countess was
-sitting up in bed and speaking softly.
-
-“How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won’t you have some tea?”
-Natásha went up to her. “You have improved in looks and grown more
-manly,” continued the countess, taking her daughter’s hand.
-
-“Mamma! What are you saying...”
-
-“Natásha, he is no more, no more!”
-
-And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first
-time.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sónya and the count tried to
-replace Natásha but could not. They saw that she alone was able to
-restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks Natásha
-remained constantly at her mother’s side, sleeping on a lounge chair
-in her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her incessantly
-because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones soothed her
-mother.
-
-The mother’s wounded spirit could not heal. Pétya’s death had torn from
-her half her life. When the news of Pétya’s death had come she had been
-a fresh and vigorous woman of fifty, but a month later she left her room
-a listless old woman taking no interest in life. But the same blow that
-almost killed the countess, this second blow, restored Natásha to life.
-
-A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is like
-a physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep wound may
-heal and its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike can yet
-heal completely only as the result of a vital force from within.
-
-Natásha’s wound healed in that way. She thought her life was ended,
-but her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the essence of
-life—love—was still active within her. Love awoke and so did life.
-
-Prince Andrew’s last days had bound Princess Mary and Natásha together;
-this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another. Princess Mary
-put off her departure, and for three weeks looked after Natásha as if
-she had been a sick child. The last weeks passed in her mother’s bedroom
-had strained Natásha’s physical strength.
-
-One afternoon noticing Natásha shivering with fever, Princess Mary took
-her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natásha lay down,
-but when Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away she
-called her back.
-
-“I don’t want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little.”
-
-“You are tired—try to sleep.”
-
-“No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me.”
-
-“She is much better. She spoke so well today,” said Princess Mary.
-
-Natásha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned
-Princess Mary’s face.
-
-“Is she like him?” thought Natásha. “Yes, like and yet not like. But she
-is quite original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me. What
-is in her heart? All that is good. But how? What is her mind like? What
-does she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!”
-
-“Mary,” she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary’s hand to herself,
-“Mary, you mustn’t think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love you!
-Let us be quite, quite friends.”
-
-And Natásha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making
-Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her feelings.
-
-From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only
-between women was established between Princess Mary and Natásha. They
-were continually kissing and saying tender things to one another and
-spent most of their time together. When one went out the other became
-restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt more in harmony
-with one another than either of them felt with herself when alone. A
-feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them; an exclusive
-feeling of life being possible only in each other’s presence.
-
-Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were already
-in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They spoke most
-of what was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her childhood, of her
-mother, her father, and her daydreams; and Natásha, who with a passive
-lack of understanding had formerly turned away from that life of
-devotion, submission, and the poetry of Christian self-sacrifice, now
-feeling herself bound to Princess Mary by affection, learned to love her
-past too and to understand a side of life previously incomprehensible to
-her. She did not think of applying submission and self-abnegation to her
-own life, for she was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood
-and loved in another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For
-Princess Mary, listening to Natásha’s tales of childhood and early
-youth, there also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of
-life: belief in life and its enjoyment.
-
-Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they
-thought) their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him had
-the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without being
-conscious of it.
-
-Natásha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all
-talked about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was
-suddenly overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness,
-and loss of good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm
-carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her
-drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed to
-her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.
-
-One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath.
-Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and
-then, testing her strength, ran upstairs again, observing the result.
-
-Another time when she called Dunyásha her voice trembled, so she called
-again—though she could hear Dunyásha coming—called her in the deep chest
-tones in which she had been wont to sing, and listened attentively to
-herself.
-
-She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the layer
-of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable, delicate
-young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking root would so
-cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed her down that
-it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound had begun to heal
-from within.
-
-At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow, and the count
-insisted on Natásha’s going with her to consult the doctors.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-After the encounter at Vyázma, where Kutúzov had been unable to hold
-back his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemy and
-so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French, and of the Russians
-who pursued them, continued as far as Krásnoe without a battle. The
-flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing the French could
-not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses broke down, and the
-information received of the movements of the French was never reliable.
-
-The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuous marching
-at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could not go any
-faster.
-
-To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it is only
-necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that, while not
-losing more than five thousand killed and wounded after Tarútino and
-less than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left that place a
-hundred thousand strong reached Krásnoe with only fifty thousand.
-
-The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our army
-as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only difference was that
-the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of destruction
-as hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmen were left behind
-in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind were among their
-own people. The chief cause of the wastage of Napoleon’s army was
-the rapidity of its movement, and a convincing proof of this is the
-corresponding decrease of the Russian army.
-
-Kutúzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check the
-movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian
-army generals, directed his whole activity here, as he had done at
-Tarútino and Vyázma, to hastening it on while easing the movement of our
-army.
-
-But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution of the
-army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident, another
-reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented itself to Kutúzov.
-The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French. The road the
-French would take was unknown, and so the closer our troops trod on
-their heels the greater distance they had to cover. Only by following
-at some distance could one cut across the zigzag path of the French. All
-the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals meant fresh movements of
-the army and a lengthening of its marches, whereas the only reasonable
-aim was to shorten those marches. To that end Kutúzov’s activity was
-directed during the whole campaign from Moscow to Vílna—not casually or
-intermittently but so consistently that he never once deviated from it.
-
-Kutúzov felt and knew—not by reasoning or science but with the whole of
-his Russian being—what every Russian soldier felt: that the French were
-beaten, that the enemy was flying and must be driven out; but at the
-same time he like the soldiers realized all the hardship of this march,
-the rapidity of which was unparalleled for such a time of the year.
-
-But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian army,
-who wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody, and for some
-reason to capture a king or a duke—it seemed that now—when any battle
-must be horrible and senseless—was the very time to fight and conquer
-somebody. Kutúzov merely shrugged his shoulders when one after
-another they presented projects of maneuvers to be made with those
-soldiers—ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half starved—who within a
-month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half their number,
-and who at the best if the flight continued would have to go a greater
-distance than they had already traversed, before they reached the
-frontier.
-
-This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow, and
-to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians stumbled on
-the French army.
-
-So it was at Krásnoe, where they expected to find one of the three
-French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen
-thousand men. Despite all Kutúzov’s efforts to avoid that ruinous
-encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob
-of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krásnoe for three
-days.
-
-Toll wrote a disposition: “The first column will march to so and so,”
-etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the disposition.
-Prince Eugène of Württemberg fired from a hill over the French crowds
-that were running past, and demanded reinforcements which did not
-arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and hid themselves
-in the forest by night, making their way round as best they could, and
-continued their flight.
-
-Milorádovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the
-commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found when
-he was wanted—that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche * as he styled
-himself—who was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys demanding
-their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was ordered to do.
-
- * Knight without fear and without reproach.
-
-“I give you that column, lads,” he said, riding up to the troops and
-pointing out the French to the cavalry.
-
-And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could
-scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented
-to them—that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold,
-frost-bitten, and starving—and the column that had been presented to
-them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long been anxious to
-do.
-
-At Krásnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several hundred
-cannon, and a stick called a “marshal’s staff,” and disputed as to who
-had distinguished himself and were pleased with their achievement—though
-they much regretted not having taken Napoleon, or at least a marshal or
-a hero of some sort, and reproached one another and especially Kutúzov
-for having failed to do so.
-
-These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of the
-most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes and
-imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable
-deed. They blamed Kutúzov and said that from the very beginning of the
-campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought of
-nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from the Linen
-Factories because he was comfortable there, that at Krásnoe he checked
-the advance because on learning that Napoleon was there he had quite
-lost his head, and that it was probable that he had an understanding
-with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so on, and so on.
-
-Not only did his contemporaries, carried away by their passions, talk
-in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as grand,
-while Kutúzov is described by foreigners as a crafty, dissolute, weak
-old courtier, and by Russians as something indefinite—a sort of puppet
-useful only because he had a Russian name.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-In 1812 and 1813 Kutúzov was openly accused of blundering. The Emperor
-was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written by order
-of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutúzov was a cunning court
-liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by his blunders at
-Krásnoe and the Berëzina he deprived the Russian army of the glory of
-complete victory over the French. *
-
- * History of the year 1812. The character of Kutúzov and
- reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at
- Krásnoe, by Bogdánovich.
-
-Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian mind
-does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary individuals
-who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their personal will to
-it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish such men for discerning
-the higher laws.
-
-For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleon—that most
-insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in exile, showed
-human dignity—Napoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm; he
-is grand. But Kutúzov—the man who from the beginning to the end of his
-activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or deed from Borodinó to
-Vílna, presented an example exceptional in history of self-sacrifice
-and a present consciousness of the future importance of what was
-happening—Kutúzov seems to them something indefinite and pitiful, and
-when speaking of him and of the year 1812 they always seem a little
-ashamed.
-
-And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose
-activity was so unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be
-difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the
-will of the whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find
-an instance in history of the aim of an historical personage being so
-completely accomplished as that to which all Kutúzov’s efforts were
-directed in 1812.
-
-Kutúzov never talked of “forty centuries looking down from the
-Pyramids,” of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of
-what he intended to accomplish or had accomplished; in general he
-said nothing about himself, adopted no pose, always appeared to be
-the simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most
-ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de
-Staël, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested with
-generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who tried
-to prove anything to him. When Count Rostopchín at the Yaúza bridge
-galloped up to Kutúzov with personal reproaches for having caused the
-destruction of Moscow, and said: “How was it you promised not to abandon
-Moscow without a battle?” Kutúzov replied: “And I shall not abandon
-Moscow without a battle,” though Moscow was then already abandoned. When
-Arakchéev, coming to him from the Emperor, said that Ermólov ought to
-be appointed chief of the artillery, Kutúzov replied: “Yes, I was
-just saying so myself,” though a moment before he had said quite the
-contrary. What did it matter to him—who then alone amid a senseless
-crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what was
-happening—what did it matter to him whether Rostopchín attributed the
-calamities of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could it matter to
-him who was appointed chief of the artillery.
-
-Not merely in these cases but continually did that old man—who by
-experience of life had reached the conviction that thoughts and the
-words serving as their expression are not what move people—use quite
-meaningless words that happened to enter his head.
-
-But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the whole
-time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single aim
-toward which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite of
-himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his real
-thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be understood.
-Beginning with the battle of Borodinó, from which time his disagreement
-with those about him began, he alone said that the battle of Borodinó
-was a victory, and repeated this both verbally and in his dispatches
-and reports up to the time of his death. He alone said that the loss of
-Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to Lauriston’s proposal of
-peace, he said: There can be no peace, for such is the people’s will. He
-alone during the retreat of the French said that all our maneuvers are
-useless, everything is being accomplished of itself better than we could
-desire; that the enemy must be offered “a golden bridge”; that neither
-the Tarútino, the Vyázma, nor the Krásnoe battles were necessary; that
-we must keep some force to reach the frontier with, and that he would
-not sacrifice a single Russian for ten Frenchmen.
-
-And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to Arakchéev
-to please the Emperor, he alone—incurring thereby the Emperor’s
-displeasure—said in Vílna that to carry the war beyond the frontier is
-useless and harmful.
-
-Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the meaning of the
-events. His actions—without the smallest deviation—were all directed
-to one and the same threefold end: (1) to brace all his strength for
-conflict with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3) to drive them out
-of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the sufferings of our people
-and of our army.
-
-This procrastinator Kutúzov, whose motto was “Patience and Time,”
-this enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodinó, investing the
-preparations for it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutúzov who before
-the battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be lost, he alone, in
-contradiction to everyone else, declared till his death that Borodinó
-was a victory, despite the assurance of generals that the battle was
-lost and despite the fact that for an army to have to retire after
-winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during the whole retreat
-insisted that battles, which were useless then, should not be fought,
-and that a new war should not be begun nor the frontiers of Russia
-crossed.
-
-It is easy now to understand the significance of these events—if only we
-abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that existed
-only in the heads of a dozen individuals—for the events and results now
-lie before us.
-
-But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general opinion,
-so truly discern the importance of the people’s view of the events that
-in all his activity he was never once untrue to it?
-
-The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating the meaning of the
-events then occuring lay in the national feeling which he possessed in
-full purity and strength.
-
-Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this feeling caused
-the people in so strange a manner, contrary to the Tsar’s wish, to
-select him—an old man in disfavor—to be their representative in the
-national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest human
-pedestal from which he, the commander in chief, devoted all his powers
-not to slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing pity on
-them.
-
-That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not be
-cast in the false mold of a European hero—the supposed ruler of men—that
-history has invented.
-
-To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception of
-greatness.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle of
-Krásnoe. Toward evening—after much disputing and many mistakes made by
-generals who did not go to their proper places, and after adjutants had
-been sent about with counterorders—when it had become plain that the
-enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and would be no
-battle, Kutúzov left Krásnoe and went to Dóbroe whither his headquarters
-had that day been transferred.
-
-The day was clear and frosty. Kutúzov rode to Dóbroe on his plump little
-white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented generals who
-whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the road groups of
-French prisoners captured that day (there were seven thousand of them)
-were crowding to warm themselves at campfires. Near Dóbroe an immense
-crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with talk and wrapped and bandaged
-in anything they had been able to get hold of, were standing in the road
-beside a long row of unharnessed French guns. At the approach of the
-commander in chief the buzz of talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on
-Kutúzov who, wearing a white cap with a red band and a padded overcoat
-that bulged on his round shoulders, moved slowly along the road on his
-white horse. One of the generals was reporting to him where the guns and
-prisoners had been captured.
-
-Kutúzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what the general was
-saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he gazed
-attentively and fixedly at these prisoners, who presented a specially
-wretched appearance. Most of them were disfigured by frost-bitten noses
-and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and festering eyes.
-
-One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them, one of
-whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of raw
-flesh with their hands. There was something horrible and bestial in
-the fleeting glance they threw at the riders and in the malevolent
-expression with which, after a glance at Kutúzov, the soldier with the
-sores immediately turned away and went on with what he was doing.
-
-Kutúzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers. He puckered his
-face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head. At another
-spot he noticed a Russian soldier laughingly patting a Frenchman on the
-shoulder, saying something to him in a friendly manner, and Kutúzov with
-the same expression on his face again swayed his head.
-
-“What were you saying?” he asked the general, who continuing his report
-directed the commander in chief’s attention to some standards captured
-from the French and standing in front of the Preobrazhénsk regiment.
-
-“Ah, the standards!” said Kutúzov, evidently detaching himself with
-difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied him.
-
-He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were looking at him from
-all sides awaiting a word from him.
-
-He stopped in front of the Preobrazhénsk regiment, sighed deeply, and
-closed his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers carrying
-the standards to advance and surround the commander in chief with them.
-Kutúzov was silent for a few seconds and then, submitting with evident
-reluctance to the duty imposed by his position, raised his head
-and began to speak. A throng of officers surrounded him. He looked
-attentively around at the circle of officers, recognizing several of
-them.
-
-“I thank you all!” he said, addressing the soldiers and then again the
-officers. In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words were
-distinctly heard. “I thank you all for your hard and faithful service.
-The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor to you
-forever.”
-
-He paused and looked around.
-
-“Lower its head, lower it!” he said to a soldier who had accidentally
-lowered the French eagle he was holding before the Preobrazhénsk
-standards. “Lower, lower, that’s it. Hurrah lads!” he added, addressing
-the men with a rapid movement of his chin.
-
-“Hur-r-rah!” roared thousands of voices.
-
-While the soldiers were shouting Kutúzov leaned forward in his saddle
-and bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and apparently ironic
-gleam.
-
-“You see, brothers...” said he when the shouts had ceased... and all at
-once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no longer
-the commander in chief speaking but an ordinary old man who wanted to
-tell his comrades something very important.
-
-There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the ranks of the
-soldiers, who moved that they might hear better what he was going to
-say.
-
-“You see, brothers, I know it’s hard for you, but it can’t be helped!
-Bear up; it won’t be for long now! We’ll see our visitors off and then
-we’ll rest. The Tsar won’t forget your service. It is hard for you, but
-still you are at home while they—you see what they have come to,” said
-he, pointing to the prisoners. “Worse off than our poorest beggars.
-While they were strong we didn’t spare ourselves, but now we may even
-pity them. They are human beings too. Isn’t it so, lads?”
-
-He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze fixed
-upon him he read sympathy with what he had said. His face grew brighter
-and brighter with an old man’s mild smile, which drew the corners of his
-lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased speaking and bowed
-his head as if in perplexity.
-
-“But after all who asked them here? Serves them right, the bloody
-bastards!” he cried, suddenly lifting his head.
-
-And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first time
-during the whole campaign, and left the broken ranks of the soldiers
-laughing joyfully and shouting “Hurrah!”
-
-Kutúzov’s words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could have
-repeated the field marshal’s address, begun solemnly and then changing
-into an old man’s simplehearted talk; but the hearty sincerity of that
-speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined with pity for the foe
-and consciousness of the justice of our cause, exactly expressed by that
-old man’s good-natured expletives, was not merely understood but lay
-in the soul of every soldier and found expression in their joyous and
-long-sustained shouts. Afterwards when one of the generals addressed
-Kutúzov asking whether he wished his calèche to be sent for, Kutúzov in
-answering unexpectedly gave a sob, being evidently greatly moved.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-When the troops reached their night’s halting place on the eighth of
-November, the last day of the Krásnoe battles, it was already growing
-dusk. All day it had been calm and frosty with occasional lightly
-falling snow and toward evening it began to clear. Through the falling
-snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the frost grew
-keener.
-
-An infantry regiment which had left Tarútino three thousand strong but
-now numbered only nine hundred was one of the first to arrive that night
-at its halting place—a village on the highroad. The quartermasters who
-met the regiment announced that all the huts were full of sick and dead
-Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff. There was only one hut
-available for the regimental commander.
-
-The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed through the
-village and stacked its arms in front of the last huts.
-
-Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its
-lair and its food. One part of it dispersed and waded knee-deep
-through the snow into a birch forest to the right of the village, and
-immediately the sound of axes and swords, the crashing of branches,
-and merry voices could be heard from there. Another section amid the
-regimental wagons and horses which were standing in a group was busy
-getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and feeding the horses. A third
-section scattered through the village arranging quarters for the staff
-officers, carrying out the French corpses that were in the huts, and
-dragging away boards, dry wood, and thatch from the roofs, for the
-campfires, or wattle fences to serve for shelter.
-
-Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down the high wattle
-wall of a shed, the roof of which had already been removed.
-
-“Now then, all together—shove!” cried the voices, and the huge surface
-of the wall, sprinkled with snow and creaking with frost, was seen
-swaying in the gloom of the night. The lower stakes cracked more and
-more and at last the wall fell, and with it the men who had been pushing
-it. Loud, coarse laughter and joyous shouts ensued.
-
-“Now then, catch hold in twos! Hand up the lever! That’s it.... Where
-are you shoving to?”
-
-“Now, all together! But wait a moment, boys... With a song!”
-
-All stood silent, and a soft, pleasant velvety voice began to sing. At
-the end of the third verse as the last note died away, twenty voices
-roared out at once: “Oo-oo-oo-oo! That’s it. All together! Heave away,
-boys!...” but despite their united efforts the wattle hardly moved, and
-in the silence that followed the heavy breathing of the men was audible.
-
-“Here, you of the Sixth Company! Devils that you are! Lend a hand...
-will you? You may want us one of these days.”
-
-Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on their way into the
-village joined the haulers, and the wattle wall, which was about
-thirty-five feet long and seven feet high, moved forward along the
-village street, swaying, pressing upon and cutting the shoulders of the
-gasping men.
-
-“Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for? There now....”
-
-Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely.
-
-“What are you up to?” suddenly came the authoritative voice of a
-sergeant major who came upon the men who were hauling their burden.
-“There are gentry here; the general himself is in that hut, and you
-foul-mouthed devils, you brutes, I’ll give it to you!” shouted he,
-hitting the first man who came in his way a swinging blow on the back.
-“Can’t you make less noise?”
-
-The men became silent. The soldier who had been struck groaned and wiped
-his face, which had been scratched till it bled by his falling against
-the wattle.
-
-“There, how that devil hits out! He’s made my face all bloody,” said he
-in a frightened whisper when the sergeant major had passed on.
-
-“Don’t you like it?” said a laughing voice, and moderating their tones
-the men moved forward.
-
-When they were out of the village they began talking again as loud as
-before, interlarding their talk with the same aimless expletives.
-
-In the hut which the men had passed, the chief officers had gathered and
-were in animated talk over their tea about the events of the day and the
-maneuvers suggested for tomorrow. It was proposed to make a flank march
-to the left, cut off the Vice-King (Murat) and capture him.
-
-By the time the soldiers had dragged the wattle fence to its place
-the campfires were blazing on all sides ready for cooking, the wood
-crackled, the snow was melting, and black shadows of soldiers flitted
-to and fro all over the occupied space where the snow had been trodden
-down.
-
-Axes and choppers were plied all around. Everything was done without any
-orders being given. Stores of wood were brought for the night, shelters
-were rigged up for the officers, caldrons were being boiled, and muskets
-and accouterments put in order.
-
-The wattle wall the men had brought was set up in a semicircle by the
-Eighth Company as a shelter from the north, propped up by musket rests,
-and a campfire was built before it. They beat the tattoo, called the
-roll, had supper, and settled down round the fires for the night—some
-repairing their footgear, some smoking pipes, and some stripping
-themselves naked to steam the lice out of their shirts.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched
-conditions the Russian soldiers were in at that time—lacking warm boots
-and sheepskin coats, without a roof over their heads, in the snow
-with eighteen degrees of frost, and without even full rations (the
-commissariat did not always keep up with the troops)—they would have
-presented a very sad and depressing spectacle.
-
-On the contrary, the army had never under the best material conditions
-presented a more cheerful and animated aspect. This was because all who
-began to grow depressed or who lost strength were sifted out of the army
-day by day. All the physically or morally weak had long since been left
-behind and only the flower of the army—physically and mentally—remained.
-
-More men collected behind the wattle fence of the Eighth Company than
-anywhere else. Two sergeants major were sitting with them and their
-campfire blazed brighter than others. For leave to sit by their wattle
-they demanded contributions of fuel.
-
-“Eh, Makéev! What has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you lost or
-have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!” shouted a red-haired
-and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking because of the
-smoke but not moving back from the fire. “And you, Jackdaw, go and fetch
-some wood!” said he to another soldier.
-
-This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a corporal, but being
-robust he ordered about those weaker than himself. The soldier
-they called “Jackdaw,” a thin little fellow with a sharp nose, rose
-obediently and was about to go but at that instant there came into
-the light of the fire the slender, handsome figure of a young soldier
-carrying a load of wood.
-
-“Bring it here—that’s fine!”
-
-They split up the wood, pressed it down on the fire, blew at it with
-their mouths, and fanned it with the skirts of their greatcoats, making
-the flames hiss and crackle. The men drew nearer and lit their pipes.
-The handsome young soldier who had brought the wood, setting his arms
-akimbo, began stamping his cold feet rapidly and deftly on the spot
-where he stood.
-
-“Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It’s well that I’m a
-musketeer...” he sang, pretending to hiccough after each syllable.
-
-“Look out, your soles will fly off!” shouted the red-haired man,
-noticing that the sole of the dancer’s boot was hanging loose. “What a
-fellow you are for dancing!”
-
-The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of leather, and threw it
-on the fire.
-
-“Right enough, friend,” said he, and, having sat down, took out of his
-knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and wrapped it round his foot.
-“It’s the steam that spoils them,” he added, stretching out his feet
-toward the fire.
-
-“They’ll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when we’ve finished
-hammering them, we’re to receive double kits!”
-
-“And that son of a bitch Petróv has lagged behind after all, it seems,”
-said one sergeant major.
-
-“I’ve had an eye on him this long while,” said the other.
-
-“Well, he’s a poor sort of soldier....”
-
-“But in the Third Company they say nine men were missing yesterday.”
-
-“Yes, it’s all very well, but when a man’s feet are frozen how can he
-walk?”
-
-“Eh? Don’t talk nonsense!” said a sergeant major.
-
-“Do you want to be doing the same?” said an old soldier, turning
-reproachfully to the man who had spoken of frozen feet.
-
-“Well, you know,” said the sharp-nosed man they called Jackdaw in a
-squeaky and unsteady voice, raising himself at the other side of the
-fire, “a plump man gets thin, but for a thin one it’s death. Take
-me, now! I’ve got no strength left,” he added, with sudden resolution
-turning to the sergeant major. “Tell them to send me to hospital; I’m
-aching all over; anyway I shan’t be able to keep up.”
-
-“That’ll do, that’ll do!” replied the sergeant major quietly.
-
-The soldier said no more and the talk went on.
-
-“What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and the fact is that
-not one of them had what you might call real boots on,” said a soldier,
-starting a new theme. “They were no more than make-believes.”
-
-“The Cossacks have taken their boots. They were clearing the hut for the
-colonel and carried them out. It was pitiful to see them, boys,” put in
-the dancer. “As they turned them over one seemed still alive and, would
-you believe it, he jabbered something in their lingo.”
-
-“But they’re a clean folk, lads,” the first man went on; “he was
-white—as white as birchbark—and some of them are such fine fellows, you
-might think they were nobles.”
-
-“Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there.”
-
-“But they don’t understand our talk at all,” said the dancer with a
-puzzled smile. “I asked him whose subject he was, and he jabbered in his
-own way. A queer lot!”
-
-“But it’s strange, friends,” continued the man who had wondered at their
-whiteness, “the peasants at Mozháysk were saying that when they began
-burying the dead—where the battle was you know—well, those dead had been
-lying there for nearly a month, and says the peasant, ‘they lie as white
-as paper, clean, and not as much smell as a puff of powder smoke.’”
-
-“Was it from the cold?” asked someone.
-
-“You’re a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If it
-had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. ‘But,’ he
-says, ‘go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,’ he says,
-‘we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as we drag
-them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,’ he says, ‘are white as paper
-and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.’”
-
-All were silent.
-
-“It must be from their food,” said the sergeant major. “They used to
-gobble the same food as the gentry.”
-
-No one contradicted him.
-
-“That peasant near Mozháysk where the battle was said the men were all
-called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days and
-still didn’t finish carting the dead away. And as for the wolves, he
-says...”
-
-“That was a real battle,” said an old soldier. “It’s the only one worth
-remembering; but since that... it’s only been tormenting folk.”
-
-“And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them and,
-my word, they didn’t let us get near before they just threw down their
-muskets and went on their knees. ‘Pardon!’ they say. That’s only one
-case. They say Plátov took ‘Poleon himself twice. But he didn’t know
-the right charm. He catches him and catches him—no good! He turns into
-a bird in his hands and flies away. And there’s no way of killing him
-either.”
-
-“You’re a first-class liar, Kiselëv, when I come to look at you!”
-
-“Liar, indeed! It’s the real truth.”
-
-“If he fell into my hands, when I’d caught him I’d bury him in the
-ground with an aspen stake to fix him down. What a lot of men he’s
-ruined!”
-
-“Well, anyhow we’re going to end it. He won’t come here again,” remarked
-the old soldier, yawning.
-
-The conversation flagged, and the soldiers began settling down to sleep.
-
-“Look at the stars. It’s wonderful how they shine! You would think the
-women had spread out their linen,” said one of the men, gazing with
-admiration at the Milky Way.
-
-“That’s a sign of a good harvest next year.”
-
-“We shall want some more wood.”
-
-“You warm your back and your belly gets frozen. That’s queer.”
-
-“O Lord!”
-
-“What are you pushing for? Is the fire only for you? Look how he’s
-sprawling!”
-
-In the silence that ensued, the snoring of those who had fallen asleep
-could be heard. Others turned over and warmed themselves, now and again
-exchanging a few words. From a campfire a hundred paces off came a sound
-of general, merry laughter.
-
-“Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!” said one of the
-soldiers, “and what a lot of them there are!”
-
-One of the men got up and went over to the Fifth Company.
-
-“They’re having such fun,” said he, coming back. “Two Frenchies have
-turned up. One’s quite frozen and the other’s an awful swaggerer. He’s
-singing songs....”
-
-“Oh, I’ll go across and have a look....”
-
-And several of the men went over to the Fifth Company.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-The fifth company was bivouacking at the very edge of the forest. A huge
-campfire was blazing brightly in the midst of the snow, lighting up the
-branches of trees heavy with hoarfrost.
-
-About midnight they heard the sound of steps in the snow of the forest,
-and the crackling of dry branches.
-
-“A bear, lads,” said one of the men.
-
-They all raised their heads to listen, and out of the forest into the
-bright firelight stepped two strangely clad human figures clinging to
-one another.
-
-These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the forest. They came up
-to the fire, hoarsely uttering something in a language our soldiers did
-not understand. One was taller than the other; he wore an officer’s hat
-and seemed quite exhausted. On approaching the fire he had been going to
-sit down, but fell. The other, a short sturdy soldier with a shawl
-tied round his head, was stronger. He raised his companion and said
-something, pointing to his mouth. The soldiers surrounded the Frenchmen,
-spread a greatcoat on the ground for the sick man, and brought some
-buckwheat porridge and vodka for both of them.
-
-The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the man with his head
-wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his orderly.
-
-When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his bowl of porridge he
-suddenly became unnaturally merry and chattered incessantly to the
-soldiers, who could not understand him. Ramballe refused food and
-resting his head on his elbow lay silent beside the campfire, looking at
-the Russian soldiers with red and vacant eyes. Occasionally he emitted
-a long-drawn groan and then again became silent. Morel, pointing to his
-shoulders, tried to impress on the soldiers the fact that Ramballe was
-an officer and ought to be warmed. A Russian officer who had come up
-to the fire sent to ask his colonel whether he would not take a French
-officer into his hut to warm him, and when the messenger returned and
-said that the colonel wished the officer to be brought to him, Ramballe
-was told to go. He rose and tried to walk, but staggered and would have
-fallen had not a soldier standing by held him up.
-
-“You won’t do it again, eh?” said one of the soldiers, winking and
-turning mockingly to Ramballe.
-
-“Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you are—a real peasant!” came
-rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier.
-
-They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed arms of two
-soldiers, and carried him to the hut. Ramballe put his arms around their
-necks while they carried him and began wailing plaintively:
-
-“Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are men! Oh, my
-brave, kind friends,” and he leaned his head against the shoulder of one
-of the men like a child.
-
-Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire, surrounded by
-the soldiers.
-
-Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and streaming eyes, was
-wearing a woman’s cloak and had a shawl tied woman fashion round his
-head over his cap. He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a French song
-in a hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the nearest soldier.
-The soldiers simply held their sides as they watched him.
-
-“Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I’ll soon pick it up. How is
-it?” said the man—a singer and a wag—whom Morel was embracing.
-
-“Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!” sang Morel, winking. “Ce
-diable à quatre...” *
-
- * “Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That rowdy
- devil.”
-
-
-“Vivarika! Vif-seruvaru! Sedyablyaka!” repeated the soldier, flourishing
-his arm and really catching the tune.
-
-“Bravo! Ha, ha, ha!” rose their rough, joyous laughter from all sides.
-
-Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.
-
-“Well, go on, go on!”
-
- “Qui eut le triple talent,
- De boire, de battre,
- Et d’être un vert galant.” *
-
- * Who had a triple talent
- For drinking, for fighting,
- And for being a gallant old boy...
-
-“It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletáev!”
-
-“Ke...” Zaletáev, brought out with effort: “ke-e-e-e,” he drawled,
-laboriously pursing his lips, “le-trip-ta-la-de-bu-de-ba, e
-de-tra-va-ga-la” he sang.
-
-“Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want some more to eat?”
-
-“Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get filled up after
-starving.”
-
-They gave him some more porridge and Morel with a laugh set to work on
-his third bowl. All the young soldiers smiled gaily as they watched him.
-The older men, who thought it undignified to amuse themselves with such
-nonsense, continued to lie at the opposite side of the fire, but one
-would occasionally raise himself on an elbow and glance at Morel with a
-smile.
-
-“They are men too,” said one of them as he wrapped himself up in his
-coat. “Even wormwood grows on its own root.”
-
-“O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That means a hard
-frost....”
-
-They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no one was looking
-at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now flaring
-up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering something
-gladsome and mysterious to one another.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a mathematical
-progression; and that crossing of the Berëzina about which so much has
-been written was only one intermediate stage in its destruction, and
-not at all the decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been
-and still is written about the Berëzina, on the French side this is only
-because at the broken bridge across that river the calamities their army
-had been previously enduring were suddenly concentrated at one moment
-into a tragic spectacle that remained in every memory, and on the
-Russian side merely because in Petersburg—far from the seat of war—a
-plan (again one of Pfuel’s) had been devised to catch Napoleon in a
-strategic trap at the Berëzina River. Everyone assured himself that all
-would happen according to plan, and therefore insisted that it was just
-the crossing of the Berëzina that destroyed the French army. In reality
-the results of the crossing were much less disastrous to the French—in
-guns and men lost—than Krásnoe had been, as the figures show.
-
-The sole importance of the crossing of the Berëzina lies in the fact
-that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans for
-cutting off the enemy’s retreat and the soundness of the only possible
-line of action—the one Kutúzov and the general mass of the army
-demanded—namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd fled
-at a continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed to
-reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and it was impossible
-to block its path. This was shown not so much by the arrangements it
-made for crossing as by what took place at the bridges. When the bridges
-broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from Moscow and women with
-children who were with the French transport, all—carried on by vis
-inertiæ—pressed forward into boats and into the ice-covered water and
-did not, surrender.
-
-That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives and of pursuers
-was equally bad. As long as they remained with their own people each
-might hope for help from his fellows and the definite place he held
-among them. But those who surrendered, while remaining in the same
-pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share in the
-necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed of the fact
-that half the prisoners—with whom the Russians did not know what to
-do—perished of cold and hunger despite their captors’ desire to save
-them; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The most compassionate
-Russian commanders, those favorable to the French—and even the Frenchmen
-in the Russian service—could do nothing for the prisoners. The French
-perished from the conditions to which the Russian army was itself
-exposed. It was impossible to take bread and clothes from our hungry and
-indispensable soldiers to give to the French who, though not harmful, or
-hated, or guilty, were simply unnecessary. Some Russians even did that,
-but they were exceptions.
-
-Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front there was hope.
-Their ships had been burned, there was no salvation save in collective
-flight, and on that the whole strength of the French was concentrated.
-
-The farther they fled the more wretched became the plight of the
-remnant, especially after the Berëzina, on which (in consequence of the
-Petersburg plan) special hopes had been placed by the Russians, and
-the keener grew the passions of the Russian commanders, who blamed one
-another and Kutúzov most of all. Anticipation that the failure of
-the Petersburg Berëzina plan would be attributed to Kutúzov led
-to dissatisfaction, contempt, and ridicule, more and more strongly
-expressed. The ridicule and contempt were of course expressed in a
-respectful form, making it impossible for him to ask wherein he was
-to blame. They did not talk seriously to him; when reporting to him or
-asking for his sanction they appeared to be fulfilling a regrettable
-formality, but they winked behind his back and tried to mislead him at
-every turn.
-
-Because they could not understand him all these people assumed that
-it was useless to talk to the old man; that he would never grasp the
-profundity of their plans, that he would answer with his phrases (which
-they thought were mere phrases) about a “golden bridge,” about the
-impossibility of crossing the frontier with a crowd of tatterdemalions,
-and so forth. They had heard all that before. And all he said—that it
-was necessary to await provisions, or that the men had no boots—was so
-simple, while what they proposed was so complicated and clever, that
-it was evident that he was old and stupid and that they, though not in
-power, were commanders of genius.
-
-After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral and Petersburg
-hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff reached their
-maximum. Kutúzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
-Only once, after the affair of the Berëzina, did he get angry and write
-to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the Emperor) the following
-letter:
-
-“On account of your spells of ill health, will your excellency please
-be so good as to set off for Kalúga on receipt of this, and there await
-further commands and appointments from His Imperial Majesty.”
-
-But after Bennigsen’s departure, the Grand Duke Tsarévich Constantine
-Pávlovich joined the army. He had taken part in the beginning of the
-campaign but had subsequently been removed from the army by Kutúzov.
-Now having come to the army, he informed Kutúzov of the Emperor’s
-displeasure at the poor success of our forces and the slowness of their
-advance. The Emperor intended to join the army personally in a few days’
-time.
-
-The old man, experienced in court as well as in military affairs—this
-same Kutúzov who in August had been chosen commander in chief
-against the sovereign’s wishes and who had removed the Grand Duke and
-heir—apparent from the army—who on his own authority and contrary to the
-Emperor’s will had decided on the abandonment of Moscow, now realized at
-once that his day was over, that his part was played, and that the power
-he was supposed to hold was no longer his. And he understood this not
-merely from the attitude of the court. He saw on the one hand that the
-military business in which he had played his part was ended and felt
-that his mission was accomplished; and at the same time he began to
-be conscious of the physical weariness of his aged body and of the
-necessity of physical rest.
-
-On the twenty-ninth of November Kutúzov entered Vílna—his “dear Vílna”
-as he called it. Twice during his career Kutúzov had been governor of
-Vílna. In that wealthy town, which had not been injured, he found old
-friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of which he had
-so long been deprived. And he suddenly turned from the cares of army
-and state and, as far as the passions that seethed around him allowed,
-immersed himself in the quiet life to which he had formerly been
-accustomed, as if all that was taking place and all that had still to be
-done in the realm of history did not concern him at all.
-
-Chichagóv, one of the most zealous “cutters-off” and “breakers-up,” who
-had first wanted to effect a diversion in Greece and then in Warsaw but
-never wished to go where he was sent: Chichagóv, noted for the boldness
-with which he spoke to the Emperor, and who considered Kutúzov to be
-under an obligation to him because when he was sent to make peace
-with Turkey in 1811 independently of Kutúzov, and found that peace had
-already been concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that the merit of
-securing that peace was really Kutúzov’s; this Chichagóv was the first
-to meet Kutúzov at the castle where the latter was to stay. In undress
-naval uniform, with a dirk, and holding his cap under his arm, he handed
-Kutúzov a garrison report and the keys of the town. The contemptuously
-respectful attitude of the younger men to the old man in his dotage was
-expressed in the highest degree by the behavior of Chichagóv, who knew
-of the accusations that were being directed against Kutúzov.
-
-When speaking to Chichagóv, Kutúzov incidentally mentioned that the
-vehicles packed with china that had been captured from him at Borísov
-had been recovered and would be restored to him.
-
-“You mean to imply that I have nothing to eat out of.... On the
-contrary, I can supply you with everything even if you want to give
-dinner parties,” warmly replied Chichagóv, who tried by every word he
-spoke to prove his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutúzov to be
-animated by the same desire.
-
-Kutúzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle penetrating
-smile: “I meant merely to say what I said.”
-
-Contrary to the Emperor’s wish Kutúzov detained the greater part of the
-army at Vílna. Those about him said that he became extraordinarily slack
-and physically feeble during his stay in that town. He attended to army
-affairs reluctantly, left everything to his generals, and while awaiting
-the Emperor’s arrival led a dissipated life.
-
-Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December with his suite—Count
-Tolstóy, Prince Volkónski, Arakchéev, and others—the Emperor reached
-Vílna on the eleventh, and in his traveling sleigh drove straight to
-the castle. In spite of the severe frost some hundred generals and staff
-officers in full parade uniform stood in front of the castle, as well as
-a guard of honor of the Semënov regiment.
-
-A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a troyka with three
-foam-flecked horses, shouted “Coming!” and Konovnítsyn rushed into the
-vestibule to inform Kutúzov, who was waiting in the hall porter’s little
-lodge.
-
-A minute later the old man’s large stout figure in full-dress uniform,
-his chest covered with orders and a scarf drawn round his stomach,
-waddled out into the porch. He put on his hat with its peaks to the
-sides and, holding his gloves in his hand and walking with an effort
-sideways down the steps to the level of the street, took in his hand the
-report he had prepared for the Emperor.
-
-There was running to and fro and whispering; another troyka flew
-furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh
-in which the figures of the Emperor and Volkónski could already be
-descried.
-
-From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating effect
-on the old general. He carefully and hastily felt himself all over,
-readjusted his hat, and pulling himself together drew himself up and,
-at the very moment when the Emperor, having alighted from the sleigh,
-lifted his eyes to him, handed him the report and began speaking in his
-smooth, ingratiating voice.
-
-The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutúzov from head to foot,
-frowned for an instant, but immediately mastering himself went up to the
-old man, extended his arms and embraced him. And this embrace too, owing
-to a long-standing impression related to his innermost feelings, had its
-usual effect on Kutúzov and he gave a sob.
-
-The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semënov guard, and again
-pressing the old man’s hand went with him into the castle.
-
-When alone with the field marshal the Emperor expressed his
-dissatisfaction at the slowness of the pursuit and at the mistakes made
-at Krásnoe and the Berëzina, and informed him of his intentions for a
-future campaign abroad. Kutúzov made no rejoinder or remark. The same
-submissive, expressionless look with which he had listened to the
-Emperor’s commands on the field of Austerlitz seven years before settled
-on his face now.
-
-When Kutúzov came out of the study and with lowered head was crossing
-the ballroom with his heavy waddling gait, he was arrested by someone’s
-voice saying:
-
-“Your Serene Highness!”
-
-Kutúzov raised his head and looked for a long while into the eyes of
-Count Tolstóy, who stood before him holding a silver salver on which lay
-a small object. Kutúzov seemed not to understand what was expected of
-him.
-
-Suddenly he seemed to remember; a scarcely perceptible smile flashed
-across his puffy face, and bowing low and respectfully he took the
-object that lay on the salver. It was the Order of St. George of the
-First Class.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-Next day the field marshal gave a dinner and ball which the Emperor
-honored by his presence. Kutúzov had received the Order of St. George
-of the First Class and the Emperor showed him the highest honors, but
-everyone knew of the imperial dissatisfaction with him. The proprieties
-were observed and the Emperor was the first to set that example,
-but everybody understood that the old man was blameworthy and
-good-for-nothing. When Kutúzov, conforming to a custom of Catherine’s
-day, ordered the standards that had been captured to be lowered at the
-Emperor’s feet on his entering the ballroom, the Emperor made a wry face
-and muttered something in which some people caught the words, “the old
-comedian.”
-
-The Emperor’s displeasure with Kutúzov was specially increased at Vílna
-by the fact that Kutúzov evidently could not or would not understand the
-importance of the coming campaign.
-
-When on the following morning the Emperor said to the officers assembled
-about him: “You have not only saved Russia, you have saved Europe!” they
-all understood that the war was not ended.
-
-Kutúzov alone would not see this and openly expressed his opinion that
-no fresh war could improve the position or add to the glory of Russia,
-but could only spoil and lower the glorious position that Russia had
-gained. He tried to prove to the Emperor the impossibility of levying
-fresh troops, spoke of the hardships already endured by the people, of
-the possibility of failure and so forth.
-
-This being the field marshal’s frame of mind he was naturally regarded
-as merely a hindrance and obstacle to the impending war.
-
-To avoid unpleasant encounters with the old man, the natural method was
-to do what had been done with him at Austerlitz and with Barclay at
-the beginning of the Russian campaign—to transfer the authority to the
-Emperor himself, thus cutting the ground from under the commander in
-chief’s feet without upsetting the old man by informing him of the
-change.
-
-With this object his staff was gradually reconstructed and its real
-strength removed and transferred to the Emperor. Toll, Konovnítsyn, and
-Ermólov received fresh appointments. Everyone spoke loudly of the field
-marshal’s great weakness and failing health.
-
-His health had to be bad for his place to be taken away and given to
-another. And in fact his health was poor.
-
-So naturally, simply, and gradually—just as he had come from Turkey to
-the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit the militia, and then to the army
-when he was needed there—now when his part was played out, Kutúzov’s
-place was taken by a new and necessary performer.
-
-The war of 1812, besides its national significance dear to every Russian
-heart, was now to assume another, a European, significance.
-
-The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a
-movement of peoples from east to west, and for this fresh war another
-leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing from
-Kutúzov’s and animated by different motives.
-
-Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the peoples from east
-to west and for the refixing of national frontiers as Kutúzov had been
-for the salvation and glory of Russia.
-
-Kutúzov did not understand what Europe, the balance of power, or
-Napoleon meant. He could not understand it. For the representative of
-the Russian people, after the enemy had been destroyed and Russia had
-been liberated and raised to the summit of her glory, there was nothing
-left to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the representative of the
-national war but to die, and Kutúzov died.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects of the
-physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until after
-they were over. After his liberation he reached Orël, and on the third
-day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was laid up
-for three months. He had what the doctors termed “bilious fever.” But
-despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him
-medicines to drink, he recovered.
-
-Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre’s mind by all that happened
-to him from the time of his rescue till his illness. He remembered
-only the dull gray weather now rainy and now snowy, internal physical
-distress, and pains in his feet and side. He remembered a general
-impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of people and of being
-worried by the curiosity of officers and generals who questioned him, he
-also remembered his difficulty in procuring a conveyance and horses, and
-above all he remembered his incapacity to think and feel all that time.
-On the day of his rescue he had seen the body of Pétya Rostóv. That same
-day he had learned that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of
-Borodinó for more than a month had recently died in the Rostóvs’ house
-at Yaroslávl, and Denísov who told him this news also mentioned Hélène’s
-death, supposing that Pierre had heard of it long before. All this at
-the time seemed merely strange to Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its
-significance. Just then he was only anxious to get away as quickly as
-possible from places where people were killing one another, to some
-peaceful refuge where he could recover himself, rest, and think over
-all the strange new facts he had learned; but on reaching Orël he
-immediately fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw
-in attendance on him two of his servants, Terénty and Váska, who had
-come from Moscow; and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had been
-living on his estate at Eléts and hearing of his rescue and illness had
-come to look after him.
-
-It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre lost the
-impressions he had become accustomed to during the last few months
-and got used to the idea that no one would oblige him to go anywhere
-tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he
-would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a long time in
-his dreams he still saw himself in the conditions of captivity. In the
-same way little by little he came to understand the news he had been
-told after his rescue, about the death of Prince Andrew, the death of
-his wife, and the destruction of the French.
-
-A joyous feeling of freedom—that complete inalienable freedom natural
-to man which he had first experienced at the first halt outside
-Moscow—filled Pierre’s soul during his convalescence. He was surprised
-to find that this inner freedom, which was independent of external
-conditions, now had as it were an additional setting of external
-liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without acquaintances. No one
-demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere. He had all he wanted:
-the thought of his wife which had been a continual torment to him was no
-longer there, since she was no more.
-
-“Oh, how good! How splendid!” said he to himself when a cleanly laid
-table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down for
-the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the French had
-gone and that his wife was no more. “Oh, how good, how splendid!”
-
-And by old habit he asked himself the question: “Well, and what then?
-What am I going to do?” And he immediately gave himself the answer:
-“Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!”
-
-The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he had
-continually sought to find—the aim of life—no longer existed for
-him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared
-temporarily—he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not
-present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the
-complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at
-this time.
-
-He could not see an aim, for he now had faith—not faith in any kind of
-rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living, ever-manifest
-God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set himself. That search for
-an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his captivity
-he had learned not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling what his
-nurse had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere. In his
-captivity he had learned that in Karatáev God was greater, more infinite
-and unfathomable than in the Architect of the Universe recognized by the
-Freemasons. He felt like a man who after straining his eyes to see into
-the far distance finds what he sought at his very feet. All his life
-he had looked over the heads of the men around him, when he should have
-merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes.
-
-In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable
-infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and
-had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had seen
-only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had
-equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space,
-where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed to
-him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen. And such
-had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and philanthropy
-seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as he had accounted
-them, his mind had penetrated to those distances and he had there seen
-the same pettiness, worldliness, and senselessness. Now, however, he
-had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and
-therefore—to see it and enjoy its contemplation—he naturally threw away
-the telescope through which he had till now gazed over men’s heads, and
-gladly regarded the ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and
-infinite life around him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and
-happy he became. That dreadful question, “What for?” which had formerly
-destroyed all his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that
-question, “What for?” a simple answer was now always ready in his soul:
-“Because there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls
-from a man’s head.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance he
-was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and seemed
-occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something special
-of his own. The difference between his former and present self was that
-formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was said to
-him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly seeking to
-distinguish something at a distance. At present he still forgot what was
-said to him and still did not see what was before his eyes, but he now
-looked with a scarcely perceptible and seemingly ironic smile at what
-was before him and listened to what was said, though evidently seeing
-and hearing something quite different. Formerly he had appeared to be
-a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so people had been inclined to avoid
-him. Now a smile at the joy of life always played round his lips, and
-sympathy for others, shone in his eyes with a questioning look as to
-whether they were as contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his
-presence.
-
-Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when he talked, and
-seldom listened; now he was seldom carried away in conversation and
-knew how to listen so that people readily told him their most intimate
-secrets.
-
-The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been particularly
-hostile to him since she had felt herself under obligations to him after
-the old count’s death, now after staying a short time in Orël—where she
-had come intending to show Pierre that in spite of his ingratitude she
-considered it her duty to nurse him—felt to her surprise and vexation
-that she had become fond of him. Pierre did not in any way seek her
-approval, he merely studied her with interest. Formerly she had felt
-that he regarded her with indifference and irony, and so had shrunk into
-herself as she did with others and had shown him only the combative side
-of her nature; but now he seemed to be trying to understand the most
-intimate places of her heart, and, mistrustfully at first but afterwards
-gratefully, she let him see the hidden, kindly sides of her character.
-
-The most cunning man could not have crept into her confidence more
-successfully, evoking memories of the best times of her youth and
-showing sympathy with them. Yet Pierre’s cunning consisted simply in
-finding pleasure in drawing out the human qualities of the embittered,
-hard, and (in her own way) proud princess.
-
-“Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under the influence of
-bad people but of people such as myself,” thought she.
-
-His servants too—Terénty and Váska—in their own way noticed the change
-that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had become much
-“simpler.” Terénty, when he had helped him undress and wished him good
-night, often lingered with his master’s boots in his hands and clothes
-over his arm, to see whether he would not start a talk. And Pierre,
-noticing that Terénty wanted a chat, generally kept him there.
-
-“Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?” he would ask.
-
-And Terénty would begin talking of the destruction of Moscow, and of
-the old count, and would stand for a long time holding the clothes and
-talking, or sometimes listening to Pierre’s stories, and then would go
-out into the hall with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master and
-affection for him.
-
-The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every day, though he
-considered it his duty as a doctor to pose as a man whose every moment
-was of value to suffering humanity, would sit for hours with Pierre
-telling him his favorite anecdotes and his observations on the
-characters of his patients in general, and especially of the ladies.
-
-“It’s a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like our
-provincials,” he would say.
-
-There were several prisoners from the French army in Orël, and the
-doctor brought one of them, a young Italian, to see Pierre.
-
-This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess used to make fun of
-the tenderness the Italian expressed for him.
-
-The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to see Pierre, talk
-with him, tell him about his past, his life at home, and his love,
-and pour out to him his indignation against the French and especially
-against Napoleon.
-
-“If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege to fight
-such a nation,” he said to Pierre. “You, who have suffered so from the
-French, do not even feel animosity toward them.”
-
-Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the Italian merely by
-evoking the best side of his nature and taking a pleasure in so doing.
-
-During the last days of Pierre’s stay in Orël his old Masonic
-acquaintance Count Willarski, who had introduced him to the lodge in
-1807, came to see him. Willarski was married to a Russian heiress who
-had a large estate in Orël province, and he occupied a temporary post in
-the commissariat department in that town.
-
-Hearing that Bezúkhov was in Orël, Willarski, though they had never been
-intimate, came to him with the professions of friendship and intimacy
-that people who meet in a desert generally express for one another.
-Willarski felt dull in Orël and was pleased to meet a man of his own
-circle and, as he supposed, of similar interests.
-
-But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre had lagged much
-behind the times, and had sunk, as he expressed it to himself, into
-apathy and egotism.
-
-“You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow,” he said.
-
-But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than it had been
-formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see him every day. To Pierre as
-he looked at and listened to Willarski, it seemed strange to think that
-he had been like that himself but a short time before.
-
-Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with his family affairs,
-his wife’s affairs, and his official duties. He regarded all these
-occupations as hindrances to life, and considered that they were all
-contemptible because their aim was the welfare of himself and his
-family. Military, administrative, political, and Masonic interests
-continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre, without trying to
-change the other’s views and without condemning him, but with the quiet,
-joyful, and amused smile now habitual to him, was interested in this
-strange though very familiar phenomenon.
-
-There was a new feature in Pierre’s relations with Willarski, with the
-princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met, which
-gained for him the general good will. This was his acknowledgment of
-the impossibility of changing a man’s convictions by words, and his
-recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing
-things each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of
-each individual which used to excite and irritate Pierre now became a
-basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in, other
-people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between
-men’s opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased
-him and drew from him an amused and gentle smile.
-
-In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within himself a center
-of gravity he had previously lacked. Formerly all pecuniary questions,
-especially requests for money to which, as an extremely wealthy man,
-he was very exposed, produced in him a state of hopeless agitation and
-perplexity. “To give or not to give?” he had asked himself. “I have
-it and he needs it. But someone else needs it still more. Who needs it
-most? And perhaps they are both impostors?” In the old days he had been
-unable to find a way out of all these surmises and had given to all
-who asked as long as he had anything to give. Formerly he had been in a
-similar state of perplexity with regard to every question concerning his
-property, when one person advised one thing and another something else.
-
-Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt either doubt or
-perplexity about these questions. There was now within him a judge who
-by some rule unknown to him decided what should or should not be done.
-
-He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters, but now he felt
-certain of what ought and what ought not to be done. The first time he
-had recourse to his new judge was when a French prisoner, a colonel,
-came to him and, after talking a great deal about his exploits,
-concluded by making what amounted to a demand that Pierre should give
-him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children. Pierre
-refused without the least difficulty or effort, and was afterwards
-surprised how simple and easy had been what used to appear so
-insurmountably difficult. At the same time that he refused the colonel’s
-demand he made up his mind that he must have recourse to artifice when
-leaving Orël, to induce the Italian officer to accept some money of
-which he was evidently in need. A further proof to Pierre of his own
-more settled outlook on practical matters was furnished by his decision
-with regard to his wife’s debts and to the rebuilding of his houses in
-and near Moscow.
-
-His head steward came to him at Orël and Pierre reckoned up with him his
-diminished income. The burning of Moscow had cost him, according to the
-head steward’s calculation, about two million rubles.
-
-To console Pierre for these losses the head steward gave him an estimate
-showing that despite these losses his income would not be diminished but
-would even be increased if he refused to pay his wife’s debts which he
-was under no obligation to meet, and did not rebuild his Moscow house
-and the country house on his Moscow estate, which had cost him eighty
-thousand rubles a year and brought in nothing.
-
-“Yes, of course that’s true,” said Pierre with a cheerful smile. “I
-don’t need all that at all. By being ruined I have become much richer.”
-
-But in January Savélich came from Moscow and gave him an account of the
-state of things there, and spoke of the estimate an architect had made
-of the cost of rebuilding the town and country houses, speaking of this
-as of a settled matter. About the same time he received letters from
-Prince Vasíli and other Petersburg acquaintances speaking of his wife’s
-debts. And Pierre decided that the steward’s proposals which had so
-pleased him were wrong and that he must go to Petersburg and settle his
-wife’s affairs and must rebuild in Moscow. Why this was necessary he
-did not know, but he knew for certain that it was necessary. His income
-would be reduced by three fourths, but he felt it must be done.
-
-Willarski was going to Moscow and they agreed to travel together.
-
-During the whole time of his convalescence in Orël Pierre had
-experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life; but when during his
-journey he found himself in the open world and saw hundreds of new
-faces, that feeling was intensified. Throughout his journey he felt like
-a schoolboy on holiday. Everyone—the stagecoach driver, the post-house
-overseers, the peasants on the roads and in the villages—had a new
-significance for him. The presence and remarks of Willarski who
-continually deplored the ignorance and poverty of Russia and its
-backwardness compared with Europe only heightened Pierre’s pleasure.
-Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an extraordinary strength and
-vitality—the strength which in that vast space amid the snows maintained
-the life of this original, peculiar, and unique people. He did not
-contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree with him—an apparent
-agreement being the simplest way to avoid discussions that could lead to
-nothing—and he smiled joyfully as he listened to him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap
-has been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of
-rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they
-jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally
-difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of the
-French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But when
-we watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity, energy, and
-immense number of the delving insects prove that despite the destruction
-of the heap, something indestructible, which though intangible is the
-real strength of the colony, still exists; and similarly, though in
-Moscow in the month of October there was no government and no churches,
-shrines, riches, or houses—it was still the Moscow it had been in
-August. All was destroyed, except something intangible yet powerful and
-indestructible.
-
-The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after it had
-been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal, and at first
-for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only they all had in
-common: a desire to get to the place that had been called Moscow, to
-apply their activities there.
-
-Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants, in a
-fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on. By the autumn of 1813 the
-number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what it had been in
-1812.
-
-The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of Wintzingerode’s
-detachment, peasants from the adjacent villages, and residents who had
-fled from Moscow and had been hiding in its vicinity. The Russians who
-entered Moscow, finding it plundered, plundered it in their turn. They
-continued what the French had begun. Trains of peasant carts came to
-Moscow to carry off to the villages what had been abandoned in the
-ruined houses and the streets. The Cossacks carried off what they could
-to their camps, and the householders seized all they could find in other
-houses and moved it to their own, pretending that it was their property.
-
-But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a third
-contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering became more and more
-difficult and assumed more definite forms.
-
-The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the organizations of
-regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and craftsmanship, with
-luxury, and governmental and religious institutions. These forms were
-lifeless but still existed. There were bazaars, shops, warehouses,
-market stalls, granaries—for the most part still stocked with goods—and
-there were factories and workshops, palaces and wealthy houses filled
-with luxuries, hospitals, prisons, government offices, churches, and
-cathedrals. The longer the French remained the more these forms of town
-life perished, until finally all was merged into one confused, lifeless
-scene of plunder.
-
-The more the plundering by the French continued, the more both the
-wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was destroyed. But
-plundering by the Russians, with which the reoccupation of the city
-began, had an opposite effect: the longer it continued and the greater
-the number of people taking part in it the more rapidly was the wealth
-of the city and its regular life restored.
-
-Besides the plunderers, very various people, some drawn by curiosity,
-some by official duties, some by self-interest—house owners, clergy,
-officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and peasants—streamed into
-Moscow as blood flows to the heart.
-
-Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts to carry off
-plunder were stopped by the authorities and made to cart the corpses
-out of the town. Other peasants, having heard of their comrades’
-discomfiture, came to town bringing rye, oats, and hay, and beat down
-one another’s prices to below what they had been in former days. Gangs
-of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived in Moscow every day, and on
-all sides logs were being hewn, new houses built, and old, charred ones
-repaired. Tradesmen began trading in booths. Cookshops and taverns were
-opened in partially burned houses. The clergy resumed the services
-in many churches that had not been burned. Donors contributed
-Church property that had been stolen. Government clerks set up their
-baize-covered tables and their pigeonholes of documents in small rooms.
-The higher authorities and the police organized the distribution of
-goods left behind by the French. The owners of houses in which much
-property had been left, brought there from other houses, complained of
-the injustice of taking everything to the Faceted Palace in the Krémlin;
-others insisted that as the French had gathered things from different
-houses into this or that house, it would be unfair to allow its owner to
-keep all that was found there. They abused the police and bribed them,
-made out estimates at ten times their value for government stores that
-had perished in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchín
-wrote proclamations.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and stayed in an annex of
-his house which had not been burned. He called on Count Rostopchín and
-on some acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he intended to leave
-for Petersburg two days later. Everybody was celebrating the victory,
-everything was bubbling with life in the ruined but reviving city.
-Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone wished to meet him, and
-everyone questioned him about what he had seen. Pierre felt particularly
-well disposed toward them all, but was now instinctively on his
-guard for fear of binding himself in any way. To all questions put to
-him—whether important or quite trifling—such as: Where would he live?
-Was he going to rebuild? When was he going to Petersburg and would he
-mind taking a parcel for someone?—he replied: “Yes, perhaps,” or, “I
-think so,” and so on.
-
-He had heard that the Rostóvs were at Kostromá but the thought of
-Natásha seldom occurred to him. If it did it was only as a pleasant
-memory of the distant past. He felt himself not only free from social
-obligations but also from that feeling which, it seemed to him, he had
-aroused in himself.
-
-On the third day after his arrival he heard from the Drubetskóys that
-Princess Mary was in Moscow. The death, sufferings, and last days of
-Prince Andrew had often occupied Pierre’s thoughts and now recurred to
-him with fresh vividness. Having heard at dinner that Princess Mary
-was in Moscow and living in her house—which had not been burned—in
-Vozdvízhenka Street, he drove that same evening to see her.
-
-On his way to the house Pierre kept thinking of Prince Andrew, of their
-friendship, of his various meetings with him, and especially of the last
-one at Borodinó.
-
-“Is it possible that he died in the bitter frame of mind he was then in?
-Is it possible that the meaning of life was not disclosed to him
-before he died?” thought Pierre. He recalled Karatáev and his death and
-involuntarily began to compare these two men, so different, and yet so
-similar in that they had both lived and both died and in the love he
-felt for both of them.
-
-Pierre drove up to the house of the old prince in a most serious mood.
-The house had escaped the fire; it showed signs of damage but its
-general aspect was unchanged. The old footman, who met Pierre with a
-stern face as if wishing to make the visitor feel that the absence
-of the old prince had not disturbed the order of things in the house,
-informed him that the princess had gone to her own apartments, and that
-she received on Sundays.
-
-“Announce me. Perhaps she will see me,” said Pierre.
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the man. “Please step into the portrait gallery.”
-
-A few minutes later the footman returned with Dessalles, who brought
-word from the princess that she would be very glad to see Pierre if he
-would excuse her want of ceremony and come upstairs to her apartment.
-
-In a rather low room lit by one candle sat the princess and with her
-another person dressed in black. Pierre remembered that the princess
-always had lady companions, but who they were and what they were like
-he never knew or remembered. “This must be one of her companions,” he
-thought, glancing at the lady in the black dress.
-
-The princess rose quickly to meet him and held out her hand.
-
-“Yes,” she said, looking at his altered face after he had kissed her
-hand, “so this is how we meet again. He spoke of you even at the very
-last,” she went on, turning her eyes from Pierre to her companion with a
-shyness that surprised him for an instant.
-
-“I was so glad to hear of your safety. It was the first piece of good
-news we had received for a long time.”
-
-Again the princess glanced round at her companion with even more
-uneasiness in her manner and was about to add something, but Pierre
-interrupted her.
-
-“Just imagine—I knew nothing about him!” said he. “I thought he had been
-killed. All I know I heard at second hand from others. I only know that
-he fell in with the Rostóvs.... What a strange coincidence!”
-
-Pierre spoke rapidly and with animation. He glanced once at the
-companion’s face, saw her attentive and kindly gaze fixed on him, and,
-as often happens when one is talking, felt somehow that this companion
-in the black dress was a good, kind, excellent creature who would not
-hinder his conversing freely with Princess Mary.
-
-But when he mentioned the Rostóvs, Princess Mary’s face expressed still
-greater embarrassment. She again glanced rapidly from Pierre’s face to
-that of the lady in the black dress and said:
-
-“Do you really not recognize her?”
-
-Pierre looked again at the companion’s pale, delicate face with its
-black eyes and peculiar mouth, and something near to him, long forgotten
-and more than sweet, looked at him from those attentive eyes.
-
-“But no, it can’t be!” he thought. “This stern, thin, pale face that
-looks so much older! It cannot be she. It merely reminds me of her.”
-But at that moment Princess Mary said, “Natásha!” And with difficulty,
-effort, and stress, like the opening of a door grown rusty on its
-hinges, a smile appeared on the face with the attentive eyes, and from
-that opening door came a breath of fragrance which suffused Pierre with
-a happiness he had long forgotten and of which he had not even been
-thinking—especially at that moment. It suffused him, seized him, and
-enveloped him completely. When she smiled doubt was no longer possible,
-it was Natásha and he loved her.
-
-At that moment Pierre involuntarily betrayed to her, to Princess Mary,
-and above all to himself, a secret of which he himself had been unaware.
-He flushed joyfully yet with painful distress. He tried to hide his
-agitation. But the more he tried to hide it the more clearly—clearer
-than any words could have done—did he betray to himself, to her, and to
-Princess Mary that he loved her.
-
-“No, it’s only the unexpectedness of it,” thought Pierre. But as soon as
-he tried to continue the conversation he had begun with Princess Mary he
-again glanced at Natásha, and a still-deeper flush suffused his face and
-a still-stronger agitation of mingled joy and fear seized his soul. He
-became confused in his speech and stopped in the middle of what he was
-saying.
-
-Pierre had failed to notice Natásha because he did not at all expect to
-see her there, but he had failed to recognize her because the change in
-her since he last saw her was immense. She had grown thin and pale, but
-that was not what made her unrecognizable; she was unrecognizable at the
-moment he entered because on that face whose eyes had always shone with
-a suppressed smile of the joy of life, now when he first entered and
-glanced at her there was not the least shadow of a smile: only her eyes
-were kindly attentive and sadly interrogative.
-
-Pierre’s confusion was not reflected by any confusion on Natásha’s part,
-but only by the pleasure that just perceptibly lit up her whole face.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-“She has come to stay with me,” said Princess Mary. “The count and
-countess will be here in a few days. The countess is in a dreadful
-state; but it was necessary for Natásha herself to see a doctor. They
-insisted on her coming with me.”
-
-“Yes, is there a family free from sorrow now?” said Pierre, addressing
-Natásha. “You know it happened the very day we were rescued. I saw him.
-What a delightful boy he was!”
-
-Natásha looked at him, and by way of answer to his words her eyes
-widened and lit up.
-
-“What can one say or think of as a consolation?” said Pierre. “Nothing!
-Why had such a splendid boy, so full of life, to die?”
-
-“Yes, in these days it would be hard to live without faith...” remarked
-Princess Mary.
-
-“Yes, yes, that is really true,” Pierre hastily interrupted her.
-
-“Why is it true?” Natásha asked, looking attentively into Pierre’s eyes.
-
-“How can you ask why?” said Princess Mary. “The thought alone of what
-awaits...”
-
-Natásha without waiting for Princess Mary to finish again looked
-inquiringly at Pierre.
-
-“And because,” Pierre continued, “only one who believes that there is a
-God ruling us can bear a loss such as hers and... yours.”
-
-Natásha had already opened her mouth to speak but suddenly stopped.
-Pierre hurriedly turned away from her and again addressed Princess Mary,
-asking about his friend’s last days.
-
-Pierre’s confusion had now almost vanished, but at the same time he felt
-that his freedom had also completely gone. He felt that there was now a
-judge of his every word and action whose judgment mattered more to
-him than that of all the rest of the world. As he spoke now he was
-considering what impression his words would make on Natásha. He did
-not purposely say things to please her, but whatever he was saying he
-regarded from her standpoint.
-
-Princess Mary—reluctantly as is usual in such cases—began telling of
-the condition in which she had found Prince Andrew. But Pierre’s face
-quivering with emotion, his questions and his eager restless expression,
-gradually compelled her to go into details which she feared to recall
-for her own sake.
-
-“Yes, yes, and so...?” Pierre kept saying as he leaned toward her with
-his whole body and eagerly listened to her story. “Yes, yes... so he
-grew tranquil and softened? With all his soul he had always sought
-one thing—to be perfectly good—so he could not be afraid of death. The
-faults he had—if he had any—were not of his making. So he did soften?...
-What a happy thing that he saw you again,” he added, suddenly turning to
-Natásha and looking at her with eyes full of tears.
-
-Natásha’s face twitched. She frowned and lowered her eyes for a moment.
-She hesitated for an instant whether to speak or not.
-
-“Yes, that was happiness,” she then said in her quiet voice with its
-deep chest notes. “For me it certainly was happiness.” She paused. “And
-he... he... he said he was wishing for it at the very moment I entered
-the room....”
-
-Natásha’s voice broke. She blushed, pressed her clasped hands on her
-knees, and then controlling herself with an evident effort lifted her
-head and began to speak rapidly.
-
-“We knew nothing of it when we started from Moscow. I did not dare to
-ask about him. Then suddenly Sónya told me he was traveling with us. I
-had no idea and could not imagine what state he was in, all I wanted was
-to see him and be with him,” she said, trembling, and breathing quickly.
-
-And not letting them interrupt her she went on to tell what she had
-never yet mentioned to anyone—all she had lived through during those
-three weeks of their journey and life at Yaroslávl.
-
-Pierre listened to her with lips parted and eyes fixed upon her full of
-tears. As he listened he did not think of Prince Andrew, nor of death,
-nor of what she was telling. He listened to her and felt only pity for
-her, for what she was suffering now while she was speaking.
-
-Princess Mary, frowning in her effort to hold back her tears, sat beside
-Natásha, and heard for the first time the story of those last days of
-her brother’s and Natásha’s love.
-
-Evidently Natásha needed to tell that painful yet joyful tale.
-
-She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the intimate secrets of
-her soul, and it seemed as if she could never finish. Several times she
-repeated the same thing twice.
-
-Dessalles’ voice was heard outside the door asking whether little
-Nicholas might come in to say good night.
-
-“Well, that’s all—everything,” said Natásha.
-
-She got up quickly just as Nicholas entered, almost ran to the door
-which was hidden by curtains, struck her head against it, and rushed
-from the room with a moan either of pain or sorrow.
-
-Pierre gazed at the door through which she had disappeared and did not
-understand why he suddenly felt all alone in the world.
-
-Princess Mary roused him from his abstraction by drawing his attention
-to her nephew who had entered the room.
-
-At that moment of emotional tenderness young Nicholas’ face, which
-resembled his father’s, affected Pierre so much that when he had kissed
-the boy he got up quickly, took out his handkerchief, and went to the
-window. He wished to take leave of Princess Mary, but she would not let
-him go.
-
-“No, Natásha and I sometimes don’t go to sleep till after two, so please
-don’t go. I will order supper. Go downstairs, we will come immediately.”
-
-Before Pierre left the room Princess Mary told him: “This is the first
-time she has talked of him like that.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-Pierre was shown into the large, brightly lit dining room; a few minutes
-later he heard footsteps and Princess Mary entered with Natásha. Natásha
-was calm, though a severe and grave expression had again settled on her
-face. They all three of them now experienced that feeling of awkwardness
-which usually follows after a serious and heartfelt talk. It is
-impossible to go back to the same conversation, to talk of trifles is
-awkward, and yet the desire to speak is there and silence seems like
-affectation. They went silently to table. The footmen drew back the
-chairs and pushed them up again. Pierre unfolded his cold table napkin
-and, resolving to break the silence, looked at Natásha and at Princess
-Mary. They had evidently both formed the same resolution; the eyes of
-both shone with satisfaction and a confession that besides sorrow life
-also has joy.
-
-“Do you take vodka, Count?” asked Princess Mary, and those words
-suddenly banished the shadows of the past. “Now tell us about yourself,”
-said she. “One hears such improbable wonders about you.”
-
-“Yes,” replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now habitual to him.
-“They even tell me wonders I myself never dreamed of! Mary Abrámovna
-invited me to her house and kept telling me what had happened, or ought
-to have happened, to me. Stepán Stepánych also instructed me how I ought
-to tell of my experiences. In general I have noticed that it is very
-easy to be an interesting man (I am an interesting man now); people
-invite me out and tell me all about myself.”
-
-Natásha smiled and was on the point of speaking.
-
-“We have been told,” Princess Mary interrupted her, “that you lost two
-millions in Moscow. Is that true?”
-
-“But I am three times as rich as before,” returned Pierre.
-
-Though the position was now altered by his decision to pay his wife’s
-debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still maintained that he had
-become three times as rich as before.
-
-“What I have certainly gained is freedom,” he began seriously, but did
-not continue, noticing that this theme was too egotistic.
-
-“And are you building?”
-
-“Yes. Savélich says I must!”
-
-“Tell me, you did not know of the countess’ death when you decided to
-remain in Moscow?” asked Princess Mary and immediately blushed, noticing
-that her question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed to his
-words a meaning he had perhaps not intended.
-
-“No,” answered Pierre, evidently not considering awkward the meaning
-Princess Mary had given to his words. “I heard of it in Orël and you
-cannot imagine how it shocked me. We were not an exemplary couple,” he
-added quickly, glancing at Natásha and noticing on her face curiosity as
-to how he would speak of his wife, “but her death shocked me terribly.
-When two people quarrel they are always both in fault, and one’s own
-guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other is no longer
-alive. And then such a death... without friends and without consolation!
-I am very, very sorry for her,” he concluded, and was pleased to notice
-a look of glad approval on Natásha’s face.
-
-“Yes, and so you are once more an eligible bachelor,” said Princess
-Mary.
-
-Pierre suddenly flushed crimson and for a long time tried not to look
-at Natásha. When he ventured to glance her way again her face was cold,
-stern, and he fancied even contemptuous.
-
-“And did you really see and speak to Napoleon, as we have been told?”
-said Princess Mary.
-
-Pierre laughed.
-
-“No, not once! Everybody seems to imagine that being taken prisoner
-means being Napoleon’s guest. Not only did I never see him but I heard
-nothing about him—I was in much lower company!”
-
-Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to speak about his
-captivity was gradually led on to do so.
-
-“But it’s true that you remained in Moscow to kill Napoleon?” Natásha
-asked with a slight smile. “I guessed it then when we met at the
-Súkharev tower, do you remember?”
-
-Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by
-Princess Mary’s questions and especially by Natásha’s into giving a
-detailed account of his adventures.
-
-At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now customary with
-him toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he came
-to describe the horrors and sufferings he had witnessed he was
-unconsciously carried away and began speaking with the suppressed
-emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he
-has lived through.
-
-Princess Mary with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre and now at
-Natásha. In the whole narrative she saw only Pierre and his goodness.
-Natásha, leaning on her elbow, the expression of her face constantly
-changing with the narrative, watched Pierre with an attention that never
-wandered—evidently herself experiencing all that he described. Not only
-her look, but her exclamations and the brief questions she put, showed
-Pierre that she understood just what he wished to convey. It was clear
-that she understood not only what he said but also what he wished to,
-but could not, express in words. The account Pierre gave of the incident
-with the child and the woman for protecting whom he was arrested was
-this: “It was an awful sight—children abandoned, some in the flames...
-One was snatched out before my eyes... and there were women who had
-their things snatched off and their earrings torn out...” he flushed and
-grew confused. “Then a patrol arrived and all the men—all those who were
-not looting, that is—were arrested, and I among them.”
-
-“I am sure you’re not telling us everything; I am sure you did
-something...” said Natásha and pausing added, “something fine?”
-
-Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he wanted to pass
-over the horrible details, but Natásha insisted that he should not omit
-anything.
-
-Pierre began to tell about Karatáev, but paused. By this time he had
-risen from the table and was pacing the room, Natásha following him with
-her eyes. Then he added:
-
-“No, you can’t understand what I learned from that illiterate man—that
-simple fellow.”
-
-“Yes, yes, go on!” said Natásha. “Where is he?”
-
-“They killed him almost before my eyes.”
-
-And Pierre, his voice trembling continually, went on to tell of the last
-days of their retreat, of Karatáev’s illness and his death.
-
-He told of his adventures as he had never yet recalled them. He now, as
-it were, saw a new meaning in all he had gone through. Now that he was
-telling it all to Natásha he experienced that pleasure which a man has
-when women listen to him—not clever women who when listening either try
-to remember what they hear to enrich their minds and when opportunity
-offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt it to some thought of their
-own and promptly contribute their own clever comments prepared in their
-little mental workshop—but the pleasure given by real women gifted with
-a capacity to select and absorb the very best a man shows of himself.
-Natásha without knowing it was all attention: she did not lose a word,
-no single quiver in Pierre’s voice, no look, no twitch of a muscle in
-his face, nor a single gesture. She caught the unfinished word in its
-flight and took it straight into her open heart, divining the secret
-meaning of all Pierre’s mental travail.
-
-Princess Mary understood his story and sympathized with him, but she
-now saw something else that absorbed all her attention. She saw the
-possibility of love and happiness between Natásha and Pierre, and the
-first thought of this filled her heart with gladness.
-
-It was three o’clock in the morning. The footmen came in with sad and
-stern faces to change the candles, but no one noticed them.
-
-Pierre finished his story. Natásha continued to look at him intently
-with bright, attentive, and animated eyes, as if trying to understand
-something more which he had perhaps left untold. Pierre in shamefaced
-and happy confusion glanced occasionally at her, and tried to think what
-to say next to introduce a fresh subject. Princess Mary was silent. It
-occurred to none of them that it was three o’clock and time to go to
-bed.
-
-“People speak of misfortunes and sufferings,” remarked Pierre, “but if
-at this moment I were asked: ‘Would you rather be what you were before
-you were taken prisoner, or go through all this again?’ then for
-heaven’s sake let me again have captivity and horseflesh! We imagine
-that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is
-only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is
-happiness. There is much, much before us. I say this to you,” he added,
-turning to Natásha.
-
-“Yes, yes,” she said, answering something quite different. “I too should
-wish nothing but to relive it all from the beginning.”
-
-Pierre looked intently at her.
-
-“Yes, and nothing more,” said Natásha.
-
-“It’s not true, not true!” cried Pierre. “I am not to blame for being
-alive and wishing to live—nor you either.”
-
-Suddenly Natásha bent her head, covered her face with her hands, and
-began to cry.
-
-“What is it, Natásha?” said Princess Mary.
-
-“Nothing, nothing.” She smiled at Pierre through her tears. “Good night!
-It is time for bed.”
-
-Pierre rose and took his leave.
-
-
-Princess Mary and Natásha met as usual in the bedroom. They talked of
-what Pierre had told them. Princess Mary did not express her opinion of
-Pierre nor did Natásha speak of him.
-
-“Well, good night, Mary!” said Natásha. “Do you know, I am often afraid
-that by not speaking of him” (she meant Prince Andrew) “for fear of not
-doing justice to our feelings, we forget him.”
-
-Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby acknowledged the justice of
-Natásha’s remark, but she did not express agreement in words.
-
-“Is it possible to forget?” said she.
-
-“It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It was hard and
-painful, but good, very good!” said Natásha. “I am sure he really loved
-him. That is why I told him... Was it all right?” she added, suddenly
-blushing.
-
-“To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!” said Princess
-Mary.
-
-“Do you know, Mary...” Natásha suddenly said with a mischievous smile
-such as Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long time, “he has
-somehow grown so clean, smooth, and fresh—as if he had just come out of
-a Russian bath; do you understand? Out of a moral bath. Isn’t it true?”
-
-“Yes,” replied Princess Mary. “He has greatly improved.”
-
-“With a short coat and his hair cropped; just as if, well, just as if he
-had come straight from the bath... Papa used to...”
-
-“I understand why he” (Prince Andrew) “liked no one so much as him,”
-said Princess Mary.
-
-“Yes, and yet he is quite different. They say men are friends when they
-are quite different. That must be true. Really he is quite unlike him—in
-everything.”
-
-“Yes, but he’s wonderful.”
-
-“Well, good night,” said Natásha.
-
-And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her face as
-if it had been forgotten there.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that night. He paced
-up and down his room, now turning his thoughts on a difficult problem
-and frowning, now suddenly shrugging his shoulders and wincing, and now
-smiling happily.
-
-He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natásha, and of their love, at one
-moment jealous of her past, then reproaching himself for that feeling.
-It was already six in the morning and he still paced up and down the
-room.
-
-“Well, what’s to be done if it cannot be avoided? What’s to be done?
-Evidently it has to be so,” said he to himself, and hastily undressing
-he got into bed, happy and agitated but free from hesitation or
-indecision.
-
-“Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I must do everything
-that she and I may be man and wife,” he told himself.
-
-A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to Petersburg on the
-Friday. When he awoke on the Thursday, Savélich came to ask him about
-packing for the journey.
-
-“What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is there in Petersburg?”
-he asked involuntarily, though only to himself. “Oh, yes, long ago
-before this happened I did for some reason mean to go to Petersburg,”
-he reflected. “Why? But perhaps I shall go. What a good fellow he is and
-how attentive, and how he remembers everything,” he thought, looking at
-Savélich’s old face, “and what a pleasant smile he has!”
-
-“Well, Savélich, do you still not wish to accept your freedom?” Pierre
-asked him.
-
-“What’s the good of freedom to me, your excellency? We lived under the
-late count—the kingdom of heaven be his!—and we have lived under you
-too, without ever being wronged.”
-
-“And your children?”
-
-“The children will live just the same. With such masters one can live.”
-
-“But what about my heirs?” said Pierre. “Supposing I suddenly marry...
-it might happen,” he added with an involuntary smile.
-
-“If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be a good thing.”
-
-“How easy he thinks it,” thought Pierre. “He doesn’t know how terrible
-it is and how dangerous. Too soon or too late... it is terrible!”
-
-“So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?” asked Savélich.
-
-“No, I’ll put it off for a bit. I’ll tell you later. You must forgive
-the trouble I have put you to,” said Pierre, and seeing Savélich smile,
-he thought: “But how strange it is that he should not know that now
-there is no Petersburg for me, and that that must be settled first of
-all! But probably he knows it well enough and is only pretending. Shall
-I have a talk with him and see what he thinks?” Pierre reflected. “No,
-another time.”
-
-At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he had been to
-see Princess Mary the day before and had there met—“Whom do you think?
-Natásha Rostóva!”
-
-The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary in that than if he
-had seen Anna Semënovna.
-
-“Do you know her?” asked Pierre.
-
-“I have seen the princess,” she replied. “I heard that they were
-arranging a match for her with young Rostóv. It would be a very good
-thing for the Rostóvs, they are said to be utterly ruined.”
-
-“No; I mean do you know Natásha Rostóva?”
-
-“I heard about that affair of hers at the time. It was a great pity.”
-
-“No, she either doesn’t understand or is pretending,” thought Pierre.
-“Better not say anything to her either.”
-
-The princess too had prepared provisions for Pierre’s journey.
-
-“How kind they all are,” thought Pierre. “What is surprising is that
-they should trouble about these things now when it can no longer be of
-interest to them. And all for me!”
-
-On the same day the Chief of Police came to Pierre, inviting him to send
-a representative to the Faceted Palace to recover things that were to be
-returned to their owners that day.
-
-“And this man too,” thought Pierre, looking into the face of the Chief
-of Police. “What a fine, good-looking officer and how kind. Fancy
-bothering about such trifles now! And they actually say he is not honest
-and takes bribes. What nonsense! Besides, why shouldn’t he take bribes?
-That’s the way he was brought up, and everybody does it. But what a
-kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as he looks at me.”
-
-Pierre went to Princess Mary’s to dinner.
-
-As he drove through the streets past the houses that had been burned
-down, he was surprised by the beauty of those ruins. The picturesqueness
-of the chimney stacks and tumble-down walls of the burned-out quarters
-of the town, stretching out and concealing one another, reminded him of
-the Rhine and the Colosseum. The cabmen he met and their passengers,
-the carpenters cutting the timber for new houses with axes, the women
-hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked at him with cheerful beaming
-eyes that seemed to say: “Ah, there he is! Let’s see what will come of
-it!”
-
-At the entrance to Princess Mary’s house Pierre felt doubtful whether
-he had really been there the night before and really seen Natásha and
-talked to her. “Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall go in and find
-no one there.” But he had hardly entered the room before he felt her
-presence with his whole being by the loss of his sense of freedom. She
-was in the same black dress with soft folds and her hair was done the
-same way as the day before, yet she was quite different. Had she been
-like this when he entered the day before he could not for a moment have
-failed to recognize her.
-
-She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince
-Andrew’s fiancée. A bright questioning light shone in her eyes, and on
-her face was a friendly and strangely roguish expression.
-
-Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there, but
-Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house with her.
-
-Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening. Though
-Princess Mary and Natásha were evidently glad to see their visitor and
-though all Pierre’s interest was now centered in that house, by the
-evening they had talked over everything and the conversation passed from
-one trivial topic to another and repeatedly broke off. He stayed so long
-that Princess Mary and Natásha exchanged glances, evidently wondering
-when he would go. Pierre noticed this but could not go. He felt uneasy
-and embarrassed, but sat on because he simply could not get up and take
-his leave.
-
-Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and complaining of
-a headache began to say good night.
-
-“So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?” she asked.
-
-“No, I am not going,” Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised tone and as
-though offended. “Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrow—but I won’t say
-good-by yet. I will call round in case you have any commissions for me,”
-said he, standing before Princess Mary and turning red, but not taking
-his departure.
-
-Natásha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary on the other hand
-instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly and
-intently at him with her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she
-had plainly shown before had now quite passed off. With a deep and
-long-drawn sigh she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk.
-
-When Natásha left the room Pierre’s confusion and awkwardness
-immediately vanished and were replaced by eager excitement. He quickly
-moved an armchair toward Princess Mary.
-
-“Yes, I wanted to tell you,” said he, answering her look as if she had
-spoken. “Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess, my
-dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know I am not worthy of her, I
-know it’s impossible to speak of it now. But I want to be a brother to
-her. No, not that, I don’t, I can’t...”
-
-He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.
-
-“Well,” he went on with an evident effort at self-control and coherence.
-“I don’t know when I began to love her, but I have loved her and her
-alone all my life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine life without
-her. I cannot propose to her at present, but the thought that
-perhaps she might someday be my wife and that I may be missing that
-possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell me, can I hope?
-Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!” he added after a pause, and
-touched her hand as she did not reply.
-
-“I am thinking of what you have told me,” answered Princess Mary.
-“This is what I will say. You are right that to speak to her of love at
-present...”
-
-Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to speak of love was
-impossible, but she stopped because she had seen by the sudden change
-in Natásha two days before that she would not only not be hurt if Pierre
-spoke of his love, but that it was the very thing she wished for.
-
-“To speak to her now wouldn’t do,” said the princess all the same.
-
-“But what am I to do?”
-
-“Leave it to me,” said Princess Mary. “I know...”
-
-Pierre was looking into Princess Mary’s eyes.
-
-“Well?... Well?...” he said.
-
-“I know that she loves... will love you,” Princess Mary corrected
-herself.
-
-Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and with a frightened
-expression seized Princess Mary’s hand.
-
-“What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You think...?”
-
-“Yes, I think so,” said Princess Mary with a smile. “Write to her
-parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I wish it to
-happen and my heart tells me it will.”
-
-“No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can’t be.... How happy I am!
-No, it can’t be!” Pierre kept saying as he kissed Princess Mary’s hands.
-
-“Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to you,” she
-said.
-
-“To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I’ll go. But I may come again
-tomorrow?”
-
-Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natásha was less animated than
-she had been the day before; but that day as he looked at her Pierre
-sometimes felt as if he was vanishing and that neither he nor she
-existed any longer, that nothing existed but happiness. “Is it possible?
-No, it can’t be,” he told himself at every look, gesture, and word that
-filled his soul with joy.
-
-When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand, he could not help
-holding it a little longer in his own.
-
-“Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this treasure
-of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it possible that it will one
-day be mine forever, as familiar to me as I am to myself?... No, that’s
-impossible!...”
-
-“Good-by, Count,” she said aloud. “I shall look forward very much to
-your return,” she added in a whisper.
-
-And these simple words, her look, and the expression on her face which
-accompanied them, formed for two months the subject of inexhaustible
-memories, interpretations, and happy meditations for Pierre. “‘I shall
-look forward very much to your return....’ Yes, yes, how did she say it?
-Yes, ‘I shall look forward very much to your return.’ Oh, how happy I
-am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!” said Pierre to himself.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-There was nothing in Pierre’s soul now at all like what had troubled it
-during his courtship of Hélène.
-
-He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the words
-he had spoken, or say: “Oh, why did I not say that?” and, “Whatever made
-me say ‘Je vous aime’?” On the contrary, he now repeated in imagination
-every word that he or Natásha had spoken and pictured every detail of
-her face and smile, and did not wish to diminish or add anything, but
-only to repeat it again and again. There was now not a shadow of doubt
-in his mind as to whether what he had undertaken was right or wrong.
-Only one terrible doubt sometimes crossed his mind: “Wasn’t it all
-a dream? Isn’t Princess Mary mistaken? Am I not too conceited and
-self-confident? I believe all this—and suddenly Princess Mary will tell
-her, and she will be sure to smile and say: ‘How strange! He must be
-deluding himself. Doesn’t he know that he is a man, just a man, while
-I...? I am something altogether different and higher.’”
-
-That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now make any
-plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable that if only
-he could attain it, it would be the end of all things. Everything ended
-with that.
-
-A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself incapable,
-possessed him. The whole meaning of life—not for him alone but for the
-whole world—seemed to him centered in his love and the possibility of
-being loved by her. At times everybody seemed to him to be occupied with
-one thing only—his future happiness. Sometimes it seemed to him that
-other people were all as pleased as he was himself and merely tried to
-hide that pleasure by pretending to be busy with other interests. In
-every word and gesture he saw allusions to his happiness. He often
-surprised those he met by his significantly happy looks and smiles which
-seemed to express a secret understanding between him and them. And when
-he realized that people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied
-them with his whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them
-that all that occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of
-attention.
-
-When it was suggested to him that he should enter the civil service,
-or when the war or any general political affairs were discussed on the
-assumption that everybody’s welfare depended on this or that issue
-of events, he would listen with a mild and pitying smile and surprise
-people by his strange comments. But at this time he saw everybody—both
-those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning of life (that
-is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates who evidently did not
-understand it—in the bright light of the emotion that shone within
-himself, and at once without any effort saw in everyone he met
-everything that was good and worthy of being loved.
-
-When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead wife, her memory
-aroused in him no feeling but pity that she had not known the bliss he
-now knew. Prince Vasíli, who having obtained a new post and some
-fresh decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed to him a
-pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.
-
-Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity. All
-the views he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained true
-for him always. He not only did not renounce them subsequently, but when
-he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the views he had
-held at this time of his madness and they always proved correct.
-
-“I may have appeared strange and queer then,” he thought, “but I was
-not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had
-more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is worth
-understanding in life, because... because I was happy.”
-
-Pierre’s insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to
-discover personal attributes which he termed “good qualities” in people
-before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by
-loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving
-them.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-After Pierre’s departure that first evening, when Natásha had said to
-Princess Mary with a gaily mocking smile: “He looks just, yes, just as
-if he had come out of a Russian bath—in a short coat and with his hair
-cropped,” something hidden and unknown to herself, but irrepressible,
-awoke in Natásha’s soul.
-
-Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly altered.
-To her own surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to the
-surface and demanded satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to have
-forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer complained of her
-position, did not say a word about the past, and no longer feared to
-make happy plans for the future. She spoke little of Pierre, but when
-Princess Mary mentioned him a long-extinguished light once more kindled
-in her eyes and her lips curved with a strange smile.
-
-The change that took place in Natásha at first surprised Princess Mary;
-but when she understood its meaning it grieved her. “Can she have loved
-my brother so little as to be able to forget him so soon?” she thought
-when she reflected on the change. But when she was with Natásha she was
-not vexed with her and did not reproach her. The reawakened power
-of life that had seized Natásha was so evidently irrepressible and
-unexpected by her that in her presence Princess Mary felt that she had
-no right to reproach her even in her heart.
-
-Natásha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this new feeling that
-she did not try to hide the fact that she was no longer sad, but bright
-and cheerful.
-
-When Princess Mary returned to her room after her nocturnal talk with
-Pierre, Natásha met her on the threshold.
-
-“He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?” she repeated.
-
-And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to beg forgiveness for
-her joy settled on Natásha’s face.
-
-“I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell me.”
-
-Understandable and touching as the look with which Natásha gazed at
-her seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry as she was to see her agitation,
-these words pained her for a moment. She remembered her brother and his
-love.
-
-“But what’s to be done? She can’t help it,” thought the princess.
-
-And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natásha all that Pierre
-had said. On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natásha was
-astounded.
-
-“To Petersburg!” she repeated as if unable to understand.
-
-But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary’s face she guessed
-the reason of that sadness and suddenly began to cry.
-
-“Mary,” said she, “tell me what I should do! I am afraid of being bad.
-Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me....”
-
-“You love him?”
-
-“Yes,” whispered Natásha.
-
-“Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake,” said Princess Mary,
-who because of those tears quite forgave Natásha’s joy.
-
-“It won’t be just yet—someday. Think what fun it will be when I am his
-wife and you marry Nicholas!”
-
-“Natásha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us talk about you.”
-
-They were silent awhile.
-
-“But why go to Petersburg?” Natásha suddenly asked, and hastily replied
-to her own question. “But no, no, he must... Yes, Mary, He must....”
-
-
-
-
-
-FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 - 20
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of European history had
-subsided within its shores and seemed to have become calm. But the
-mysterious forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of
-their motion are unknown to us) continued to operate.
-
-Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the movement
-of humanity went on as unceasingly as the flow of time. Various groups
-of people formed and dissolved, the coming formation and dissolution of
-kingdoms and displacement of peoples was in course of preparation.
-
-The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from shore to shore as
-previously. It was seething in its depths. Historic figures were not
-borne by the waves from one shore to another as before. They now seemed
-to rotate on one spot. The historical figures at the head of armies,
-who formerly reflected the movement of the masses by ordering wars,
-campaigns, and battles, now reflected the restless movement by political
-and diplomatic combinations, laws, and treaties.
-
-The historians call this activity of the historical figures “the
-reaction.”
-
-In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical
-personages who, in their opinion, caused what they describe as the
-reaction. All the well-known people of that period, from Alexander and
-Napoleon to Madame de Staël, Photius, Schelling, Fichte, Chateaubriand,
-and the rest, pass before their stern judgment seat and are acquitted or
-condemned according to whether they conduced to progress or to reaction.
-
-According to their accounts a reaction took place at that time in Russia
-also, and the chief culprit was Alexander I, the same man who according
-to them was the chief cause of the liberal movement at the commencement
-of his reign, being the savior of Russia.
-
-There is no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist to
-learned historian, who does not throw his little stone at Alexander for
-things he did wrong at this period of his reign.
-
-“He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In this case he did
-well and in that case badly. He behaved admirably at the beginning of
-his reign and during 1812, but acted badly by giving a constitution
-to Poland, forming the Holy Alliance, entrusting power to Arakchéev,
-favoring Golítsyn and mysticism, and afterwards Shishkóv and Photius.
-He also acted badly by concerning himself with the active army and
-disbanding the Semënov regiment.”
-
-It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the reproaches the
-historians address to him, based on their knowledge of what is good for
-humanity.
-
-What do these reproaches mean?
-
-Do not the very actions for which the historians praise Alexander I
-(the liberal attempts at the beginning of his reign, his struggle with
-Napoleon, the firmness he displayed in 1812 and the campaign of 1813)
-flow from the same sources—the circumstances of his birth, education,
-and life—that made his personality what it was and from which the
-actions for which they blame him (the Holy Alliance, the restoration of
-Poland, and the reaction of 1820 and later) also flowed?
-
-In what does the substance of those reproaches lie?
-
-It lies in the fact that an historic character like Alexander I,
-standing on the highest possible pinnacle of human power with the
-blinding light of history focused upon him; a character exposed to those
-strongest of all influences: the intrigues, flattery, and self-deception
-inseparable from power; a character who at every moment of his life
-felt a responsibility for all that was happening in Europe; and not
-a fictitious but a live character who like every man had his personal
-habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth—that
-this character—though not lacking in virtue (the historians do not
-accuse him of that)—had not the same conception of the welfare of
-humanity fifty years ago as a present-day professor who from his
-youth upwards has been occupied with learning: that is, with books and
-lectures and with taking notes from them.
-
-But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I was mistaken in
-his view of what was good for the people, we must inevitably assume that
-the historian who judges Alexander will also after the lapse of some
-time turn out to be mistaken in his view of what is good for humanity.
-This assumption is all the more natural and inevitable because, watching
-the movement of history, we see that every year and with each new
-writer, opinion as to what is good for mankind changes; so that what
-once seemed good, ten years later seems bad, and vice versa. And what is
-more, we find at one and the same time quite contradictory views as to
-what is bad and what is good in history: some people regard giving a
-constitution to Poland and forming the Holy Alliance as praiseworthy in
-Alexander, while others regard it as blameworthy.
-
-The activity of Alexander or of Napoleon cannot be called useful or
-harmful, for it is impossible to say for what it was useful or harmful.
-If that activity displeases somebody, this is only because it does
-not agree with his limited understanding of what is good. Whether the
-preservation of my father’s house in Moscow, or the glory of the Russian
-arms, or the prosperity of the Petersburg and other universities, or the
-freedom of Poland or the greatness of Russia, or the balance of power in
-Europe, or a certain kind of European culture called “progress” appear
-to me to be good or bad, I must admit that besides these things the
-action of every historic character has other more general purposes
-inaccessible to me.
-
-But let us assume that what is called science can harmonize all
-contradictions and possesses an unchanging standard of good and bad by
-which to try historic characters and events; let us say that Alexander
-could have done everything differently; let us say that with guidance
-from those who blame him and who profess to know the ultimate aim of the
-movement of humanity, he might have arranged matters according to
-the program his present accusers would have given him—of nationality,
-freedom, equality, and progress (these, I think, cover the ground). Let
-us assume that this program was possible and had then been formulated,
-and that Alexander had acted on it. What would then have become of the
-activity of all those who opposed the tendency that then prevailed in
-the government—an activity that in the opinion of the historians was
-good and beneficent? Their activity would not have existed: there would
-have been no life, there would have been nothing.
-
-If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of
-life is destroyed.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to the
-attainment of certain ends—the greatness of Russia or of France,
-the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas of the
-Revolution, general progress, or anything else—then it is impossible
-to explain the facts of history without introducing the conceptions of
-chance and genius.
-
-If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth
-century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have been
-accomplished without all the preceding wars and without the invasion. If
-the aim was the aggrandizement of France, that might have been attained
-without the Revolution and without the Empire. If the aim was the
-dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have accomplished that
-much better than warfare. If the aim was the progress of civilization,
-it is easy to see that there are other ways of diffusing civilization
-more expedient than by the destruction of wealth and of human lives.
-
-Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?
-
-Because it happened so! “Chance created the situation; genius utilized
-it,” says history.
-
-But what is chance? What is genius?
-
-The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing thing and
-therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a certain stage of
-understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a certain event occurs; I
-think that I cannot know it; so I do not try to know it and I talk about
-chance. I see a force producing effects beyond the scope of ordinary
-human agencies; I do not understand why this occurs and I talk of
-genius.
-
-To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a
-special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the others
-must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing conjunction
-of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances that this ram,
-who instead of getting into the general fold every evening goes into a
-special enclosure where there are oats—that this very ram, swelling with
-fat, is killed for meat.
-
-But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens to them
-happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they need only
-admit that what happens to them may also have purposes beyond their ken,
-and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence in what happened
-to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not know for what purpose
-they are fattened, they will at least know that all that happened to the
-ram did not happen accidentally, and will no longer need the conceptions
-of chance or genius.
-
-Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately
-intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond our
-ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives of
-historic characters and perceive the cause of the effect they produce
-(incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and then the words
-chance and genius become superfluous.
-
-We need only confess that we do not know the purpose of the European
-convulsions and that we know only the facts—that is, the murders, first
-in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria, in Spain,
-and in Russia—and that the movements from the west to the east and from
-the east to the west form the essence and purpose of these events, and
-not only shall we have no need to see exceptional ability and genius in
-Napoleon and Alexander, but we shall be unable to consider them to
-be anything but like other men, and we shall not be obliged to have
-recourse to chance for an explanation of those small events which made
-these people what they were, but it will be clear that all those small
-events were inevitable.
-
-By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate purpose, we shall
-clearly perceive that just as one cannot imagine a blossom or seed for
-any single plant better suited to it than those it produces, so it is
-impossible to imagine any two people more completely adapted down to the
-smallest detail for the purpose they had to fulfill, than Napoleon and
-Alexander with all their antecedents.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-The fundamental and essential significance of the European events of the
-beginning of the nineteenth century lies in the movement of the mass of
-the European peoples from west to east and afterwards from east to west.
-The commencement of that movement was the movement from west to east.
-For the peoples of the west to be able to make their warlike movement
-to Moscow it was necessary: (1) that they should form themselves into
-a military group of a size able to endure a collision with the warlike
-military group of the east, (2) that they should abandon all established
-traditions and customs, and (3) that during their military movement they
-should have at their head a man who could justify to himself and to them
-the deceptions, robberies, and murders which would have to be committed
-during that movement.
-
-And beginning with the French Revolution the old inadequately large
-group was destroyed, as well as the old habits and traditions, and step
-by step a group was formed of larger dimensions with new customs and
-traditions, and a man was produced who would stand at the head of the
-coming movement and bear the responsibility for all that had to be done.
-
-A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions, without
-a name, and not even a Frenchman, emerges—by what seem the strangest
-chances—from among all the seething French parties, and without joining
-anyone of them is borne forward to a prominent position.
-
-The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance of
-his opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods, and the dazzling and
-self-confident limitations of this man raise him to the head of the
-army. The brilliant qualities of the soldiers of the army sent to Italy,
-his opponents’ reluctance to fight, and his own childish audacity and
-self-confidence secure him military fame. Innumerable so-called chances
-accompany him everywhere. The disfavor into which he falls with the
-rulers of France turns to his advantage. His attempts to avoid his
-predestined path are unsuccessful: he is not received into the Russian
-service, and the appointment he seeks in Turkey comes to nothing. During
-the war in Italy he is several times on the verge of destruction and
-each time is saved in an unexpected manner. Owing to various diplomatic
-considerations the Russian armies—just those which might have destroyed
-his prestige—do not appear upon the scene till he is no longer there.
-
-On his return from Italy he finds the government in Paris in a process
-of dissolution in which all those who are in it are inevitably wiped
-out and destroyed. And by chance an escape from this dangerous position
-presents itself in the form of an aimless and senseless expedition
-to Africa. Again so-called chance accompanies him. Impregnable Malta
-surrenders without a shot; his most reckless schemes are crowned with
-success. The enemy’s fleet, which subsequently did not let a single boat
-pass, allows his entire army to elude it. In Africa a whole series of
-outrages are committed against the almost unarmed inhabitants. And the
-men who commit these crimes, especially their leader, assure themselves
-that this is admirable, this is glory—it resembles Caesar and Alexander
-the Great and is therefore good.
-
-This ideal of glory and grandeur—which consists not merely in
-considering nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on every
-crime one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible supernatural
-significance—that ideal, destined to guide this man and his associates,
-had scope for its development in Africa. Whatever he does succeeds. The
-plague does not touch him. The cruelty of murdering prisoners is not
-imputed to him as a fault. His childishly rash, uncalled-for, and
-ignoble departure from Africa, leaving his comrades in distress, is
-set down to his credit, and again the enemy’s fleet twice lets him slip
-past. When, intoxicated by the crimes he has committed so successfully,
-he reaches Paris, the dissolution of the republican government, which a
-year earlier might have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and
-his presence there now as a newcomer free from party entanglements can
-only serve to exalt him—and though he himself has no plan, he is quite
-ready for his new rôle.
-
-He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the parties snatched at
-him and demanded his participation.
-
-He alone—with his ideal of glory and grandeur developed in Italy and
-Egypt, his insane self-adulation, his boldness in crime and frankness in
-lying—he alone could justify what had to be done.
-
-He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so almost apart from
-his will and despite his indecision, his lack of a plan, and all his
-mistakes, he is drawn into a conspiracy that aims at seizing power and
-the conspiracy is crowned with success.
-
-He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm he wishes to
-flee, considering himself lost. He pretends to fall into a swoon and
-says senseless things that should have ruined him. But the once proud
-and shrewd rulers of France, feeling that their part is played out, are
-even more bewildered than he, and do not say the words they should have
-said to destroy him and retain their power.
-
-Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all men as if by
-agreement co-operate to confirm that power. Chance forms the characters
-of the rulers of France, who submit to him; chance forms the character
-of Paul I of Russia who recognizes his government; chance contrives
-a plot against him which not only fails to harm him but confirms his
-power. Chance puts the Duc d’Enghien in his hands and unexpectedly
-causes him to kill him—thereby convincing the mob more forcibly than
-in any other way that he had the right, since he had the might.
-Chance contrives that though he directs all his efforts to prepare an
-expedition against England (which would inevitably have ruined him) he
-never carries out that intention, but unexpectedly falls upon Mack and
-the Austrians, who surrender without a battle. Chance and genius give
-him the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance all men, not only the
-French but all Europe—except England which does not take part in the
-events about to happen—despite their former horror and detestation of
-his crimes, now recognize his authority, the title he has given
-himself, and his ideal of grandeur and glory, which seems excellent and
-reasonable to them all.
-
-As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming movement, the
-western forces push toward the east several times in 1805, 1806, 1807,
-and 1809, gaining strength and growing. In 1811 the group of people that
-had formed in France unites into one group with the peoples of Central
-Europe. The strength of the justification of the man who stands at the
-head of the movement grows with the increased size of the group. During
-the ten-year preparatory period this man had formed relations with all
-the crowned heads of Europe. The discredited rulers of the world can
-oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate Napoleonic ideal of
-glory and grandeur. One after another they hasten to display their
-insignificance before him. The King of Prussia sends his wife to seek
-the great man’s mercy; the Emperor of Austria considers it a favor that
-this man receives a daughter of the Caesars into his bed; the Pope, the
-guardian of all that the nations hold sacred, utilizes religion for the
-aggrandizement of the great man. It is not Napoleon who prepares himself
-for the accomplishment of his role, so much as all those round him who
-prepare him to take on himself the whole responsibility for what is
-happening and has to happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud
-he commits, which in the mouths of those around him is not at once
-represented as a great deed. The most suitable fête the Germans can
-devise for him is a celebration of Jena and Auerstädt. Not only is he
-great, but so are his ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, and his
-brothers-in-law. Everything is done to deprive him of the remains of his
-reason and to prepare him for his terrible part. And when he is ready so
-too are the forces.
-
-The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goal—Moscow. That
-city is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier losses than the opposing
-armies had suffered in the former war from Austerlitz to Wagram. But
-suddenly instead of those chances and that genius which hitherto had
-so consistently led him by an uninterrupted series of successes to the
-predestined goal, an innumerable sequence of inverse chances occur—from
-the cold in his head at Borodinó to the sparks which set Moscow on
-fire, and the frosts—and instead of genius, stupidity and immeasurable
-baseness become evident.
-
-The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are now
-not for Napoleon but always against him.
-
-A countermovement is then accomplished from east to west with a
-remarkable resemblance to the preceding movement from west to east.
-Attempted drives from east to west—similar to the contrary movements of
-1805, 1807, and 1809—precede the great westward movement; there is the
-same coalescence into a group of enormous dimensions; the same adhesion
-of the people of Central Europe to the movement; the same hesitation
-midway, and the same increasing rapidity as the goal is approached.
-
-Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government and army
-are destroyed. Napoleon himself is no longer of any account; all his
-actions are evidently pitiful and mean, but again an inexplicable chance
-occurs. The allies detest Napoleon whom they regard as the cause of
-their sufferings. Deprived of power and authority, his crimes and his
-craft exposed, he should have appeared to them what he appeared ten
-years previously and one year later—an outlawed brigand. But by some
-strange chance no one perceives this. His part is not yet ended. The man
-who ten years before and a year later was considered an outlawed brigand
-is sent to an island two days’ sail from France, which for some reason
-is presented to him as his dominion, and guards are given to him and
-millions of money are paid him.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal channels. The
-waves of the great movement abate, and on the calm surface eddies are
-formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have
-caused the floods to abate.
-
-But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed. The diplomatists
-think that their disagreements are the cause of this fresh pressure
-of natural forces; they anticipate war between their sovereigns; the
-position seems to them insoluble. But the wave they feel to be rising
-does not come from the quarter they expect. It rises again from the same
-point as before—Paris. The last backwash of the movement from the west
-occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the apparently insuperable
-diplomatic difficulties and ends the military movement of that period of
-history.
-
-The man who had devastated France returns to France alone, without any
-conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, but by
-strange chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the man they
-cursed the day before and will curse again a month later.
-
-This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.
-
-That act is performed.
-
-The last rôle is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash off his
-powder and paint: he will not be wanted any more.
-
-And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to himself
-in solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues and lies
-when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to the whole
-world what it was that people had mistaken for strength as long as an
-unseen hand directed his actions.
-
-The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped the actor
-shows him to us.
-
-“See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was not he
-but I who moved you?”
-
-But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people
-understood this.
-
-Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life of
-Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement from
-east to west.
-
-What was needed for him who, overshadowing others, stood at the head of
-that movement from east to west?
-
-What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy with European
-affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests; a moral
-superiority over those sovereigns of the day who co-operated with him;
-a mild and attractive personality; and a personal grievance against
-Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander I; all this had been
-prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life: his education,
-his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded him, and by
-Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.
-
-During the national war he was inactive because he was not needed. But
-as soon as the necessity for a general European war presented itself he
-appeared in his place at the given moment and, uniting the nations of
-Europe, led them to the goal.
-
-The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander possesses all
-possible power. How does he use it?
-
-Alexander I—the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his early years
-had striven only for his people’s welfare, the originator of the liberal
-innovations in his fatherland—now that he seemed to possess the utmost
-power and therefore to have the possibility of bringing about the
-welfare of his peoples—at the time when Napoleon in exile was drawing
-up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made mankind happy
-had he retained power—Alexander I, having fulfilled his mission and
-feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly recognizes the insignificance
-of that supposed power, turns away from it, and gives it into the hands
-of contemptible men whom he despises, saying only:
-
-“Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am a man like the
-rest of you. Let me live like a man and think of my soul and of God.”
-
-As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself, and
-yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to
-comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet
-has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.
-
-A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid
-of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet admires the
-bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the
-fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from
-flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it exists to gather honey.
-Another beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely
-says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young bees and rear
-a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices
-that the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil
-fertilizes the latter, and sees in this the purpose of the bee’s
-existence. Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that the
-bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the purpose of the
-bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first,
-the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The
-higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes,
-the more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our
-comprehension.
-
-All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to
-other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic
-characters and nations.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-Natásha’s wedding to Bezúkhov, which took place in 1813, was the last
-happy event in the family of the old Rostóvs. Count Ilyá Rostóv died
-that same year and, as always happens, after the father’s death the
-family group broke up.
-
-The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow and the flight
-from it, the death of Prince Andrew, Natásha’s despair, Pétya’s death,
-and the old countess’ grief fell blow after blow on the old count’s
-head. He seemed to be unable to understand the meaning of all these
-events, and bowed his old head in a spiritual sense as if expecting and
-inviting further blows which would finish him. He seemed now frightened
-and distraught and now unnaturally animated and enterprising.
-
-The arrangements for Natásha’s marriage occupied him for a while. He
-ordered dinners and suppers and obviously tried to appear cheerful, but
-his cheerfulness was not infectious as it used to be: on the contrary it
-evoked the compassion of those who knew and liked him.
-
-When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet and began to
-complain of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his
-bed. He realized from the first that he would not get up again, despite
-the doctor’s encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in an
-armchair by his pillow without undressing. Every time she gave him
-his medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand. On his last day,
-sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for having
-dissipated their property—that being the chief fault of which he was
-conscious. After receiving communion and unction he quietly died; and
-next day a throng of acquaintances who came to pay their last respects
-to the deceased filled the house rented by the Rostóvs. All these
-acquaintances, who had so often dined and danced at his house and had so
-often laughed at him, now said, with a common feeling of self-reproach
-and emotion, as if justifying themselves: “Well, whatever he may have
-been he was a most worthy man. You don’t meet such men nowadays.... And
-which of us has not weaknesses of his own?”
-
-It was just when the count’s affairs had become so involved that it was
-impossible to say what would happen if he lived another year that he
-unexpectedly died.
-
-Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the news of his
-father’s death reached him. He at once resigned his commission, and
-without waiting for it to be accepted took leave of absence and went to
-Moscow. The state of the count’s affairs became quite obvious a month
-after his death, surprising everyone by the immense total of small
-debts the existence of which no one had suspected. The debts amounted to
-double the value of the property.
-
-Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance. But
-he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his father’s memory, which he
-held sacred, and therefore would not hear of refusing and accepted the
-inheritance together with the obligation to pay the debts.
-
-The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained by a vague
-but powerful influence exerted on them while he lived by the count’s
-careless good nature, all proceeded to enforce their claims at once. As
-always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should get
-paid first, and those who like Mítenka held promissory notes given them
-as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors. Nicholas was
-allowed no respite and no peace, and those who had seemed to pity
-the old man—the cause of their losses (if they were losses)—now
-remorselessly pursued the young heir who had voluntarily undertaken the
-debts and was obviously not guilty of contracting them.
-
-Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the estate was sold by
-auction for half its value, and half the debts still remained
-unpaid. Nicholas accepted thirty thousand rubles offered him by his
-brother-in-law Bezúkhov to pay off debts he regarded as genuinely due
-for value received. And to avoid being imprisoned for the remainder, as
-the creditors threatened, he re-entered the government service.
-
-He could not rejoin the army where he would have been made colonel at
-the next vacancy, for his mother now clung to him as her one hold on
-life; and so despite his reluctance to remain in Moscow among people who
-had known him before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil service,
-he accepted a post in Moscow in that service, doffed the uniform of
-which he was so fond, and moved with his mother and Sónya to a small
-house on the Sívtsev Vrazhók.
-
-Natásha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time and had no
-clear idea of Nicholas’ circumstances. Having borrowed money from his
-brother-in-law, Nicholas tried to hide his wretched condition from him.
-His position was the more difficult because with his salary of twelve
-hundred rubles he had not only to keep himself, his mother, and Sónya,
-but had to shield his mother from knowledge of their poverty. The
-countess could not conceive of life without the luxurious conditions she
-had been used to from childhood and, unable to realize how hard it was
-for her son, kept demanding now a carriage (which they did not keep) to
-send for a friend, now some expensive article of food for herself, or
-wine for her son, or money to buy a present as a surprise for Natásha or
-Sónya, or for Nicholas himself.
-
-Sónya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her, put up with her
-whims and secret ill-will, and helped Nicholas to conceal their poverty
-from the old countess. Nicholas felt himself irredeemably indebted
-to Sónya for all she was doing for his mother and greatly admired her
-patience and devotion, but tried to keep aloof from her.
-
-He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too perfect, and
-because there was nothing to reproach her with. She had all that people
-are valued for, but little that could have made him love her. He felt
-that the more he valued her the less he loved her. He had taken her at
-her word when she wrote giving him his freedom and now behaved as if all
-that had passed between them had been long forgotten and could never in
-any case be renewed.
-
-Nicholas’ position became worse and worse. The idea of putting something
-aside out of his salary proved a dream. Not only did he not save
-anything, but to comply with his mother’s demands he even incurred some
-small debts. He could see no way out of this situation. The idea of
-marrying some rich woman, which was suggested to him by his female
-relations, was repugnant to him. The other way out—his mother’s
-death—never entered his head. He wished for nothing and hoped
-for nothing, and deep in his heart experienced a gloomy and stern
-satisfaction in an uncomplaining endurance of his position. He tried
-to avoid his old acquaintances with their commiseration and offensive
-offers of assistance; he avoided all distraction and recreation, and
-even at home did nothing but play cards with his mother, pace silently
-up and down the room, and smoke one pipe after another. He seemed
-carefully to cherish within himself the gloomy mood which alone enabled
-him to endure his position.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to Moscow. From reports
-current in town she learned how the Rostóvs were situated, and how “the
-son has sacrificed himself for his mother,” as people were saying.
-
-“I never expected anything else of him,” said Princess Mary to herself,
-feeling a joyous sense of her love for him. Remembering her friendly
-relations with all the Rostóvs which had made her almost a member of the
-family, she thought it her duty to go to see them. But remembering her
-relations with Nicholas in Vorónezh she was shy about doing so. Making
-a great effort she did however go to call on them a few weeks after her
-arrival in Moscow.
-
-Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess’ room could only be
-reached through his. But instead of being greeted with pleasure as she
-had expected, at his first glance at her his face assumed a cold, stiff,
-proud expression she had not seen on it before. He inquired about her
-health, led the way to his mother, and having sat there for five minutes
-left the room.
-
-When the princess came out of the countess’ room Nicholas met her again,
-and with marked solemnity and stiffness accompanied her to the anteroom.
-To her remarks about his mother’s health he made no reply. “What’s that
-to you? Leave me in peace,” his looks seemed to say.
-
-“Why does she come prowling here? What does she want? I can’t bear these
-ladies and all these civilities!” said he aloud in Sónya’s presence,
-evidently unable to repress his vexation, after the princess’ carriage
-had disappeared.
-
-“Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?” cried Sónya, hardly able to
-conceal her delight. “She is so kind and Mamma is so fond of her!”
-
-Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of the princess any
-more. But after her visit the old countess spoke of her several times a
-day.
-
-She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on her, expressed
-a wish to see her often, but yet always became ill-humored when she
-began to talk about her.
-
-Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke of the princess,
-but his silence irritated her.
-
-“She is a very admirable and excellent young woman,” said she, “and you
-must go and call on her. You would at least be seeing somebody, and I
-think it must be dull for you only seeing us.”
-
-“But I don’t in the least want to, Mamma.”
-
-“You used to want to, and now you don’t. Really I don’t understand you,
-my dear. One day you are dull, and the next you refuse to see anyone.”
-
-“But I never said I was dull.”
-
-“Why, you said yourself you don’t want even to see her. She is a very
-admirable young woman and you always liked her, but now suddenly you
-have got some notion or other in your head. You hide everything from
-me.”
-
-“Not at all, Mamma.”
-
-“If I were asking you to do something disagreeable now—but I only ask
-you to return a call. One would think mere politeness required it....
-Well, I have asked you, and now I won’t interfere any more since you
-have secrets from your mother.”
-
-“Well, then, I’ll go if you wish it.”
-
-“It doesn’t matter to me. I only wish it for your sake.”
-
-Nicholas sighed, bit his mustache, and laid out the cards for a
-patience, trying to divert his mother’s attention to another topic.
-
-The same conversation was repeated next day and the day after, and the
-day after that.
-
-After her visit to the Rostóvs and her unexpectedly chilly reception by
-Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to herself that she had been right in
-not wishing to be the first to call.
-
-“I expected nothing else,” she told herself, calling her pride to her
-aid. “I have nothing to do with him and I only wanted to see the
-old lady, who was always kind to me and to whom I am under many
-obligations.”
-
-But she could not pacify herself with these reflections; a feeling akin
-to remorse troubled her when she thought of her visit. Though she had
-firmly resolved not to call on the Rostóvs again and to forget the whole
-matter, she felt herself all the time in an awkward position. And when
-she asked herself what distressed her, she had to admit that it was her
-relation to Rostóv. His cold, polite manner did not express his feeling
-for her (she knew that) but it concealed something, and until she could
-discover what that something was, she felt that she could not be at
-ease.
-
-One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom attending to her
-nephew’s lessons, she was informed that Rostóv had called. With a firm
-resolution not to betray herself and not show her agitation, she sent
-for Mademoiselle Bourienne and went with her to the drawing room.
-
-Her first glance at Nicholas’ face told her that he had only come to
-fulfill the demands of politeness, and she firmly resolved to maintain
-the tone in which he addressed her.
-
-They spoke of the countess’ health, of their mutual friends, of the
-latest war news, and when the ten minutes required by propriety had
-elapsed after which a visitor may rise, Nicholas got up to say good-by.
-
-With Mademoiselle Bourienne’s help the princess had maintained the
-conversation very well, but at the very last moment, just when he rose,
-she was so tired of talking of what did not interest her, and her
-mind was so full of the question why she alone was granted so little
-happiness in life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat still, her
-luminous eyes gazing fixedly before her, not noticing that he had risen.
-
-Nicholas glanced at her and, wishing to appear not to notice her
-abstraction, made some remark to Mademoiselle Bourienne and then
-again looked at the princess. She still sat motionless with a look of
-suffering on her gentle face. He suddenly felt sorry for her and was
-vaguely conscious that he might be the cause of the sadness her face
-expressed. He wished to help her and say something pleasant, but could
-think of nothing to say.
-
-“Good-by, Princess!” said he.
-
-She started, flushed, and sighed deeply.
-
-“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said as if waking up. “Are you going
-already, Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but the cushion for the
-countess!”
-
-“Wait a moment, I’ll fetch it,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she
-left the room.
-
-They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another.
-
-“Yes, Princess,” said Nicholas at last with a sad smile, “it doesn’t
-seem long ago since we first met at Boguchárovo, but how much water
-has flowed since then! In what distress we all seemed to be then, yet
-I would give much to bring back that time... but there’s no bringing it
-back.”
-
-Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her own luminous ones
-as he said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden meaning of
-his words which would explain his feeling for her.
-
-“Yes, yes,” said she, “but you have no reason to regret the past, Count.
-As I understand your present life, I think you will always recall it
-with satisfaction, because the self-sacrifice that fills it now...”
-
-“I cannot accept your praise,” he interrupted her hurriedly. “On the
-contrary I continually reproach myself.... But this is not at all an
-interesting or cheerful subject.”
-
-His face again resumed its former stiff and cold expression. But the
-princess had caught a glimpse of the man she had known and loved, and it
-was to him that she now spoke.
-
-“I thought you would allow me to tell you this,” she said. “I had come
-so near to you... and to all your family that I thought you would not
-consider my sympathy misplaced, but I was mistaken,” and suddenly her
-voice trembled. “I don’t know why,” she continued, recovering herself,
-“but you used to be different, and...”
-
-“There are a thousand reasons why,” laying special emphasis on the why.
-“Thank you, Princess,” he added softly. “Sometimes it is hard.”
-
-“So that’s why! That’s why!” a voice whispered in Princess Mary’s soul.
-“No, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank look, not only that
-handsome exterior, that I loved in him. I divined his noble, resolute,
-self-sacrificing spirit too,” she said to herself. “Yes, he is poor now
-and I am rich.... Yes, that’s the only reason.... Yes, were it not for
-that...” And remembering his former tenderness, and looking now at his
-kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood the cause of his coldness.
-
-“But why, Count, why?” she almost cried, unconsciously moving closer to
-him. “Why? Tell me. You must tell me!”
-
-He was silent.
-
-“I don’t understand your why, Count,” she continued, “but it’s hard for
-me... I confess it. For some reason you wish to deprive me of our former
-friendship. And that hurts me.” There were tears in her eyes and in her
-voice. “I have had so little happiness in life that every loss is hard
-for me to bear.... Excuse me, good-by!” and suddenly she began to cry
-and was hurrying from the room.
-
-“Princess, for God’s sake!” he exclaimed, trying to stop her.
-“Princess!”
-
-She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one
-another’s eyes—and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly became
-possible, inevitable, and very near.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to Bald
-Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sónya.
-
-Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without
-selling any of his wife’s property, and having received a small
-inheritance on the death of a cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as well.
-
-In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairs that he
-was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and was negotiating
-to buy back Otrádnoe—that being his pet dream.
-
-Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it
-that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas was
-a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the English ones
-then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical treatises on estate
-management, disliked factories, the raising of expensive products,
-and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not make a hobby of any
-particular part of the work on his estate. He always had before his
-mind’s eye the estate as a whole and not any particular part of it. The
-chief thing in his eyes was not the nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen
-in the air, nor manures, nor special plows, but that most important
-agent by which nitrogen, oxygen, manure, and plow were made
-effective—the peasant laborer. When Nicholas first began farming
-and began to understand its different branches, it was the serf who
-especially attracted his attention. The peasant seemed to him not merely
-a tool, but also a judge of farming and an end in himself. At first
-he watched the serfs, trying to understand their aims and what they
-considered good and bad, and only pretended to direct them and give
-orders while in reality learning from them their methods, their manner
-of speech, and their judgment of what was good and bad. Only when he
-had understood the peasants’ tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk
-their language, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt
-akin to them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to
-perform toward them the duties demanded of him. And Nicholas’ management
-produced very brilliant results.
-
-Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of the
-estates he at once unerringly appointed as bailiff, village elder, and
-delegate, the very men the serfs would themselves have chosen had they
-had the right to choose, and these posts never changed hands. Before
-analyzing the properties of manure, before entering into the debit and
-credit (as he ironically called it), he found out how many cattle the
-peasants had and increased the number by all possible means. He kept the
-peasant families together in the largest groups possible, not allowing
-the family groups to divide into separate households. He was hard alike
-on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to get them expelled
-from the commune.
-
-He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the peasants’ hay
-and corn as of his own, and few landowners had their crops sown
-and harvested so early and so well, or got so good a return, as did
-Nicholas.
-
-He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs—the “drones”
-as he called them—and everyone said he spoiled them by his laxity. When
-a decision had to be taken regarding a domestic serf, especially if one
-had to be punished, he always felt undecided and consulted everybody in
-the house; but when it was possible to have a domestic serf conscripted
-instead of a land worker he did so without the least hesitation. He
-never felt any hesitation in dealing with the peasants. He knew that his
-every decision would be approved by them all with very few exceptions.
-
-He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or to
-make things easy for or reward anyone, merely because he felt inclined
-to do so. He could not have said by what standard he judged what he
-should or should not do, but the standard was quite firm and definite in
-his own mind.
-
-Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, he would
-say: “What can one do with our Russian peasants?” and imagined that he
-could not bear them.
-
-Yet he loved “our Russian peasants” and their way of life with his whole
-soul, and for that very reason had understood and assimilated the one
-way and manner of farming which produced good results.
-
-Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband’s and regretted
-that she could not share it; but she could not understand the joys and
-vexations he derived from that world, to her so remote and alien. She
-could not understand why he was so particularly animated and happy
-when, after getting up at daybreak and spending the whole morning in the
-fields or on the threshing floor, he returned from the sowing or mowing
-or reaping to have tea with her. She did not understand why he spoke
-with such admiration and delight of the farming of the thrifty and
-well-to-do peasant Matthew Ermíshin, who with his family had carted
-corn all night; or of the fact that his (Nicholas’) sheaves were already
-stacked before anyone else had his harvest in. She did not understand
-why he stepped out from the window to the veranda and smiled under his
-mustache and winked so joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall
-on the dry and thirsty shoots of the young oats, or why when the wind
-carried away a threatening cloud during the hay harvest he would return
-from the barn, flushed, sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of
-wormwood and gentian in his hair and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would
-say: “Well, one more day and my grain and the peasants’ will all be
-under cover.”
-
-Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always ready to
-anticipate her wishes, should become almost desperate when she brought
-him a petition from some peasant men or women who had appealed to her
-to be excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, should obstinately
-refuse her, angrily asking her not to interfere in what was not her
-business. She felt he had a world apart, which he loved passionately and
-which had laws she had not fathomed.
-
-Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke of the good work he
-was doing for his serfs, he would be vexed and reply: “Not in the least;
-it never entered my head and I wouldn’t do that for their good! That’s
-all poetry and old wives’ talk—all that doing good to one’s neighbor!
-What I want is that our children should not have to go begging. I must
-put our affairs in order while I am alive, that’s all. And to do that,
-order and strictness are essential.... That’s all about it!” said he,
-clenching his vigorous fist. “And fairness, of course,” he added, “for
-if the peasant is naked and hungry and has only one miserable horse, he
-can do no good either for himself or for me.”
-
-And all Nicholas did was fruitful—probably just because he refused to
-allow himself to think that he was doing good to others for virtue’s
-sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring estates came
-to beg him to buy them, and long after his death the memory of his
-administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs. “He was a
-master... the peasants’ affairs first and then his own. Of course he was
-not to be trifled with either—in a word, he was a real master!”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-One matter connected with his management sometimes worried Nicholas, and
-that was his quick temper together with his old hussar habit of making
-free use of his fists. At first he saw nothing reprehensible in
-this, but in the second year of his marriage his view of that form of
-punishment suddenly changed.
-
-Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from Boguchárovo, a
-man who had succeeded to the post when Dron died and who was accused of
-dishonesty and various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the porch
-to question him, and immediately after the elder had given a few replies
-the sound of cries and blows were heard. On returning to lunch Nicholas
-went up to his wife, who sat with her head bent low over her embroidery
-frame, and as usual began to tell her what he had been doing that
-morning. Among other things he spoke of the Boguchárovo elder. Countess
-Mary turned red and then pale, but continued to sit with head bowed and
-lips compressed and gave her husband no reply.
-
-“Such an insolent scoundrel!” he cried, growing hot again at the mere
-recollection of him. “If he had told me he was drunk and did not see...
-But what is the matter with you, Mary?” he suddenly asked.
-
-Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but hastily looked
-down again and her lips puckered.
-
-“Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?”
-
-The looks of the plain Countess Mary always improved when she was in
-tears. She never cried from pain or vexation, but always from sorrow or
-pity, and when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible charm.
-
-The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no longer restrain herself
-and began to cry.
-
-“Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do you... Nicholas!” and
-she covered her face with her hands.
-
-Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her side, and paced up
-and down the room. He understood what she was weeping about, but could
-not in his heart at once agree with her that what he had regarded
-from childhood as quite an everyday event was wrong. “Is it just
-sentimentality, old wives’ tales, or is she right?” he asked himself.
-Before he had solved that point he glanced again at her face filled with
-love and pain, and he suddenly realized that she was right and that he
-had long been sinning against himself.
-
-“Mary,” he said softly, going up to her, “it will never happen again;
-I give you my word. Never,” he repeated in a trembling voice like a boy
-asking for forgiveness.
-
-The tears flowed faster still from the countess’ eyes. She took his hand
-and kissed it.
-
-“Nicholas, when did you break your cameo?” she asked to change the
-subject, looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with a cameo of
-Laocoön’s head.
-
-“Today—it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don’t remind me of it!” and
-again he flushed. “I give you my word of honor it shan’t occur again,
-and let this always be a reminder to me,” and he pointed to the broken
-ring.
-
-After that, when in discussions with his village elders or stewards the
-blood rushed to his face and his fists began to clench, Nicholas would
-turn the broken ring on his finger and would drop his eyes before the
-man who was making him angry. But he did forget himself once or twice
-within a twelvemonth, and then he would go and confess to his wife, and
-would again promise that this should really be the very last time.
-
-“Mary, you must despise me!” he would say. “I deserve it.”
-
-“You should go, go away at once, if you don’t feel strong enough to
-control yourself,” she would reply sadly, trying to comfort her husband.
-
-Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected but not liked.
-He did not concern himself with the interests of his own class, and
-consequently some thought him proud and others thought him stupid. The
-whole summer, from spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with the work
-on his farm. In autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the same
-business-like seriousness—leaving home for a month, or even two, with
-his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or spent his time
-reading. The books he read were chiefly historical, and on these he
-spent a certain sum every year. He was collecting, as he said, a serious
-library, and he made it a rule to read through all the books he bought.
-He would sit in his study with a grave air, reading—a task he first
-imposed upon himself as a duty, but which afterwards became a habit
-affording him a special kind of pleasure and a consciousness of
-being occupied with serious matters. In winter, except for business
-excursions, he spent most of his time at home making himself one with
-his family and entering into all the details of his children’s relations
-with their mother. The harmony between him and his wife grew closer and
-closer and he daily discovered fresh spiritual treasures in her.
-
-From the time of his marriage Sónya had lived in his house. Before
-that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself and
-Sónya, blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess Mary to
-be gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized the wrong he
-had done Sónya, felt herself to blame toward her, and imagined that her
-wealth had influenced Nicholas’ choice. She could not find fault with
-Sónya in any way and tried to be fond of her, but often felt ill-will
-toward her which she could not overcome.
-
-Once she had a talk with her friend Natásha about Sónya and about her
-own injustice toward her.
-
-“You know,” said Natásha, “you have read the Gospels a great deal—there
-is a passage in them that just fits Sónya.”
-
-“What?” asked Countess Mary, surprised.
-
-“‘To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be
-taken away.’ You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I don’t know.
-Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don’t know, but from her is taken away, and
-everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am dreadfully sorry for her.
-Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to marry her, but I always had
-a sort of presentiment that it would not come off. She is a sterile
-flower, you know—like some strawberry blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for
-her, and sometimes I think she doesn’t feel it as you or I would.”
-
-Though Countess Mary told Natásha that those words in the Gospel must be
-understood differently, yet looking at Sónya she agreed with Natásha’s
-explanation. It really seemed that Sónya did not feel her position
-trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a sterile flower.
-She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of the family as a
-whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the people but to the
-home. She waited on the old countess, petted and spoiled the children,
-was always ready to render the small services for which she had a gift,
-and all this was unconsciously accepted from her with insufficient
-gratitude.
-
-The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the same
-scale as under the old prince.
-
-The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more than
-simple. The immense house on the old stone foundations was of wood,
-plastered only inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished with
-very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by their own
-serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was spacious
-and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for visitors. Whole
-families of the Rostóvs’ and Bolkónskis’ relations sometimes came to
-Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of servants and stayed for
-months. Besides that, four times a year, on the name days and birthdays
-of the hosts, as many as a hundred visitors would gather there for a day
-or two. The rest of the year life pursued its unbroken routine with its
-ordinary occupations, and its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers,
-provided out of the produce of the estate.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natásha had
-been staying at her brother’s with her husband and children since early
-autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his own for three
-weeks as he said, but had remained there nearly seven weeks and was
-expected back every minute.
-
-Besides the Bezúkhov family, Nicholas’ old friend the retired General
-Vasíli Dmítrich Denísov was staying with the Rostóvs this fifth of
-December.
-
-On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of
-visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for
-a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to
-the new church he had built, and then receive visitors who would come to
-congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about the elections
-of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled to spend the eve
-of that day in his usual way. He examined the bailiff’s accounts of
-the village in Ryazán which belonged to his wife’s nephew, wrote two
-business letters, and walked over to the granaries, cattle yards and
-stables before dinner. Having taken precautions against the general
-drunkenness to be expected on the morrow because it was a great saint’s
-day, he returned to dinner, and without having time for a private talk
-with his wife sat down at the long table laid for twenty persons, at
-which the whole household had assembled. At that table were his mother,
-his mother’s old lady companion Belóva, his wife, their three children
-with their governess and tutor, his wife’s nephew with his tutor, Sónya,
-Denísov, Natásha, her three children, their governess, and old Michael
-Ivánovich, the late prince’s architect, who was living on in retirement
-at Bald Hills.
-
-Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When her husband took
-his place she concluded, from the rapid manner in which after taking
-up his table napkin he pushed back the tumbler and wineglass standing
-before him, that he was out of humor, as was sometimes the case when
-he came in to dinner straight from the farm—especially before the soup.
-Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and when she herself was in
-a good frame of mind quietly waited till he had had his soup and then
-began to talk to him and make him admit that there was no cause for his
-ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that and was hurt that he should
-be angry with her without any reason, and she felt unhappy. She asked
-him where he had been. He replied. She again inquired whether
-everything was going well on the farm. Her unnatural tone made him wince
-unpleasantly and he replied hastily.
-
-“Then I’m not mistaken,” thought Countess Mary. “Why is he cross with
-me?” She concluded from his tone that he was vexed with her and wished
-to end the conversation. She knew her remarks sounded unnatural, but
-could not refrain from asking some more questions.
-
-Thanks to Denísov the conversation at table soon became general and
-lively, and she did not talk to her husband. When they left the table
-and went as usual to thank the old countess, Countess Mary held out her
-hand and kissed her husband, and asked him why he was angry with her.
-
-“You always have such strange fancies! I didn’t even think of being
-angry,” he replied.
-
-But the word always seemed to her to imply: “Yes, I am angry but I won’t
-tell you why.”
-
-Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sónya and the
-old countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to disagree,
-could find nothing to reproach them with; but even they had their
-moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always just after they
-had been happiest together, they suddenly had a feeling of estrangement
-and hostility, which occurred most frequently during Countess Mary’s
-pregnancies, and this was such a time.
-
-“Well, messieurs et mesdames,” said Nicholas loudly and with apparent
-cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary that he did it on purpose to
-vex her), “I have been on my feet since six this morning. Tomorrow I
-shall have to suffer, so today I’ll go and rest.”
-
-And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room and
-lay down on the sofa.
-
-“That’s always the way,” thought Countess Mary. “He talks to everyone
-except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive to him, especially when I
-am in this condition.” She looked down at her expanded figure and in the
-glass at her pale, sallow, emaciated face in which her eyes now looked
-larger than ever.
-
-And everything annoyed her—Denísov’s shouting and laughter, Natásha’s
-talk, and especially a quick glance Sónya gave her.
-
-Sónya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found for feeling
-irritated.
-
-Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything of
-what they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the nursery.
-
-The children were playing at “going to Moscow” in a carriage made of
-chairs and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with
-them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable
-crossness worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with
-difficulty, went to the small sitting room.
-
-“Perhaps he is not asleep; I’ll have an explanation with him,” she
-said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his mother,
-followed her on tiptoe. She did not notice him.
-
-“Mary, dear, I think he is asleep—he was so tired,” said Sónya, meeting
-her in the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Mary that she
-crossed her path everywhere). “Andrew may wake him.”
-
-Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt that
-Sónya was right, and for that very reason flushed and with evident
-difficulty refrained from saying something harsh. She made no reply, but
-to avoid obeying Sónya beckoned to Andrew to follow her quietly and went
-to the door. Sónya went away by another door. From the room in which
-Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his even breathing, every
-slightest tone of which was familiar to his wife. As she listened to it
-she saw before her his smooth handsome forehead, his mustache, and his
-whole face, as she had so often seen it in the stillness of the night
-when he slept. Nicholas suddenly moved and cleared his throat. And at
-that moment little Andrew shouted from outside the door: “Papa! Mamma’s
-standing here!” Countess Mary turned pale with fright and made signs
-to the boy. He grew silent, and quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to
-Countess Mary. She knew how Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through
-the door she heard Nicholas clearing his throat again and stirring, and
-his voice said crossly:
-
-“I can’t get a moment’s peace.... Mary, is that you? Why did you bring
-him here?”
-
-“I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me....”
-
-Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary moved away from the
-door and took the boy back to the nursery. Five minutes later little
-black-eyed three-year-old Natásha, her father’s pet, having learned from
-her brother that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting room, ran
-to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed little girl boldly
-opened the creaking door, went up to the sofa with energetic steps of
-her sturdy little legs, and having examined the position of her father,
-who was asleep with his back to her, rose on tiptoe and kissed the hand
-which lay under his head. Nicholas turned with a tender smile on his
-face.
-
-“Natásha, Natásha!” came Countess Mary’s frightened whisper from the
-door. “Papa wants to sleep.”
-
-“No, Mamma, he doesn’t want to sleep,” said little Natásha with
-conviction. “He’s laughing.”
-
-Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in his arms.
-
-“Come in, Mary,” he said to his wife.
-
-She went in and sat down by her husband.
-
-“I did not notice him following me,” she said timidly. “I just looked
-in.”
-
-Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at his wife and,
-seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm around her and kissed
-her hair.
-
-“May I kiss Mamma?” he asked Natásha.
-
-Natásha smiled bashfully.
-
-“Again!” she commanded, pointing with a peremptory gesture to the spot
-where Nicholas had placed the kiss.
-
-“I don’t know why you think I am cross,” said Nicholas, replying to the
-question he knew was in his wife’s mind.
-
-“You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are like
-that. It always seems to me...”
-
-“Mary, don’t talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” he
-said gaily.
-
-“It seems to be that you can’t love me, that I am so plain... always...
-and now... in this cond...”
-
-“Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it’s love that
-makes us see beauty. It is only Malvínas and women of that kind who are
-loved for their beauty. But do I love my wife? I don’t love her, but...
-I don’t know how to put it. Without you, or when something comes between
-us like this, I seem lost and can’t do anything. Now do I love my
-finger? I don’t love it, but just try to cut it off!”
-
-“I’m not like that myself, but I understand. So you’re not angry with
-me?”
-
-“Awfully angry!” he said, smiling and getting up. And smoothing his hair
-he began to pace the room.
-
-“Do you know, Mary, what I’ve been thinking?” he began, immediately
-thinking aloud in his wife’s presence now that they had made it up.
-
-He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did not care. A
-thought had occurred to him and so it belonged to her also. And he told
-her of his intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till spring.
-
-Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some remark, and in
-her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts were about the children.
-
-“You can see the woman in her already,” she said in French, pointing to
-little Natásha. “You reproach us women with being illogical. Here is our
-logic. I say: ‘Papa wants to sleep!’ but she says, ‘No, he’s laughing.’
-And she was right,” said Countess Mary with a happy smile.
-
-“Yes, yes.” And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his strong hand,
-lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held her by the legs, and
-paced the room with her. There was an expression of carefree happiness
-on the faces of both father and daughter.
-
-“But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one,” his wife
-whispered in French.
-
-“Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show...”
-
-At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley and footsteps in
-the hall and anteroom, as if someone had arrived.
-
-“Somebody has come.”
-
-“I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see,” said Countess Mary and left
-the room.
-
-In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little daughter a
-gallop round the room. Out of breath, he took the laughing child quickly
-from his shoulder and pressed her to his heart. His capers reminded
-him of dancing, and looking at the child’s round happy little face he
-thought of what she would be like when he was an old man, taking her
-into society and dancing the mazurka with her as his old father had
-danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter.
-
-“It is he, it is he, Nicholas!” said Countess Mary, re-entering the room
-a few minutes later. “Now our Natásha has come to life. You should have
-seen her ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed away so long.
-Well, come along now, quick, quick! It’s time you two were parted,” she
-added, looking smilingly at the little girl who clung to her father.
-
-Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.
-
-Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.
-
-“I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy,” she
-whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but at the same time she
-sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though she
-felt, through her happiness, that there is another sort of happiness
-unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily thought at that
-instant.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-Natásha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already had
-three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she was
-now nursing. She had grown stouter and broader, so that it was difficult
-to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively Natásha of
-former days. Her features were more defined and had a calm, soft,
-and serene expression. In her face there was none of the ever-glowing
-animation that had formerly burned there and constituted its charm.
-Now her face and body were often all that one saw, and her soul was
-not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a strong, handsome, and
-fertile woman. The old fire very rarely kindled in her face now. That
-happened only when, as was the case that day, her husband returned home,
-or a sick child was convalescent, or when she and Countess Mary spoke of
-Prince Andrew (she never mentioned him to her husband, who she imagined
-was jealous of Prince Andrew’s memory), or on the rare occasions when
-something happened to induce her to sing, a practice she had quite
-abandoned since her marriage. At the rare moments when the old fire
-did kindle in her handsome, fully developed body she was even more
-attractive than in former days.
-
-Since their marriage Natásha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in
-Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow, or with her mother, that is to
-say, in Nicholas’ house. The young Countess Bezúkhova was not often seen
-in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her
-and found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natásha liked
-solitude—she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even thought
-that she did not—but with her pregnancies, her confinements, the nursing
-of her children, and sharing every moment of her husband’s life, she had
-demands on her time which could be satisfied only by renouncing society.
-All who had known Natásha before her marriage wondered at the change
-in her as at something extraordinary. Only the old countess with her
-maternal instinct had realized that all Natásha’s outbursts had been due
-to her need of children and a husband—as she herself had once exclaimed
-at Otrádnoe not so much in fun as in earnest—and her mother was now
-surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never understood
-Natásha, and she kept saying that she had always known that Natásha
-would make an exemplary wife and mother.
-
-“Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all
-bounds,” said the countess, “so that it even becomes absurd.”
-
-Natásha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk,
-especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let herself
-go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments, should be
-even more careful of her appearance than when she was unmarried, and
-should fascinate her husband as much as she did before he became her
-husband. Natásha on the contrary had at once abandoned all her witchery,
-of which her singing had been an unusually powerful part. She gave it up
-just because it was so powerfully seductive. She took no pains with
-her manners or with delicacy of speech, or with her toilet, or to show
-herself to her husband in her most becoming attitudes, or to avoid
-inconveniencing him by being too exacting. She acted in contradiction
-to all those rules. She felt that the allurements instinct had formerly
-taught her to use would now be merely ridiculous in the eyes of
-her husband, to whom she had from the first moment given herself up
-entirely—that is, with her whole soul, leaving no corner of it hidden
-from him. She felt that her unity with her husband was not maintained
-by the poetic feelings that had attracted him to her, but by something
-else—indefinite but firm as the bond between her own body and soul.
-
-To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing romantic
-songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange as to adorn
-herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others might perhaps
-have been agreeable—she did not know—but she had no time at all for it.
-The chief reason for devoting no time either to singing, to dress, or
-to choosing her words was that she really had no time to spare for these
-things.
-
-We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in
-a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so
-trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one’s entire
-attention is devoted to it.
-
-The subject which wholly engrossed Natásha’s attention was her family:
-that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should belong
-entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she had to bear,
-bring into the world, nurse, and bring up.
-
-And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her whole
-soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the larger
-did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did her powers
-appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one thing and yet
-was unable to accomplish all that she considered necessary.
-
-There were then as now conversations and discussions about women’s
-rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and rights,
-though these themes were not yet termed questions as they are now; but
-these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natásha, she positively
-did not understand them.
-
-These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing in
-marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that is,
-only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance, which
-lies in the family.
-
-Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the question of
-how to get the greatest gratification from one’s dinner, did not then
-and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of a dinner is the
-nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is the family.
-
-If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats two
-dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain his
-purpose, for his stomach will not digest the two dinners.
-
-If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to have
-many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in that
-case will not have a family.
-
-If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is the
-family, the whole question resolves itself into not eating more than one
-can digest, and not having more wives or husbands than are needed for
-the family—that is, one wife or one husband. Natásha needed a husband. A
-husband was given her and he gave her a family. And she not only saw no
-need of any other or better husband, but as all the powers of her soul
-were intent on serving that husband and family, she could not imagine
-and saw no interest in imagining how it would be if things were
-different.
-
-Natásha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the
-society of her relatives—Countess Mary, and her brother, her mother, and
-Sónya. She valued the company of those to whom she could come striding
-disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and with joyful face
-show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby’s napkin, and from whom
-she could hear reassuring words to the effect that baby was much better.
-
-To such an extent had Natásha let herself go that the way she dressed
-and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy—she was jealous
-of Sónya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty or plain—were
-habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The general opinion was
-that Pierre was under his wife’s thumb, which was really true. From the
-very first days of their married life Natásha had announced her demands.
-Pierre was greatly surprised by his wife’s view, to him a perfectly
-novel one, that every moment of his life belonged to her and to the
-family. His wife’s demands astonished him, but they also flattered him,
-and he submitted to them.
-
-Pierre’s subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not
-flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman; did
-not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money on a
-whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except on
-business—in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits, which
-she did not in the least understand but to which she attributed great
-importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had the right to
-regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as he chose. At
-home Natásha placed herself in the position of a slave to her husband,
-and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was occupied—that is, was
-reading or writing in his study. Pierre had but to show a partiality for
-anything to get just what he liked done always. He had only to express a
-wish and Natásha would jump up and run to fulfill it.
-
-The entire household was governed according to Pierre’s supposed orders,
-that is, by his wishes which Natásha tried to guess. Their way of
-life and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties, Natásha’s
-occupations, the children’s upbringing, were all selected not merely
-with regard to Pierre’s expressed wishes, but to what Natásha from the
-thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his wishes to be. And she
-deduced the essentials of his wishes quite correctly, and having once
-arrived at them clung to them tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to
-change his mind she would fight him with his own weapons.
-
-Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of their
-first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet nurse
-three times and Natásha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day told her
-of Rousseau’s view, with which he quite agreed, that to have a wet
-nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was born, despite
-the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of her husband
-himself—who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing her baby herself,
-a thing then unheard of and considered injurious—she insisted on having
-her own way, and after that nursed all her babies herself.
-
-It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and wife
-would have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his surprise and
-delight would find in his wife’s ideas and actions the very thought
-against which she had argued, but divested of everything superfluous
-that in the excitement of the dispute he had added when expressing his
-opinion.
-
-After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and firm
-consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt this because he saw
-himself reflected in his wife. He felt the good and bad within himself
-inextricably mingled and overlapping. But only what was really good in
-him was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was rejected.
-And this was not the result of logical reasoning but was a direct and
-mysterious reflection.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the Rostóvs
-he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to come
-to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were being
-discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the principal
-founders.
-
-On reading that letter (she always read her husband’s letters) Natásha
-herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though she would feel
-his absence very acutely. She attributed immense importance to all
-her husband’s intellectual and abstract interests though she did not
-understand them, and she always dreaded being a hindrance to him in such
-matters. To Pierre’s timid look of inquiry after reading the letter she
-replied by asking him to go, but to fix a definite date for his return.
-He was given four weeks’ leave of absence.
-
-Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a fortnight
-before, Natásha had been in a constant state of alarm, depression, and
-irritability.
-
-Denísov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied with
-the present state of affairs, had arrived during that fortnight. He
-looked at Natásha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad likeness of a
-person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies, and talk about
-the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former enchantress.
-
-Natásha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her mother,
-her brother, Sónya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to console her
-tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay in returning.
-
-“It’s all nonsense, all rubbish—those discussions which lead to nothing
-and all those idiotic societies!” Natásha declared of the very affairs
-in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.
-
-And she would go to the nursery to nurse Pétya, her only boy. No one
-else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this
-little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she was
-conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his little
-nose. That creature said: “You are angry, you are jealous, you would
-like to pay him out, you are afraid—but here am I! And I am he...” and
-that was unanswerable. It was more than true.
-
-During that fortnight of anxiety Natásha resorted to the baby for
-comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him and
-he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was just
-what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety about her
-husband more easily.
-
-She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre’s sleigh was heard
-at the front door, and the old nurse—knowing how to please her
-mistress—entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a beaming
-face.
-
-“Has he come?” Natásha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move lest
-she should rouse the dozing baby.
-
-“He’s come, ma’am,” whispered the nurse.
-
-The blood rushed to Natásha’s face and her feet involuntarily moved, but
-she could not jump up and run out. The baby again opened his eyes and
-looked at her. “You’re here?” he seemed to be saying, and again lazily
-smacked his lips.
-
-Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natásha rocked him a little, handed
-him to the nurse, and went with rapid steps toward the door. But at the
-door she stopped as if her conscience reproached her for having in
-her joy left the child too soon, and she glanced round. The nurse with
-raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of his cot.
-
-“Go, ma’am! Don’t worry, go!” she whispered, smiling, with the kind of
-familiarity that grows up between a nurse and her mistress.
-
-Natásha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.
-
-Denísov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with his
-pipe, now for the first time recognized the old Natásha. A flood of
-brilliant, joyful light poured from her transfigured face.
-
-“He’s come!” she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denísov felt that he too
-was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had returned.
-
-On reaching the vestibule Natásha saw a tall figure in a fur coat
-unwinding his scarf. “It’s he! It’s really he! He has come!” she said
-to herself, and rushing at him embraced him, pressed his head to her
-breast, and then pushed him back and gazed at his ruddy, happy face,
-covered with hoarfrost. “Yes, it is he, happy and contented....”
-
-Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense she had
-experienced for the last fortnight, and the joy that had lit up her
-face vanished; she frowned and overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of
-reproaches and angry words.
-
-“Yes, it’s all very well for you. You are pleased, you’ve had a good
-time.... But what about me? You might at least have shown consideration
-for the children. I am nursing and my milk was spoiled.... Pétya was at
-death’s door. But you were enjoying yourself. Yes, enjoying...”
-
-Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come sooner; he
-knew this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a minute or two;
-above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy. He wanted
-to smile but dared not even think of doing so. He made a piteous,
-frightened face and bent down.
-
-“I could not, on my honor. But how is Pétya?”
-
-“All right now. Come along! I wonder you’re not ashamed! If only you
-could see what I was like without you, how I suffered!”
-
-“You are well?”
-
-“Come, come!” she said, not letting go of his arm. And they went to
-their rooms.
-
-When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he was in the nursery
-holding his baby son, who was again awake, on his huge right palm and
-dandling him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby’s broad face
-with its toothless open mouth. The storm was long since over and there
-was bright, joyous sunshine on Natásha’s face as she gazed tenderly at
-her husband and child.
-
-“And have you talked everything well over with Prince Theodore?” she
-asked.
-
-“Yes, capitally.”
-
-“You see, he holds it up.” (She meant the baby’s head.) “But how he did
-frighten me... You’ve seen the princess? Is it true she’s in love with
-that...”
-
-“Yes, just fancy...”
-
-At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in. Pierre with the baby
-on his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries. But
-in spite of much that was interesting and had to be discussed, the baby
-with the little cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all his
-attention.
-
-“How sweet!” said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the baby.
-“Now, Nicholas,” she added, turning to her husband, “I can’t understand
-how it is you don’t see the charm of these delicious marvels.”
-
-“I don’t and can’t,” replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby. “A
-lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!”
-
-“And yet he’s such an affectionate father,” said Countess Mary,
-vindicating her husband, “but only after they are a year old or so...”
-
-“Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly,” said Natásha. “He says his hand is
-just made for a baby’s seat. Just look!”
-
-“Only not for this...” Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a laugh, and
-shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several perfectly
-distinct worlds which merged into one harmonious whole, though each
-retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the others. Every
-event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house was important to all
-these worlds, but each had its own special reasons to rejoice or grieve
-over that occurrence independently of the others.
-
-For instance, Pierre’s return was a joyful and important event and they
-all felt it to be so.
-
-The servants—the most reliable judges of their masters because they
-judge not by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their
-acts and way of life—were glad of Pierre’s return because they knew that
-when he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day to attend
-to the estate, and would be in better spirits and temper, and also
-because they would all receive handsome presents for the holidays.
-
-The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre’s return because
-no one else drew them into the social life of the household as he did.
-He alone could play on the clavichord that écossaise (his only piece)
-to which, as he said, all possible dances could be danced, and they felt
-sure he had brought presents for them all.
-
-Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent,
-with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted because
-Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his rapturous and
-passionate affection. No one had instilled into him this love for Pierre
-whom he saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had brought him up
-had done her utmost to make him love her husband as she loved him, and
-little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him with just a shade of
-contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did not want to be an hussar or
-a Knight of St. George like his uncle Nicholas; he wanted to be learned,
-wise, and kind like Pierre. In Pierre’s presence his face always shone
-with pleasure and he flushed and was breathless when Pierre spoke to
-him. He did not miss a single word he uttered, and would afterwards,
-with Dessalles or by himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of
-everything Pierre had said. Pierre’s past life and his unhappiness prior
-to 1812 (of which young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture from
-some words he had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity,
-Platón Karatáev (of whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natásha
-(of whom the lad was also particularly fond), and especially Pierre’s
-friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not remember—all this
-made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.
-
-From broken remarks about Natásha and his father, from the emotion with
-which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful, reverent
-tenderness with which Natásha spoke of him, the boy, who was only just
-beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that his father had
-loved Natásha and when dying had left her to his friend. But the father
-whom the boy did not remember appeared to him a divinity who could not
-be pictured, and of whom he never thought without a swelling heart and
-tears of sadness and rapture. So the boy also was happy that Pierre had
-arrived.
-
-The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and unite
-any company he was in.
-
-The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were
-pleased to have back a friend whose presence made life run more smoothly
-and peacefully.
-
-The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and
-especially that Natásha would now be herself again.
-
-Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and made
-haste to satisfy all their expectations.
-
-Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the aid
-of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not forgetting
-his mother—and brother-in-law’s commissions, nor the dress material for
-a present to Belóva, nor toys for his wife’s nephews. In the early days
-of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that his wife should expect
-him not to forget to procure all the things he undertook to buy, and he
-had been taken aback by her serious annoyance when on his first trip he
-forgot everything. But in time he grew used to this demand. Knowing that
-Natásha asked nothing for herself, and gave him commissions for others
-only when he himself had offered to undertake them, he now found an
-unexpected and childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for
-everyone in the house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred
-Natásha’s censure it was only for buying too many and too expensive
-things. To her other defects (as most people thought them, but which
-to Pierre were qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now
-added stinginess.
-
-From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing
-entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he
-spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs—which had been
-in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife’s debts—had begun
-to improve.
-
-Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive
-luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no
-longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt that his way of life had now
-been settled once for all till death and that to change it was not in
-his power, and so that way of life proved economical.
-
-With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.
-
-“What do you think of this?” said he, unrolling a piece of stuff like a
-shopman.
-
-Natásha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on her
-lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the things he
-showed her.
-
-“That’s for Belóva? Excellent!” She felt the quality of the material.
-“It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?”
-
-Pierre told her the price.
-
-“Too dear!” Natásha remarked. “How pleased the children will be and
-Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this,” she added, unable to
-suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb set with pearls,
-of a kind then just coming into fashion.
-
-“Adèle tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it,” returned Pierre.
-
-“When am I to wear it?” and Natásha stuck it in her coil of hair. “When
-I take little Másha into society? Perhaps they will be fashionable again
-by then. Well, let’s go now.”
-
-And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and then to
-the old countess’ rooms.
-
-The countess was sitting with her companion Belóva, playing
-grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natásha came into the drawing
-room with parcels under their arms.
-
-The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with a
-frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper lip
-had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.
-
-After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession, she
-felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left
-without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or kept
-awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She wanted
-nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity only death
-could give her. But until death came she had to go on living, that is,
-to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in very young children
-and very old people was particularly evident in her. Her life had
-no external aims—only a need to exercise her various functions and
-inclinations was apparent. She had to eat, sleep, think, speak, weep,
-work, give vent to her anger, and so on, merely because she had a
-stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a liver. She did these things not
-under any external impulse as people in the full vigor of life do,
-when behind the purpose for which they strive that of exercising their
-functions remains unnoticed. She talked only because she physically
-needed to exercise her tongue and lungs. She cried as a child does,
-because her nose had to be cleared, and so on. What for people in their
-full vigor is an aim was for her evidently merely a pretext.
-
-Thus in the morning—especially if she had eaten anything rich the day
-before—she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the handiest
-pretext Belóva’s deafness.
-
-She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other end
-of the room.
-
-“It seems a little warmer today, my dear,” she would murmur.
-
-And when Belóva replied: “Oh yes, they’ve come,” she would mutter
-angrily: “O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!”
-
-Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or too damp
-or not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability her face
-would grow yellow, and her maids knew by infallible symptoms when Belóva
-would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the countess’ face yellow. Just
-as she needed to work off her spleen so she had sometimes to exercise
-her still-existing faculty of thinking—and the pretext for that was a
-game of patience. When she needed to cry, the deceased count would be
-the pretext. When she wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health
-would be the pretext, and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the
-pretext would be Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed exercise,
-which was usually toward seven o’clock when she had had an after-dinner
-rest in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same
-stories over and over again to the same audience.
-
-The old lady’s condition was understood by the whole household though no
-one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible effort to satisfy
-her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a sad smile
-between Nicholas, Pierre, Natásha, and Countess Mary was the common
-understanding of her condition expressed.
-
-But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had
-played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole self,
-that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to yield to
-her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being formerly as
-full of life as themselves, but now so much to be pitied. “Memento
-mori,” said these glances.
-
-Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and the
-little children failed to understand this and avoided her.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the countess was in
-one of her customary states in which she needed the mental exertion of
-playing patience, and so—though by force of habit she greeted him with
-the words she always used when Pierre or her son returned after an
-absence: “High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of waiting
-for you. Well, thank God!” and received her presents with another
-customary remark: “It’s not the gift that’s precious, my dear, but that
-you give it to me, an old woman...”—yet it was evident that she was
-not pleased by Pierre’s arrival at that moment when it diverted her
-attention from the unfinished game.
-
-She finished her game of patience and only then examined the presents.
-They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid workmanship, a
-bright-blue Sèvres tea cup with shepherdesses depicted on it and with
-a lid, and a gold snuffbox with the count’s portrait on the lid which
-Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in Petersburg. The countess had
-long wished for such a box, but as she did not want to cry just then she
-glanced indifferently at the portrait and gave her attention chiefly to
-the box for cards.
-
-“Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up,” said she as she always
-did. “But best of all you have brought yourself back—for I never saw
-anything like it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are we
-to do with her? She is like a mad woman when you are away. Doesn’t see
-anything, doesn’t remember anything,” she went on, repeating her usual
-phrases. “Look, Anna Timoféevna,” she added to her companion, “see what
-a box for cards my son has brought us!”
-
-Belóva admired the presents and was delighted with her dress material.
-
-Though Pierre, Natásha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denísov had much to
-talk about that they could not discuss before the old countess—not
-that anything was hidden from her, but because she had dropped so
-far behindhand in many things that had they begun to converse in her
-presence they would have had to answer inopportune questions and to
-repeat what they had already told her many times: that so-and-so was
-dead and so-and-so was married, which she would again be unable to
-remember—yet they sat at tea round the samovar in the drawing room from
-habit, and Pierre answered the countess’ questions as to whether Prince
-Vasíli had aged and whether Countess Mary Alexéevna had sent greetings
-and still thought of them, and other matters that interested no one and
-to which she herself was indifferent.
-
-Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable,
-continued all through teatime. All the grown-up members of the family
-were assembled near the round tea table at which Sónya presided beside
-the samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses had had
-tea and their voices were audible from the next room. At tea all sat
-in their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the stove at a small table
-where his tea was handed to him; Mílka, the old gray borzoi bitch
-(daughter of the first Mílka), with a quite gray face and large black
-eyes that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the armchair beside
-him; Denísov, whose curly hair, mustache, and whiskers had turned half
-gray, sat beside countess Mary with his general’s tunic unbuttoned;
-Pierre sat between his wife and the old countess. He spoke of what he
-knew might interest the old lady and that she could understand. He
-told her of external social events and of the people who had formed
-the circle of her contemporaries and had once been a real, living, and
-distinct group, but who were now for the most part scattered about the
-world and like herself were garnering the last ears of the harvests they
-had sown in earlier years. But to the old countess those contemporaries
-of hers seemed to be the only serious and real society. Natásha saw by
-Pierre’s animation that his visit had been interesting and that he had
-much to tell them but dare not say it before the old countess. Denísov,
-not being a member of the family, did not understand Pierre’s caution
-and being, as a malcontent, much interested in what was occurring in
-Petersburg, kept urging Pierre to tell them about what had happened in
-the Semënovsk regiment, then about Arakchéev, and then about the Bible
-Society. Once or twice Pierre was carried away and began to speak of
-these things, but Nicholas and Natásha always brought him back to the
-health of Prince Iván and Countess Mary Alexéevna.
-
-“Well, and all this idiocy—Gossner and Tatáwinova?” Denísov asked. “Is
-that weally still going on?”
-
-“Going on?” Pierre exclaimed. “Why more than ever! The Bible Society is
-the whole government now!”
-
-“What is that, mon cher ami?” asked the countess, who had finished her
-tea and evidently needed a pretext for being angry after her meal. “What
-are you saying about the government? I don’t understand.”
-
-“Well, you know, Maman,” Nicholas interposed, knowing how to translate
-things into his mother’s language, “Prince Alexander Golítsyn has
-founded a society and in consequence has great influence, they say.”
-
-“Arakchéev and Golítsyn,” incautiously remarked Pierre, “are now the
-whole government! And what a government! They see treason everywhere and
-are afraid of everything.”
-
-“Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a most estimable
-man. I used to meet him at Mary Antónovna’s,” said the countess in an
-offended tone; and still more offended that they all remained silent,
-she went on: “Nowadays everyone finds fault. A Gospel Society! Well, and
-what harm is there in that?” and she rose (everybody else got up too)
-and with a severe expression sailed back to her table in the sitting
-room.
-
-The melancholy silence that followed was broken by the sounds of the
-children’s voices and laughter from the next room. Evidently some jolly
-excitement was going on there.
-
-“Finished, finished!” little Natásha’s gleeful yell rose above them all.
-
-Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natásha he
-never lost sight of) and smiled happily.
-
-“That’s delightful music!” said he.
-
-“It means that Anna Makárovna has finished her stocking,” said Countess
-Mary.
-
-“Oh, I’ll go and see,” said Pierre, jumping up. “You know,” he added,
-stopping at the door, “why I’m especially fond of that music? It is
-always the first thing that tells me all is well. When I was driving
-here today, the nearer I got to the house the more anxious I grew. As I
-entered the anteroom I heard Andrúsha’s peals of laughter and that meant
-that all was well.”
-
-“I know! I know that feeling,” said Nicholas. “But I mustn’t go
-there—those stockings are to be a surprise for me.”
-
-Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and laughter grew still
-louder.
-
-“Come, Anna Makárovna,” Pierre’s voice was heard saying, “come here into
-the middle of the room and at the word of command, ‘One, two,’ and
-when I say ‘three’... You stand here, and you in my arms—well now! One,
-two!...” said Pierre, and a silence followed: “three!” and a rapturously
-breathless cry of children’s voices filled the room. “Two, two!” they
-shouted.
-
-This meant two stockings, which by a secret process known only to
-herself Anna Makárovna used to knit at the same time on the same
-needles, and which, when they were ready, she always triumphantly drew,
-one out of the other, in the children’s presence.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-Soon after this the children came in to say good night. They kissed
-everyone, the tutors and governesses made their bows, and they went out.
-Only young Nicholas and his tutor remained. Dessalles whispered to the
-boy to come downstairs.
-
-“No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me stay,” replied
-Nicholas Bolkónski also in a whisper.
-
-“Ma tante, please let me stay,” said he, going up to his aunt.
-
-His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy. Countess Mary
-glanced at him and turned to Pierre.
-
-“When you are here he can’t tear himself away,” she said.
-
-“I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles. Good night!”
-said Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned to young
-Nicholas with a smile. “You and I haven’t seen anything of one another
-yet.... How like he is growing, Mary!” he added, addressing Countess
-Mary.
-
-“Like my father?” asked the boy, flushing crimson and looking up at
-Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes.
-
-Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the
-children had interrupted. Countess Mary sat down doing woolwork; Natásha
-did not take her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denísov rose, asked
-for their pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from Sónya—who sat weary
-but resolute at the samovar—and questioned Pierre. The curly-headed,
-delicate boy sat with shining eyes unnoticed in a corner, starting
-every now and then and muttering something to himself, and evidently
-experiencing a new and powerful emotion as he turned his curly head,
-with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down collar, toward the place
-where Pierre sat.
-
-The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip about those in power,
-in which most people see the chief interest of home politics. Denísov,
-dissatisfied with the government on account of his own disappointments
-in the service, heard with pleasure of the things done in Petersburg
-which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and sharp comments on what
-Pierre told them.
-
-“One used to have to be a German—now one must dance with Tatáwinova
-and Madame Kwüdener, and wead Ecka’tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they
-should let that fine fellow Bonaparte loose—he’d knock all this nonsense
-out of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semënov wegiment to a
-fellow like that Schwa’tz!” he cried.
-
-Nicholas, though free from Denísov’s readiness to find fault with
-everything, also thought that discussion of the government was a very
-serious and weighty matter, and the fact that A had been appointed
-Minister of This and B Governor General of That, and that the Emperor
-had said so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, seemed to him very
-important. And so he thought it necessary to take an interest in these
-things and to question Pierre. The questions put by these two kept the
-conversation from changing its ordinary character of gossip about the
-higher government circles.
-
-But Natásha, knowing all her husband’s ways and ideas, saw that he had
-long been wishing but had been unable to divert the conversation to
-another channel and express his own deeply felt idea for the sake of
-which he had gone to Petersburg to consult with his new friend Prince
-Theodore, and she helped him by asking how his affairs with Prince
-Theodore had gone.
-
-“What was it about?” asked Nicholas.
-
-“Always the same thing,” said Pierre, looking round at his listeners.
-“Everybody sees that things are going so badly that they cannot be
-allowed to go on so and that it is the duty of all decent men to
-counteract it as far as they can.”
-
-“What can decent men do?” Nicholas inquired, frowning slightly. “What
-can be done?”
-
-“Why, this...”
-
-“Come into my study,” said Nicholas.
-
-Natásha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse her baby, now
-heard the nurse calling her and went to the nursery. Countess Mary
-followed her. The men went into the study and little Nicholas Bolkónski
-followed them unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the writing table
-in a shady corner by the window.
-
-“Well, what would you do?” asked Denísov.
-
-“Always some fantastic schemes,” said Nicholas.
-
-“Why this,” began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing the room,
-sometimes stopping short, gesticulating, and lisping: “the position
-in Petersburg is this: the Emperor does not look into anything. He
-has abandoned himself altogether to this mysticism” (Pierre could not
-tolerate mysticism in anyone now). “He seeks only for peace, and only
-these people sans foi ni loi * can give it him—people who recklessly
-hack at and strangle everything—Magnítski, Arakchéev, and tutti
-quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after your estates
-yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your steward was the
-more readily your object might be attained,” he said to Nicholas.
-
- * Without faith or law.
-
-“Well, what does that lead up to?” said Nicholas.
-
-“Well, everything is going to ruin! Robbery in the law courts, in the
-army nothing but flogging, drilling, and Military Settlements; the
-people are tortured, enlightenment is suppressed. All that is young and
-honest is crushed! Everyone sees that this cannot go on. Everything is
-strained to such a degree that it will certainly break,” said Pierre (as
-those who examine the actions of any government have always said since
-governments began). “I told them just one thing in Petersburg.”
-
-“Told whom?”
-
-“Well, you know whom,” said Pierre, with a meaning glance from under
-his brows. “Prince Theodore and all those. To encourage culture and
-philanthropy is all very well of course. The aim is excellent but in the
-present circumstances something else is needed.”
-
-At that moment Nicholas noticed the presence of his nephew. His face
-darkened and he went up to the boy.
-
-“Why are you here?”
-
-“Why? Let him be,” said Pierre, taking Nicholas by the arm and
-continuing. “That is not enough, I told them. Something else is needed.
-When you stand expecting the overstrained string to snap at any moment,
-when everyone is expecting the inevitable catastrophe, as many as
-possible must join hands as closely as they can to withstand the general
-calamity. Everything that is young and strong is being enticed away and
-depraved. One is lured by women, another by honors, a third by ambition
-or money, and they go over to that camp. No independent men, such as you
-or I, are left. What I say is widen the scope of our society, let the
-mot d’ordre be not virtue alone but independence and action as well!”
-
-Nicholas, who had left his nephew, irritably pushed up an armchair, sat
-down in it, and listened to Pierre, coughing discontentedly and frowning
-more and more.
-
-“But action with what aim?” he cried. “And what position will you adopt
-toward the government?”
-
-“Why, the position of assistants. The society need not be secret if the
-government allows it. Not merely is it not hostile to government, but
-it is a society of true conservatives—a society of gentlemen in the full
-meaning of that word. It is only to prevent some Pugachëv or other from
-killing my children and yours, and Arakchéev from sending me off to some
-Military Settlement. We join hands only for the public welfare and the
-general safety.”
-
-“Yes, but it’s a secret society and therefore a hostile and harmful one
-which can only cause harm.”
-
-“Why? Did the Tugendbund which saved Europe” (they did not then venture
-to suggest that Russia had saved Europe) “do any harm? The Tugendbund
-is an alliance of virtue: it is love, mutual help... it is what Christ
-preached on the Cross.”
-
-Natásha, who had come in during the conversation, looked joyfully at
-her husband. It was not what he was saying that pleased her—that did not
-even interest her, for it seemed to her that was all extremely simple
-and that she had known it a long time (it seemed so to her because she
-knew that it sprang from Pierre’s whole soul), but it was his animated
-and enthusiastic appearance that made her glad.
-
-The boy with the thin neck stretching out from the turn-down collar—whom
-everyone had forgotten—gazed at Pierre with even greater and more
-rapturous joy. Every word of Pierre’s burned into his heart, and with a
-nervous movement of his fingers he unconsciously broke the sealing wax
-and quill pens his hands came upon on his uncle’s table.
-
-“It is not at all what you suppose; but that is what the German
-Tugendbund was, and what I am proposing.”
-
-“No, my fwiend! The Tugendbund is all vewy well for the sausage eaters,
-but I don’t understand it and can’t even pwonounce it,” interposed
-Denísov in a loud and resolute voice. “I agwee that evewything here is
-wotten and howwible, but the Tugendbund I don’t understand. If we’re
-not satisfied, let us have a bunt of our own. That’s all wight. Je suis
-vot’e homme!” *
-
- * “I’m your man.”
-
-
-Pierre smiled, Natásha began to laugh, but Nicholas knitted his brows
-still more and began proving to Pierre that there was no prospect of
-any great change and that all the danger he spoke of existed only in his
-imagination. Pierre maintained the contrary, and as his mental faculties
-were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas felt himself cornered. This
-made him still angrier, for he was fully convinced, not by reasoning
-but by something within him stronger than reason, of the justice of his
-opinion.
-
-“I will tell you this,” he said, rising and trying with nervously
-twitching fingers to prop up his pipe in a corner, but finally
-abandoning the attempt. “I can’t prove it to you. You say that
-everything here is rotten and that an overthrow is coming: I don’t
-see it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance is a conditional
-matter, and to that I reply: ‘You are my best friend, as you know,
-but if you formed a secret society and began working against the
-government—be it what it may—I know it is my duty to obey the
-government. And if Arakchéev ordered me to lead a squadron against you
-and cut you down, I should not hesitate an instant, but should do it.’
-And you may argue about that as you like!”
-
-An awkward silence followed these words. Natásha was the first to speak,
-defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defense was weak
-and inapt but she attained her object. The conversation was resumed, and
-no longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone of Nicholas’ last remark.
-
-When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas Bolkónski went
-up to Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes.
-
-“Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he agree with
-you?” he asked.
-
-And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex, and
-powerful process of thought and feeling must have been going on in
-this boy during that conversation, and remembering all he had said he
-regretted that the lad should have heard him. He had, however, to give
-him an answer.
-
-“Yes, I think so,” he said reluctantly, and left the study.
-
-The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time to notice what he
-had done to the things on the table. He flushed and went up to Nicholas.
-
-“Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally,” he said, pointing to
-the broken sealing wax and pens.
-
-Nicholas started angrily.
-
-“All right, all right,” he said, throwing the bits under the table.
-
-And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty, he turned away
-from the boy.
-
-“You ought not to have been here at all,” he said.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies, but
-turned on the subject Nicholas liked best—recollections of 1812. Denísov
-started these and Pierre was particularly agreeable and amusing about
-them. The family separated on the most friendly terms.
-
-After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given
-instructions to the steward who had been waiting for him, went to the
-bedroom in his dressing gown, where he found his wife still at her
-table, writing.
-
-“What are you writing, Mary?” Nicholas asked.
-
-Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she was writing would
-not be understood or approved by her husband.
-
-She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from him, but at the same
-time was glad he had surprised her at it and that she would now have to
-tell him.
-
-“A diary, Nicholas,” she replied, handing him a blue exercise book
-filled with her firm, bold writing.
-
-“A diary?” Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he took up the
-book.
-
-It was in French.
-
-
-December 4. Today when Andrúsha (her eldest boy) woke up he did not
-wish to dress and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was naughty and
-obstinate. I tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then I took the
-matter in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse’s help to get the
-other children up, telling him that I did not love him. For a long time
-he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped out of bed, ran to me in
-his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not calm him for a long time.
-It was plain that what troubled him most was that he had grieved me.
-Afterwards in the evening when I gave him his ticket, he again began
-crying piteously and kissing me. One can do anything with him by
-tenderness.
-
-
-“What is a ‘ticket’?” Nicholas inquired.
-
-“I have begun giving the elder ones marks every evening, showing how
-they have behaved.”
-
-Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing at him, and
-continued to turn over the pages and read. In the diary was set down
-everything in the children’s lives that seemed noteworthy to their
-mother as showing their characters or suggesting general reflections
-on educational methods. They were for the most part quite insignificant
-trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or to the father either, now
-that he read this diary about his children for the first time.
-
-Under the date “5” was entered:
-
-
-Mítya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding. He had
-none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others while they were
-eating! I think that punishment by depriving children of sweets only
-develops their greediness. Must tell Nicholas this.
-
-Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant eyes
-gazed at him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her
-diary? There could be no doubt not only of his approval but also of his
-admiration for his wife.
-
-Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or even
-done at all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of which the
-sole aim was the children’s moral welfare delighted him. Had Nicholas
-been able to analyze his feelings he would have found that his steady,
-tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling of wonder at
-her spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost beyond his reach,
-in which she had her being.
-
-He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own
-insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the
-more that she with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part of
-himself.
-
-“I quite, quite approve, my dearest!” said he with a significant look,
-and after a short pause he added: “And I behaved badly today. You
-weren’t in the study. We began disputing—Pierre and I—and I lost my
-temper. But he is impossible: such a child! I don’t know what would
-become of him if Natásha didn’t keep him in hand.... Have you any idea
-why he went to Petersburg? They have formed...”
-
-“Yes, I know,” said Countess Mary. “Natásha told me.”
-
-“Well, then, you know,” Nicholas went on, growing hot at the mere
-recollection of their discussion, “he wanted to convince me that it is
-every honest man’s duty to go against the government, and that the oath
-of allegiance and duty... I am sorry you weren’t there. They all fell on
-me—Denísov and Natásha... Natásha is absurd. How she rules over him! And
-yet there need only be a discussion and she has no words of her own
-but only repeats his sayings...” added Nicholas, yielding to that
-irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge those nearest and
-dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying about Natásha could
-have been applied word for word to himself in relation to his wife.
-
-“Yes, I have noticed that,” said Countess Mary.
-
-“When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he
-started proving goodness knows what! A pity you were not there—what
-would you have said?”
-
-“As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natásha so. Pierre says
-everybody is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that it
-is our duty to help our neighbor. Of course he is right there,” said
-Countess Mary, “but he forgets that we have other duties nearer to us,
-duties indicated to us by God Himself, and that though we might expose
-ourselves to risks we must not risk our children.”
-
-“Yes, that’s it! That’s just what I said to him,” put in Nicholas, who
-fancied he really had said it. “But they insisted on their own view:
-love of one’s neighbor and Christianity—and all this in the presence of
-young Nicholas, who had gone into my study and broke all my things.”
-
-“Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about little Nicholas,”
-said Countess Mary. “He is such an exceptional boy. I am afraid I
-neglect him in favor of my own: we all have children and relations while
-he has no one. He is constantly alone with his thoughts.”
-
-“Well, I don’t think you need reproach yourself on his account. All that
-the fondest mother could do for her son you have done and are doing for
-him, and of course I am glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine lad! This
-evening he listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and fancy—as we were
-going in to supper I looked and he had broken everything on my table to
-bits, and he told me of it himself at once! I never knew him to tell an
-untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!” repeated Nicholas, who at heart was
-not fond of Nicholas Bolkónski but was always anxious to recognize that
-he was a fine lad.
-
-“Still, I am not the same as his own mother,” said Countess Mary. “I
-feel I am not the same and it troubles me. A wonderful boy, but I am
-dreadfully afraid for him. It would be good for him to have companions.”
-
-“Well it won’t be for long. Next summer I’ll take him to Petersburg,”
-said Nicholas. “Yes, Pierre always was a dreamer and always will be,”
-he continued, returning to the talk in the study which had evidently
-disturbed him. “Well, what business is it of mine what goes on
-there—whether Arakchéev is bad, and all that? What business was it of
-mine when I married and was so deep in debt that I was threatened with
-prison, and had a mother who could not see or understand it? And
-then there are you and the children and our affairs. Is it for my own
-pleasure that I am at the farm or in the office from morning to night?
-No, but I know I must work to comfort my mother, to repay you, and not
-to leave the children such beggars as I was.”
-
-Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not live by bread alone
-and that he attached too much importance to these matters. But she knew
-she must not say this and that it would be useless to do so. She only
-took his hand and kissed it. He took this as a sign of approval and
-a confirmation of his thoughts, and after a few minutes’ reflection
-continued to think aloud.
-
-“You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofánych” (this was his overseer) “came
-back from the Tambóv estate and told me they are already offering eighty
-thousand rubles for the forest.”
-
-And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the possibility of
-repurchasing Otrádnoe before long, and added: “Another ten years of life
-and I shall leave the children... in an excellent position.”
-
-Countess Mary listened to her husband and understood all that he told
-her. She knew that when he thought aloud in this way he would sometimes
-ask her what he had been saying, and be vexed if he noticed that she
-had been thinking about something else. But she had to force herself to
-attend, for what he was saying did not interest her at all. She looked
-at him and did not think, but felt, about something different. She felt
-a submissive tender love for this man who would never understand all
-that she understood, and this seemed to make her love for him still
-stronger and added a touch of passionate tenderness. Besides this
-feeling which absorbed her altogether and hindered her from following
-the details of her husband’s plans, thoughts that had no connection with
-what he was saying flitted through her mind. She thought of her nephew.
-Her husband’s account of the boy’s agitation while Pierre was speaking
-struck her forcibly, and various traits of his gentle, sensitive
-character recurred to her mind; and while thinking of her nephew she
-thought also of her own children. She did not compare them with him, but
-compared her feeling for them with her feeling for him, and felt
-with regret that there was something lacking in her feeling for young
-Nicholas.
-
-Sometimes it seemed to her that this difference arose from the
-difference in their ages, but she felt herself to blame toward him and
-promised in her heart to do better and to accomplish the impossible—in
-this life to love her husband, her children, little Nicholas, and all
-her neighbors, as Christ loved mankind. Countess Mary’s soul always
-strove toward the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute, and could
-therefore never be at peace. A stern expression of the lofty, secret
-suffering of a soul burdened by the body appeared on her face. Nicholas
-gazed at her. “O God! What will become of us if she dies, as I always
-fear when her face is like that?” thought he, and placing himself before
-the icon he began to say his evening prayers.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-Natásha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only a husband
-and wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity,
-understanding and expressing each other’s thoughts in ways contrary to
-all rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions, and in
-a quite peculiar way. Natásha was so used to this kind of talk with her
-husband that for her it was the surest sign of something being wrong
-between them if Pierre followed a line of logical reasoning. When he
-began proving anything, or talking argumentatively and calmly and she,
-led on by his example, began to do the same, she knew that they were on
-the verge of a quarrel.
-
-From the moment they were alone and Natásha came up to him with
-wide-open happy eyes, and quickly seizing his head pressed it to her
-bosom, saying: “Now you are all mine, mine! You won’t escape!”—from that
-moment this conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic and
-contrary to them because quite different subjects were talked about at
-one and the same time. This simultaneous discussion of many topics did
-not prevent a clear understanding but on the contrary was the surest
-sign that they fully understood one another.
-
-Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning, and
-contradictory, except the feeling that guides the dream, so in this
-intercourse contrary to all laws of reason, the words themselves were
-not consecutive and clear but only the feeling that prompted them.
-
-Natásha spoke to Pierre about her brother’s life and doings, of how she
-had suffered and lacked life during his own absence, and of how she
-was fonder than ever of Mary, and how Mary was in every way better than
-herself. In saying this Natásha was sincere in acknowledging Mary’s
-superiority, but at the same time by saying it she made a demand on
-Pierre that he should, all the same, prefer her to Mary and to all
-other women, and that now, especially after having seen many women in
-Petersburg, he should tell her so afresh.
-
-Pierre, answering Natásha’s words, told her how intolerable it had been
-for him to meet ladies at dinners and balls in Petersburg.
-
-“I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies,” he said. “It was
-simply dull. Besides, I was very busy.”
-
-Natásha looked intently at him and went on:
-
-“Mary is so splendid,” she said. “How she understands children! It is as
-if she saw straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance, Mítya was
-naughty...”
-
-“How like his father he is,” Pierre interjected.
-
-Natásha knew why he mentioned Mítya’s likeness to Nicholas: the
-recollection of his dispute with his brother-in-law was unpleasant and
-he wanted to know what Natásha thought of it.
-
-“Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with anything not generally
-accepted. But I understand that you value what opens up a fresh line,”
-said she, repeating words Pierre had once uttered.
-
-“No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and discussions are
-an amusement—almost a pastime,” said Pierre. “For instance, he is
-collecting a library and has made it a rule not to buy a new book
-till he has read what he had already bought—Sismondi and Rousseau and
-Montesquieu,” he added with a smile. “You know how much I...” he began
-to soften down what he had said; but Natásha interrupted him to show
-that this was unnecessary.
-
-“So you say ideas are an amusement to him....”
-
-“Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in Petersburg I
-saw everyone as in a dream. When I am taken up by a thought, all else is
-mere amusement.”
-
-“Ah, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you met the children,” said
-Natásha. “Which was most delighted? Lisa, I’m sure.”
-
-“Yes,” Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his mind. “Nicholas
-says we ought not to think. But I can’t help it. Besides, when I was in
-Petersburg I felt (I can say this to you) that the whole affair would go
-to pieces without me—everyone was pulling his own way. But I succeeded
-in uniting them all; and then my idea is so clear and simple. You see,
-I don’t say that we ought to oppose this and that. We may be mistaken.
-What I say is: ‘Join hands, you who love the right, and let there be but
-one banner—that of active virtue.’ Prince Sergéy is a fine fellow and
-clever.”
-
-Natásha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of Pierre’s idea,
-but one thing disconcerted her. “Can a man so important and necessary to
-society be also my husband? How did this happen?” She wished to express
-this doubt to him. “Now who could decide whether he is really cleverer
-than all the others?” she asked herself, and passed in review all those
-whom Pierre most respected. Judging by what he had said there was no one
-he had respected so highly as Platón Karatáev.
-
-“Do you know what I am thinking about?” she asked. “About Platón
-Karatáev. Would he have approved of you now, do you think?”
-
-Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He understood his
-wife’s line of thought.
-
-“Platón Karatáev?” he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely
-trying to imagine Karatáev’s opinion on the subject. “He would not have
-understood... yet perhaps he would.”
-
-“I love you awfully!” Natásha suddenly said. “Awfully, awfully!”
-
-“No, he would not have approved,” said Pierre, after reflection. “What
-he would have approved of is our family life. He was always so anxious
-to find seemliness, happiness, and peace in everything, and I should
-have been proud to let him see us. There now—you talk of my absence,
-but you wouldn’t believe what a special feeling I have for you after a
-separation....”
-
-“Yes, I should think...” Natásha began.
-
-“No, it’s not that. I never leave off loving you. And one couldn’t love
-more, but this is something special.... Yes, of course—” he did not
-finish because their eyes meeting said the rest.
-
-“What nonsense it is,” Natásha suddenly exclaimed, “about honeymoons,
-and that the greatest happiness is at first! On the contrary, now is
-the best of all. If only you did not go away! Do you remember how
-we quarreled? And it was always my fault. Always mine. And what we
-quarreled about—I don’t even remember!”
-
-“Always about the same thing,” said Pierre with a smile. “Jealo...”
-
-“Don’t say it! I can’t bear it!” Natásha cried, and her eyes glittered
-coldly and vindictively. “Did you see her?” she added, after a pause.
-
-“No, and if I had I shouldn’t have recognized her.”
-
-They were silent for a while.
-
-“Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the study I was looking at
-you,” Natásha began, evidently anxious to disperse the cloud that had
-come over them. “You are as like him as two peas—like the boy.” (She
-meant her little son.) “Oh, it’s time to go to him.... The milk’s
-come.... But I’m sorry to leave you.”
-
-They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly turning to one
-another at the same time they both began to speak. Pierre began with
-self-satisfaction and enthusiasm, Natásha with a quiet, happy smile.
-Having interrupted one another they both stopped to let the other
-continue.
-
-“No. What did you say? Go on, go on.”
-
-“No, you go on, I was talking nonsense,” said Natásha.
-
-Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to his complacent
-reflections on his success in Petersburg. At that moment it seemed to
-him that he was chosen to give a new direction to the whole of Russian
-society and to the whole world.
-
-“I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are always
-simple ones. My whole idea is that if vicious people are united and
-constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same. Now that’s simple
-enough.”
-
-“Yes.”
-
-“And what were you going to say?”
-
-“I? Only nonsense.”
-
-“But all the same?”
-
-“Oh nothing, only a trifle,” said Natásha, smiling still more brightly.
-“I only wanted to tell you about Pétya: today nurse was coming to take
-him from me, and he laughed, shut his eyes, and clung to me. I’m sure
-he thought he was hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now he’s crying. Well,
-good-by!” and she left the room.
-
-
-Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkónski’s bedroom a little lamp
-was burning as usual. (The boy was afraid of the dark and they could
-not cure him of it.) Dessalles slept propped up on four pillows and his
-Roman nose emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring. Little Nicholas, who had
-just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat up in bed and gazed before him
-with wide-open eyes. He had awaked from a terrible dream. He had dreamed
-that he and Uncle Pierre, wearing helmets such as were depicted in
-his Plutarch, were leading a huge army. The army was made up of white
-slanting lines that filled the air like the cobwebs that float about in
-autumn and which Dessalles called les fils de la Vièrge. In front was
-Glory, which was similar to those threads but rather thicker. He and
-Pierre were borne along lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer to their
-goal. Suddenly the threads that moved them began to slacken and become
-entangled and it grew difficult to move. And Uncle Nicholas stood before
-them in a stern and threatening attitude.
-
-“Have you done this?” he said, pointing to some broken sealing wax and
-pens. “I loved you, but I have orders from Arakchéev and will kill
-the first of you who moves forward.” Little Nicholas turned to look
-at Pierre but Pierre was no longer there. In his place was his
-father—Prince Andrew—and his father had neither shape nor form, but he
-existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with love:
-he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father caressed and
-pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer and nearer to them. Terror
-seized young Nicholas and he awoke.
-
-“My father!” he thought. (Though there were two good portraits of Prince
-Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human form.) “My
-father has been with me and caressed me. He approved of me and of Uncle
-Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it. Mucius Scaevola burned
-his hand. Why should not the same sort of thing happen to me? I know
-they want me to learn. And I will learn. But someday I shall have
-finished learning, and then I will do something. I only pray God that
-something may happen to me such as happened to Plutarch’s men, and I
-will act as they did. I will do better. Everyone shall know me, love me,
-and be delighted with me!” And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and
-he began to cry.
-
-“Are you ill?” he heard Dessalles’ voice asking.
-
-“No,” answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.
-
-“He is good and kind and I am fond of him!” he thought of Dessalles.
-“But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father? Oh,
-Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he would be
-satisfied....”
-
-
-
-
-
-SECOND EPILOGUE
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into
-words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single
-nation, appears impossible.
-
-The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to describe
-and seize the apparently elusive—the life of a people. They described
-the activity of individuals who ruled the people, and regarded the
-activity of those men as representing the activity of the whole nation.
-
-The question: how did individuals make nations act as they wished and by
-what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the ancients
-met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations to the will of
-a chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so as to accomplish
-ends that were predestined.
-
-For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in the direct
-participation of the Deity in human affairs.
-
-Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.
-
-It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in man’s
-subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward which nations
-are led, modern history should study not the manifestations of power but
-the causes that produce it. But modern history has not done this. Having
-in theory rejected the view held by the ancients, it still follows them
-in practice.
-
-Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided by
-the will of God, modern history has given us either heroes endowed with
-extraordinary, superhuman capacities, or simply men of very various
-kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses. Instead of the
-former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations,
-which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of
-humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims—the welfare of the
-French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the
-welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually
-meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a
-large continent.
-
-Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without
-replacing them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has
-obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the divine
-authority of the kings and the “fate” of the ancients, to reach the same
-conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations guided
-by individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to which these
-nations and humanity at large are tending.
-
-At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon to
-Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent novelty of
-their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.
-
-In the first place the historian describes the activity of individuals
-who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian considers
-only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men, while another
-includes also orators, learned men, reformers, philosophers, and poets).
-Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward which humanity is being led
-is known to the historians: to one of them this goal is the greatness of
-the Roman, Spanish, or French realm; to another it is liberty, equality,
-and a certain kind of civilization of a small corner of the world called
-Europe.
-
-In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is expressed
-by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it moves
-eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east westward.
-In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with remarkable
-symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west, attracting to
-it, as the first movement had done, the nations of middle Europe. The
-counter movement reaches the starting point of the first movement in the
-west—Paris—and subsides.
-
-During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left
-untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions
-of men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions
-of Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one
-another.
-
-What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people burn
-houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these events?
-What force made men act so? These are the instinctive, plain, and
-most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it encounters the
-monuments and tradition of that period.
-
-For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns to the
-science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity to know
-themselves.
-
-If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have
-said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and
-directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that reply
-would have been clear and complete. One might believe or disbelieve
-in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone believing in
-it there would have been nothing unintelligible in the history of that
-period, nor would there have been any contradictions.
-
-But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit the
-conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the Deity
-in human affairs, and therefore history ought to give other answers.
-
-Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know what
-this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced these
-events? Then listen:
-
-“Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such and such
-mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France badly. His
-descendants were weak men and they too ruled France badly. And they had
-such and such favorites and such and such mistresses. Moreover, certain
-men wrote some books at that time. At the end of the eighteenth century
-there were a couple of dozen men in Paris who began to talk about all
-men being free and equal. This caused people all over France to begin
-to slash at and drown one another. They killed the king and many other
-people. At that time there was in France a man of genius—Napoleon. He
-conquered everybody everywhere—that is, he killed many people because
-he was a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and
-killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he returned to
-France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all obeyed him. Having
-become an Emperor he again went out to kill people in Italy, Austria,
-and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. In Russia there
-was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and
-therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807 he suddenly made friends
-with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled and again began killing many
-people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand men into Russia and captured
-Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and the Emperor
-Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to
-arm against the disturber of its peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly
-became his enemies and their forces advanced against the fresh forces he
-raised. The Allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to
-abdicate, and sent him to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the
-title of Emperor and showing him every respect, though five years before
-and one year later they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand.
-Then Louis XVIII, who till then had been the laughingstock both of the
-French and the Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears
-before his Old Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then
-the skillful statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who
-managed to sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and
-thereby extended the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by
-these conversations made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the
-diplomatists and monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of
-again ordering their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon
-arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating
-him, immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were
-angry at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated
-the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent him
-to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the beloved
-France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that rock and
-bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a reaction
-occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress their
-subjects.”
-
-It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic—a caricature of the
-historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild expression of
-the contradictory replies, not meeting the questions, which all the
-historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the histories
-of separate states to the writers of general histories and the new
-histories of the culture of that period.
-
-The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact that
-modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked.
-
-If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of
-humanity and of the peoples, the first question—in the absence of a
-reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible—is: what is the
-power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies
-either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very
-proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.
-
-All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not
-what was asked. All that would be interesting if we recognized a divine
-power based on itself and always consistently directing its nations
-through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we do not acknowledge such
-a power, and therefore before speaking about Napoleons, Louis-es, and
-authors, we ought to be shown the connection existing between these men
-and the movement of the nations.
-
-If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it should
-be explained in what this new force consists, for the whole interest of
-history lies precisely in that force.
-
-History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to
-everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone
-reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new
-force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really
-quite well known to everybody.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-What force moves the nations?
-
-Biographical historians and historians of separate nations understand
-this force as a power inherent in heroes and rulers. In their narration
-events occur solely by the will of a Napoleon, and Alexander, or in
-general of the persons they describe. The answers given by this kind
-of historian to the question of what force causes events to happen are
-satisfactory only as long as there is but one historian to each event.
-As soon as historians of different nationalities and tendencies begin
-to describe the same event, the replies they give immediately lose all
-meaning, for this force is understood by them all not only differently
-but often in quite contradictory ways. One historian says that an
-event was produced by Napoleon’s power, another that it was produced by
-Alexander’s, a third that it was due to the power of some other person.
-Besides this, historians of that kind contradict each other even
-in their statement as to the force on which the authority of some
-particular person was based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that Napoleon’s
-power was based on his virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it
-was based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the historians
-of this class, by mutually destroying one another’s positions, destroy
-the understanding of the force which produces events, and furnish no
-reply to history’s essential question.
-
-Writers of universal history who deal with all the nations seem to
-recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians’ view of the force
-which produces events. They do not recognize it as a power inherent in
-heroes and rulers, but as the resultant of a multiplicity of variously
-directed forces. In describing a war or the subjugation of a people, a
-general historian looks for the cause of the event not in the power
-of one man, but in the interaction of many persons connected with the
-event.
-
-According to this view the power of historical personages, represented
-as the product of many forces, can no longer, it would seem, be regarded
-as a force that itself produces events. Yet in most cases universal
-historians still employ the conception of power as a force that itself
-produces events, and treat it as their cause. In their exposition, an
-historic character is first the product of his time, and his power only
-the resultant of various forces, and then his power is itself a force
-producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and others, for instance, at one
-time prove Napoleon to be a product of the Revolution, of the ideas of
-1789 and so forth, and at another plainly say that the campaign of 1812
-and other things they do not like were simply the product of Napoleon’s
-misdirected will, and that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested in their
-development by Napoleon’s caprice. The ideas of the Revolution and the
-general temper of the age produced Napoleon’s power. But Napoleon’s
-power suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of
-the age.
-
-This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only does it occur at
-every step, but the universal historians’ accounts are all made up of
-a chain of such contradictions. This contradiction occurs because after
-entering the field of analysis the universal historians stop halfway.
-
-To find component forces equal to the composite or resultant force, the
-sum of the components must equal the resultant. This condition is never
-observed by the universal historians, and so to explain the resultant
-forces they are obliged to admit, in addition to the insufficient
-components, another unexplained force affecting the resultant action.
-
-Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813 or the restoration
-of the Bourbons plainly assert that these events were produced by the
-will of Alexander. But the universal historian Gervinus, refuting this
-opinion of the specialist historian, tries to prove that the campaign of
-1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons were due to other things beside
-Alexander’s will—such as the activity of Stein, Metternich, Madame de
-Staël, Talleyrand, Fichte, Chateaubriand, and others. The historian
-evidently decomposes Alexander’s power into the components: Talleyrand,
-Chateaubriand, and the rest—but the sum of the components, that is,
-the interactions of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Staël, and the
-others, evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon
-of millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That Chateaubriand,
-Madame de Staël, and others spoke certain words to one another only
-affected their mutual relations but does not account for the submission
-of millions. And therefore to explain how from these relations of theirs
-the submission of millions of people resulted—that is, how component
-forces equal to one A gave a resultant equal to a thousand times A—the
-historian is again obliged to fall back on power—the force he had
-denied—and to recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that is, he
-has to admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And that is
-just what the universal historians do, and consequently they not only
-contradict the specialist historians but contradict themselves.
-
-Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according to
-whether they want rain or fine weather: “The wind has blown the clouds
-away,” or, “The wind has brought up the clouds.” And in the same way the
-universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them and fits in with
-their theory, say that power is the result of events, and sometimes,
-when they want to prove something else, say that power produces events.
-
-A third class of historians—the so-called historians of
-culture—following the path laid down by the universal historians who
-sometimes accept writers and ladies as forces producing events—again
-take that force to be something quite different. They see it in what is
-called culture—in mental activity.
-
-The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their
-progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical
-events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one
-another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that
-such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense number of
-indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these historians select
-the indication of intellectual activity and say that this indication is
-the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove that the cause of events
-lies in intellectual activity, only by a great stretch can one admit
-that there is any connection between intellectual activity and the
-movement of peoples, and in no case can one admit that intellectual
-activity controls people’s actions, for that view is not confirmed by
-such facts as the very cruel murders of the French Revolution resulting
-from the doctrine of the equality of man, or the very cruel wars and
-executions resulting from the preaching of love.
-
-But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised arguments with
-which these histories are filled—admitting that nations are governed by
-some undefined force called an idea—history’s essential question still
-remains unanswered, and to the former power of monarchs and to the
-influence of advisers and other people introduced by the universal
-historians, another, newer force—the idea—is added, the connection of
-which with the masses needs explanation. It is possible to understand
-that Napoleon had power and so events occurred; with some effort one may
-even conceive that Napoleon together with other influences was the cause
-of an event; but how a book, Le Contrat Social, had the effect of making
-Frenchmen begin to drown one another cannot be understood without an
-explanation of the causal nexus of this new force with the event.
-
-Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live contemporaneously,
-and so it is possible to find some connection between the intellectual
-activity of men and their historical movements, just as such a
-connection may be found between the movements of humanity and commerce,
-handicraft, gardening, or anything else you please. But why intellectual
-activity is considered by the historians of culture to be the cause or
-expression of the whole historical movement is hard to understand.
-Only the following considerations can have led the historians to such
-a conclusion: (1) that history is written by learned men, and so it is
-natural and agreeable for them to think that the activity of their class
-supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity, just as a similar
-belief is natural and agreeable to traders, agriculturists, and soldiers
-(if they do not express it, that is merely because traders and soldiers
-do not write history), and (2) that spiritual activity, enlightenment,
-civilization, culture, ideas, are all indistinct, indefinite conceptions
-under whose banner it is very easy to use words having a still less
-definite meaning, and which can therefore be readily introduced into any
-theory.
-
-But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this kind
-(which may possibly even be of use to someone for something) the
-histories of culture, to which all general histories tend more and more
-to approximate, are significant from the fact that after seriously
-and minutely examining various religious, philosophic, and political
-doctrines as causes of events, as soon as they have to describe an
-actual historic event such as the campaign of 1812 for instance, they
-involuntarily describe it as resulting from an exercise of power—and say
-plainly that that was the result of Napoleon’s will. Speaking so, the
-historians of culture involuntarily contradict themselves, and show that
-the new force they have devised does not account for what happens in
-history, and that history can only be explained by introducing a power
-which they apparently do not recognize.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: “What moves it?” A peasant says
-the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves because its
-wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement lies in
-the smoke which the wind carries away.
-
-The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation. To
-refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is no devil,
-or another peasant would have to explain to him that it is not the devil
-but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, as a result of the
-contradiction, will they see that they are both wrong. But the man who
-says that the movement of the wheels is the cause refutes himself, for
-having once begun to analyze he ought to go on and explain further why
-the wheels go round; and till he has reached the ultimate cause of the
-movement of the locomotive in the pressure of steam in the boiler, he
-has no right to stop in his search for the cause. The man who explains
-the movement of the locomotive by the smoke that is carried back has
-noticed that the wheels do not supply an explanation and has taken the
-first sign that occurs to him and in his turn has offered that as an
-explanation.
-
-The only conception that can explain the movement of the locomotive is
-that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.
-
-The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples is that
-of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the peoples.
-
-Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces of
-different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement
-observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as the
-peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a force resulting
-from several other forces, like the movement of the wheels; others again
-as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that is blown away.
-
-So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whether
-Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the histories
-of all, absolutely all those who take part in an event, it is quite
-impossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conception
-of a force compelling men to direct their activity toward a certain end.
-And the only such conception known to historians is that of power.
-
-This conception is the one handle by means of which the material of
-history, as at present expounded, can be dealt with, and anyone who
-breaks that handle off, as Buckle did, without finding some other method
-of treating historical material, merely deprives himself of the one
-possible way of dealing with it. The necessity of the conception of
-power as an explanation of historical events is best demonstrated by
-the universal historians and historians of culture themselves, for they
-professedly reject that conception but inevitably have recourse to it at
-every step.
-
-In dealing with humanity’s inquiry, the science of history up to now
-is like money in circulation—paper money and coin. The biographies and
-special national histories are like paper money. They can be used and
-can circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm to anyone and even
-advantageously, as long as no one asks what is the security behind them.
-You need only forget to ask how the will of heroes produces events, and
-such histories as Thiers’ will be interesting and instructive and may
-perhaps even possess a tinge of poetry. But just as doubts of the real
-value of paper money arise either because, being easy to make, too much
-of it gets made or because people try to exchange it for gold, so also
-doubts concerning the real value of such histories arise either because
-too many of them are written or because in his simplicity of heart
-someone inquires: by what force did Napoleon do this?—that is, wants
-to exchange the current paper money for the real gold of actual
-comprehension.
-
-The writers of universal histories and of the history of culture are
-like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide to
-substitute for it money made of metal that has not the specific gravity
-of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do no more than
-that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is deceived by
-tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle. As gold is
-gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchange but also for use,
-so universal historians will be valuable only when they can reply to
-history’s essential question: what is power? The universal historians
-give contradictory replies to that question, while the historians of
-culture evade it and answer something quite different. And as counters
-of imitation gold can be used only among a group of people who agree to
-accept them as gold, or among those who do not know the nature of
-gold, so universal historians and historians of culture, not answering
-humanity’s essential question, serve as currency for some purposes of
-their own, only in universities and among the mass of readers who have a
-taste for what they call “serious reading.”
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the divine
-subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and the subjection
-of that man’s will to the Deity, history cannot without contradictions
-take a single step till it has chosen one of two things: either a return
-to the former belief in the direct intervention of the Deity in human
-affairs or a definite explanation of the meaning of the force producing
-historical events and termed “power.”
-
-A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been destroyed; and
-so it is essential to explain what is meant by power.
-
-Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are so
-accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that the question:
-why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when Napoleon uttered
-certain words, seems to us senseless. He had the power and so what he
-ordered was done.
-
-This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was given
-him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes essential to
-determine what is this power of one man over others.
-
-It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weak one—a
-domination based on the application or threat of physical force, like
-the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effect of moral force,
-as in their simplicity some historians think who say that the leading
-figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted with a special
-strength of soul and mind called genius. This power cannot be based on
-the predominance of moral strength, for, not to mention heroes such as
-Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions differ widely, history
-shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a Metternich, who ruled over
-millions of people, had any particular moral qualities, but on the
-contrary were generally morally weaker than any of the millions they
-ruled over.
-
-If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moral
-qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for
-elsewhere—in the relation to the people of the man who wields the power.
-
-And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence,
-that exchange bank of history which offers to exchange history’s
-understanding of power for true gold.
-
-Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed or
-tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.
-
-In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions of how a
-state and power might be arranged were it possible for all that to
-be arranged, it is all very clear; but when applied to history that
-definition of power needs explanation.
-
-The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power as the ancients
-regarded fire—namely, as something existing absolutely. But for history,
-the state and power are merely phenomena, just as for modern physics
-fire is not an element but a phenomenon.
-
-From this fundamental difference between the view held by history and
-that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence can tell
-minutely how in its opinion power should be constituted and what
-power—existing immutably outside time—is, but to history’s questions
-about the meaning of the mutations of power in time it can answer
-nothing.
-
-If power be the collective will of the people transferred to their
-ruler, was Pugachëv a representative of the will of the people? If not,
-then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal when he was
-taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later on, were those criminals whom
-he arrested?
-
-Do palace revolutions—in which sometimes only two or three people take
-part—transfer the will of the people to a new ruler? In international
-relations, is the will of the people also transferred to their
-conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine transferred
-to Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian people transferred
-to Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with the French went to
-fight the Austrians?
-
-To these questions three answers are possible:
-
-Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always
-unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen, and
-that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggle
-against the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded as an
-infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of the people
-is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definite and known
-conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts, and even
-destructions of power result from a nonobservance by the rulers of the
-conditions under which their power was entrusted to them; or (3) that
-the will of the people is delegated to the rulers conditionally, but
-that the conditions are unknown and indefinite, and that the appearance
-of several authorities, their struggles and their falls, result solely
-from the greater or lesser fulfillment by the rulers of these unknown
-conditions on which the will of the people is transferred from some
-people to others.
-
-And these are the three ways in which the historians do explain the
-relation of the people to their rulers.
-
-Some historians—those biographical and specialist historians already
-referred to—in their simplicity failing to understand the question of
-the meaning of power, seem to consider that the collective will of
-the people is unconditionally transferred to historical persons, and
-therefore when describing some single state they assume that particular
-power to be the one absolute and real power, and that any other force
-opposing this is not a power but a violation of power—mere violence.
-
-Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods of history,
-has the inconvenience—in application to complex and stormy periods in
-the life of nations during which various powers arise simultaneously and
-struggle with one another—that a Legitimist historian will prove
-that the National Convention, the Directory, and Bonaparte were mere
-infringers of the true power, while a Republican and a Bonapartist will
-prove: the one that the Convention and the other that the Empire was the
-real power, and that all the others were violations of power.
-Evidently the explanations furnished by these historians being mutually
-contradictory can only satisfy young children.
-
-Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set of
-historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of the will
-of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders have power
-only conditionally on carrying out the program that the will of the
-people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what this program
-consists in these historians do not say, or if they do they continually
-contradict one another.
-
-Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation’s
-progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness, wealth, freedom,
-or enlightenment of citizens of France or some other country. But not
-to mention the historians’ contradictions as to the nature of this
-program—or even admitting that some one general program of these
-conditions exists—the facts of history almost always contradict that
-theory. If the conditions under which power is entrusted consist in the
-wealth, freedom, and enlightenment of the people, how is it that Louis
-XIV and Iván the Terrible end their reigns tranquilly, while Louis XVI
-and Charles I are executed by their people? To this question historians
-reply that Louis XIV’s activity, contrary to the program, reacted on
-Louis XVI. But why did it not react on Louis XIV or on Louis XV—why
-should it react just on Louis XVI? And what is the time limit for such
-reactions? To these questions there are and can be no answers. Equally
-little does this view explain why for several centuries the collective
-will is not withdrawn from certain rulers and their heirs, and
-then suddenly during a period of fifty years is transferred to the
-Convention, to the Directory, to Napoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII,
-to Napoleon again, to Charles X, to Louis Philippe, to a Republican
-government, and to Napoleon III. When explaining these rapid transfers
-of the people’s will from one individual to another, especially in view
-of international relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians are
-obliged to admit that some of these transfers are not normal delegations
-of the people’s will but are accidents dependent on cunning, on
-mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a ruler, or a
-party leader. So that the greater part of the events of history—civil
-wars, revolutions, and conquests—are presented by these historians
-not as the results of free transferences of the people’s will, but as
-results of the ill-directed will of one or more individuals, that is,
-once again, as usurpations of power. And so these historians also see
-and admit historical events which are exceptions to the theory.
-
-These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed that some
-plants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist that all
-that grows does so by sprouting into two leaves, and that the palm, the
-mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into full growth and no longer
-resemble two leaves, are deviations from the theory.
-
-Historians of the third class assume that the will of the people
-is transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that the
-conditions are unknown to us. They say that historical personages have
-power only because they fulfill the will of the people which has been
-delegated to them.
-
-But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not in the
-historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance have
-those leaders?
-
-The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of the people:
-the activity of the leaders represents the activity of the people.
-
-But in that case the question arises whether all the activity of the
-leaders serves as an expression of the people’s will or only some part
-of it. If the whole activity of the leaders serves as the expression of
-the people’s will, as some historians suppose, then all the details
-of the court scandals contained in the biographies of a Napoleon or
-a Catherine serve to express the life of the nation, which is evident
-nonsense; but if it is only some particular side of the activity of an
-historical leader which serves to express the people’s life, as other
-so-called “philosophical” historians believe, then to determine which
-side of the activity of a leader expresses the nation’s life, we have
-first of all to know in what the nation’s life consists.
-
-Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some most
-obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover all
-conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of
-humanity’s movement. The most usual generalizations adopted by almost
-all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment, progress,
-civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization as the goal
-of the movement of humanity, the historians study the men of whom the
-greatest number of monuments have remained: kings, ministers, generals,
-authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, to the extent to which in
-their opinion these persons have promoted or hindered that abstraction.
-But as it is in no way proved that the aim of humanity does consist in
-freedom, equality, enlightenment, or civilization, and as the connection
-of the people with the rulers and enlighteners of humanity is only based
-on the arbitrary assumption that the collective will of the people is
-always transferred to the men whom we have noticed, it happens that the
-activity of the millions who migrate, burn houses, abandon agriculture,
-and destroy one another never is expressed in the account of the
-activity of some dozen people who did not burn houses, practice
-agriculture, or slay their fellow creatures.
-
-History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the peoples of
-the west at the end of the eighteenth century and their drive eastward
-explained by the activity of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, their mistresses
-and ministers, and by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau, Diderot,
-Beaumarchais, and others?
-
-Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazán and Siberia
-expressed by details of the morbid character of Iván the Terrible and by
-his correspondence with Kúrbski?
-
-Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explained by
-the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es and their ladies?
-For us that movement of the peoples from west to east, without
-leaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit, remains
-incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible is the cessation of that
-movement when a rational and sacred aim for the Crusade—the deliverance
-of Jerusalem—had been clearly defined by historic leaders. Popes, kings,
-and knights incited the peoples to free the Holy Land; but the people
-did not go, for the unknown cause which had previously impelled them to
-go no longer existed. The history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers
-can evidently not cover the life of the peoples. And the history of the
-Godfreys and the Minnesingers has remained the history of Godfreys
-and Minnesingers, but the history of the life of the peoples and their
-impulses has remained unknown.
-
-Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us the
-life of the peoples.
-
-The history of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions of
-life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had
-a hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau was
-suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why after
-the Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor why during the
-French Revolution they guillotined one another.
-
-If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the newest
-historians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers, but not
-the history of the life of the peoples.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-The life of the nations is not contained in the lives of a few men, for
-the connection between those men and the nations has not been found.
-The theory that this connection is based on the transference of the
-collective will of a people to certain historical personages is an
-hypothesis unconfirmed by the experience of history.
-
-The theory of the transference of the collective will of the people to
-historic persons may perhaps explain much in the domain of jurisprudence
-and be essential for its purposes, but in its application to history, as
-soon as revolutions, conquests, or civil wars occur—that is, as soon as
-history begins—that theory explains nothing.
-
-The theory seems irrefutable just because the act of transference of the
-people’s will cannot be verified, for it never occurred.
-
-Whatever happens and whoever may stand at the head of affairs, the
-theory can always say that such and such a person took the lead because
-the collective will was transferred to him.
-
-The replies this theory gives to historical questions are like the
-replies of a man who, watching the movements of a herd of cattle and
-paying no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in different
-parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman, should attribute
-the direction the herd takes to what animal happens to be at its head.
-
-“The herd goes in that direction because the animal in front leads
-it and the collective will of all the other animals is vested in that
-leader.” This is what historians of the first class say—those who assume
-the unconditional transference of the people’s will.
-
-“If the animals leading the herd change, this happens because the
-collective will of all the animals is transferred from one leader to
-another, according to whether the animal is or is not leading them in
-the direction selected by the whole herd.” Such is the reply historians
-who assume that the collective will of the people is delegated to
-rulers under conditions which they regard as known. (With this method
-of observation it often happens that the observer, influenced by the
-direction he himself prefers, regards those as leaders who, owing to the
-people’s change of direction, are no longer in front, but on one side,
-or even in the rear.)
-
-“If the animals in front are continually changing and the direction of
-the whole herd is constantly altered, this is because in order to follow
-a given direction the animals transfer their will to the animals that
-have attracted our attention, and to study the movements of the herd
-we must watch the movements of all the prominent animals moving on all
-sides of the herd.” So say the third class of historians who regard all
-historical persons, from monarchs to journalists, as the expression of
-their age.
-
-The theory of the transference of the will of the people to historic
-persons is merely a paraphrase—a restatement of the question in other
-words.
-
-What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the
-collective will of the people transferred to one person. Under what
-condition is the will of the people delegated to one person? On
-condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people. That
-is, power is power: in other words, power is a word the meaning of which
-we do not understand.
-
-If the realm of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning,
-then having subjected to criticism the explanation of “power” that
-juridical science gives us, humanity would conclude that power is merely
-a word and has no real existence. But to understand phenomena man
-has, besides abstract reasoning, experience by which he verifies his
-reflections. And experience tells us that power is not merely a word but
-an actually existing phenomenon.
-
-Not to speak of the fact that no description of the collective activity
-of men can do without the conception of power, the existence of power is
-proved both by history and by observing contemporary events.
-
-Whenever an event occurs a man appears or men appear, by whose will the
-event seems to have taken place. Napoleon III issues a decree and the
-French go to Mexico. The King of Prussia and Bismarck issue decrees and
-an army enters Bohemia. Napoleon I issues a decree and an army enters
-Russia. Alexander I gives a command and the French submit to the
-Bourbons. Experience shows us that whatever event occurs it is always
-related to the will of one or of several men who have decreed it.
-
-The historians, in accord with the old habit of acknowledging divine
-intervention in human affairs, want to see the cause of events in
-the expression of the will of someone endowed with power, but that
-supposition is not confirmed either by reason or by experience.
-
-On the one side reflection shows that the expression of a man’s will—his
-words—are only part of the general activity expressed in an event,
-as for instance in a war or a revolution, and so without assuming an
-incomprehensible, supernatural force—a miracle—one cannot admit that
-words can be the immediate cause of the movements of millions of men.
-On the other hand, even if we admitted that words could be the cause
-of events, history shows that the expression of the will of historical
-personages does not in most cases produce any effect, that is to say,
-their commands are often not executed, and sometimes the very opposite
-of what they order occurs.
-
-Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of humanity we
-cannot regard “power” as the cause of events.
-
-Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation that
-exists between the expression of someone’s will and the execution of
-that will by others.
-
-To explain the conditions of that relationship we must first establish a
-conception of the expression of will, referring it to man and not to the
-Deity.
-
-If the Deity issues a command, expresses His will, as ancient history
-tells us, the expression of that will is independent of time and is not
-caused by anything, for the Divinity is not controlled by an event. But
-speaking of commands that are the expression of the will of men acting
-in time and in relation to one another, to explain the connection of
-commands with events we must restore: (1) the condition of all that
-takes place: the continuity of movement in time both of the events and
-of the person who commands, and (2) the inevitability of the connection
-between the person commanding and those who execute his command.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent on time, can
-relate to a whole series of events occurring over a period of years or
-centuries, and only the Deity, independent of everything, can by His
-sole will determine the direction of humanity’s movement; but man acts
-in time and himself takes part in what occurs.
-
-Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we see that no
-command can be executed without some preceding order having been given
-rendering the execution of the last command possible.
-
-No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a whole series
-of occurrences; but each command follows from another, and never refers
-to a whole series of events but always to one moment only of an event.
-
-When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies to go to war,
-we combine in one simultaneous expression a whole series of consecutive
-commands dependent one on another. Napoleon could not have commanded
-an invasion of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered such and such
-papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to Petersburg;
-tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to the army, the fleet, the
-commissariat, and so on and so on—millions of commands, which formed
-a whole series corresponding to a series of events which brought the
-French armies into Russia.
-
-If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning an invasion
-of England and expended on no other undertaking so much time and effort,
-and yet during his whole reign never once attempted to execute that
-design but undertook an expedition into Russia, with which country he
-considered it desirable to be in alliance (a conviction he repeatedly
-expressed)—this came about because his commands did not correspond to
-the course of events in the first case, but did so correspond in the
-latter.
-
-For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that a man should
-order what can be executed. But to know what can and what cannot be
-executed is impossible, not only in the case of Napoleon’s invasion of
-Russia in which millions participated, but even in the simplest event,
-for in either case millions of obstacles may arise to prevent its
-execution. Every order executed is always one of an immense number
-unexecuted. All the impossible orders inconsistent with the course of
-events remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones get linked up with a
-consecutive series of commands corresponding to a series of events, and
-are executed.
-
-Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which precedes
-it is due to the fact that when the event has taken place and out of
-thousands of others those few commands which were consistent with that
-event have been executed, we forget about the others that were not
-executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the chief source
-of our error in this matter is due to the fact that in the historical
-accounts a whole series of innumerable, diverse, and petty events, such
-for instance as all those which led the French armies to Russia, is
-generalized into one event in accord with the result produced by that
-series of events, and corresponding with this generalization the whole
-series of commands is also generalized into a single expression of will.
-
-We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and invaded it. In
-reality in all Napoleon’s activity we never find anything resembling an
-expression of that wish, but find a series of orders, or expressions of
-his will, very variously and indefinitely directed. Amid a long series
-of unexecuted orders of Napoleon’s one series, for the campaign of 1812,
-was carried out—not because those orders differed in any way from the
-other, unexecuted orders but because they coincided with the course of
-events that led the French army into Russia; just as in stencil work
-this or that figure comes out not because the color was laid on from
-this side or in that way, but because it was laid on from all sides over
-the figure cut in the stencil.
-
-So that examining the relation in time of the commands to the events,
-we find that a command can never be the cause of the event, but that a
-certain definite dependence exists between the two.
-
-To understand in what this dependence consists it is necessary to
-reinstate another omitted condition of every command proceeding not from
-the Deity but from a man, which is, that the man who gives the command
-himself takes part in the event.
-
-This relation of the commander to those he commands is just what is
-called power. This relation consists in the following:
-
-For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in which
-regardless of the difference of the aims set for the common action, the
-relation between those taking part in it is always the same.
-
-Men uniting in these combinations always assume such relations toward
-one another that the larger number take a more direct share, and the
-smaller number a less direct share, in the collective action for which
-they have combined.
-
-Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective action one of
-the most striking and definite examples is an army.
-
-Every army is composed of lower grades of the service—the rank and
-file—of whom there are always the greatest number; of the next higher
-military rank—corporals and noncommissioned officers of whom there are
-fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom there are still fewer,
-and so on to the highest military command which is concentrated in one
-person.
-
-A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone, of
-which the base with the largest diameter consists of the rank and file;
-the next higher and smaller section of the cone consists of the next
-higher grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point of which
-will represent the commander in chief.
-
-The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section of
-the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing, hacking,
-burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for these actions
-from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The noncommissioned
-officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the action itself less
-frequently than the soldiers, but they already give commands. An
-officer still less often acts directly himself, but commands still more
-frequently. A general does nothing but command the troops, indicates the
-objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon himself. The commander in chief
-never takes direct part in the action itself, but only gives general
-orders concerning the movement of the mass of the troops. A similar
-relation of people to one another is seen in every combination of men
-for common activity—in agriculture, trade, and every administration.
-
-And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of
-a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in
-any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to the
-highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action, combine
-in such relations that the more directly they participate in performing
-the action the less they can command and the more numerous they are,
-while the less their direct participation in the action itself, the more
-they command and the fewer of them there are; rising in this way from
-the lowest ranks to the man at the top, who takes the least direct share
-in the action and directs his activity chiefly to commanding.
-
-This relation of the men who command to those they command is what
-constitutes the essence of the conception called power.
-
-Having restored the condition of time under which all events occur,
-we find that a command is executed only when it is related to a
-corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of
-relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that
-by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest part
-in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively directed to
-commanding.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-When an event is taking place people express their opinions and wishes
-about it, and as the event results from the collective activity of
-many people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sure to be
-fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions expressed
-is fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the event as a command
-preceding it.
-
-Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion as to how and
-where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happens that this is
-done as one of them said. He ordered it. There we have command and power
-in their primary form. The man who worked most with his hands could not
-think so much about what he was doing, or reflect on or command what
-would result from the common activity; while the man who commanded
-more would evidently work less with his hands on account of his greater
-verbal activity.
-
-When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to a common aim
-there is a yet sharper division of those who, because their activity is
-given to directing and commanding, take less part in the direct work.
-
-When a man works alone he always has a certain set of reflections which
-as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify his present
-activity, and guide him in planning his future actions. Just the same is
-done by a concourse of people, allowing those who do not take a direct
-part in the activity to devise considerations, justifications, and
-surmises concerning their collective activity.
-
-For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown and kill
-one another. And corresponding to the event its justification appears in
-people’s belief that this was necessary for the welfare of France, for
-liberty, and for equality. People ceased to kill one another, and
-this event was accompanied by its justification in the necessity for a
-centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and so on. Men went
-from the west to the east killing their fellow men, and the event
-was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France, the baseness of
-England, and so on. History shows us that these justifications of the
-events have no common sense and are all contradictory, as in the case of
-killing a man as the result of recognizing his rights, and the killing
-of millions in Russia for the humiliation of England. But these
-justifications have a very necessary significance in their own day.
-
-These justifications release those who produce the events from moral
-responsibility. These temporary aims are like the broom fixed in front
-of a locomotive to clear the snow from the rails in front: they clear
-men’s moral responsibilities from their path.
-
-Without such justification there would be no reply to the simplest
-question that presents itself when examining each historical event. How
-is it that millions of men commit collective crimes—make war, commit
-murder, and so on?
-
-With the present complex forms of political and social life in Europe
-can any event that is not prescribed, decreed, or ordered by monarchs,
-ministers, parliaments, or newspapers be imagined? Is there any
-collective action which cannot find its justification in political
-unity, in patriotism, in the balance of power, or in civilization? So
-that every event that occurs inevitably coincides with some expressed
-wish and, receiving a justification, presents itself as the result of
-the will of one man or of several men.
-
-In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves it cuts
-will always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on board the ship the
-movement of those waves will be the only perceptible motion.
-
-Only by watching closely moment by moment the movement of that flow and
-comparing it with the movement of the ship do we convince ourselves that
-every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movement of the ship,
-and that we were led into error by the fact that we ourselves were
-imperceptibly moving.
-
-We see the same if we watch moment by moment the movement of historical
-characters (that is, re-establish the inevitable condition of all that
-occurs—the continuity of movement in time) and do not lose sight of the
-essential connection of historical persons with the masses.
-
-When the ship moves in one direction there is one and the same wave
-ahead of it, when it turns frequently the wave ahead of it also turns
-frequently. But wherever it may turn there always will be the wave
-anticipating its movement.
-
-Whatever happens it always appears that just that event was foreseen
-and decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the rush of water which neither
-directs nor increases its movement foams ahead of it, and at a distance
-seems to us not merely to move of itself but to govern the ship’s
-movement also.
-
-Examining only those expressions of the will of historical persons
-which, as commands, were related to events, historians have assumed
-that the events depended on those commands. But examining the events
-themselves and the connection in which the historical persons stood to
-the people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent on
-events. The incontestable proof of this deduction is that, however many
-commands were issued, the event does not take place unless there are
-other causes for it, but as soon as an event occurs—be it what it
-may—then out of all the continually expressed wishes of different people
-some will always be found which by their meaning and their time of
-utterance are related as commands to the events.
-
-Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and positively to
-these two essential questions of history:
-
-(1) What is power?
-
-(2) What force produces the movement of the nations?
-
-(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other individuals,
-in which the more this person expresses opinions, predictions, and
-justifications of the collective action that is performed, the less is
-his participation in that action.
-
-(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor by intellectual
-activity, nor even by a combination of the two as historians have
-supposed, but by the activity of all the people who participate in
-the events, and who always combine in such a way that those taking
-the largest direct share in the event take on themselves the least
-responsibility and vice versa.
-
-Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event; physically
-it is those who submit to the power. But as the moral activity is
-inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the event is neither in
-the one nor in the other but in the union of the two.
-
-Or in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable to the
-phenomena we are examining.
-
-In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity—that final limit
-to which in every domain of thought man’s reason arrives if it is not
-playing with the subject. Electricity produces heat, heat produces
-electricity. Atoms attract each other and atoms repel one another.
-
-Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of atoms, we
-cannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is so because it is
-inconceivable otherwise, because it must be so and that it is a law. The
-same applies to historical events. Why war and revolution occur we do
-not know. We only know that to produce the one or the other action,
-people combine in a certain formation in which they all take part, and
-we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or in other
-words that it is a law.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-If history dealt only with external phenomena, the establishment of this
-simple and obvious law would suffice and we should have finished our
-argument. But the law of history relates to man. A particle of matter
-cannot tell us that it does not feel the law of attraction or repulsion
-and that that law is untrue, but man, who is the subject of history,
-says plainly: I am free and am therefore not subject to the law.
-
-The presence of the problem of man’s free will, though unexpressed, is
-felt at every step of history.
-
-All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered this
-question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and the
-false path historical science has followed are due solely to the lack of
-a solution of that question.
-
-If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act as he
-pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected incidents.
-
-If in a thousand years even one man in a million could act freely, that
-is, as he chose, it is evident that one single free act of that man’s
-in violation of the laws governing human action would destroy the
-possibility of the existence of any laws for the whole of humanity.
-
-If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free will cannot
-exist, for then man’s will is subject to that law.
-
-In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which from most
-ancient times has occupied the best human minds and from most ancient
-times has been presented in its whole tremendous significance.
-
-The problem is that regarding man as a subject of observation
-from whatever point of view—theological, historical, ethical, or
-philosophic—we find a general law of necessity to which he (like all
-that exists) is subject. But regarding him from within ourselves as what
-we are conscious of, we feel ourselves to be free.
-
-This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite apart from and
-independent of reason. Through his reason man observes himself, but only
-through consciousness does he know himself.
-
-Apart from consciousness of self no observation or application of reason
-is conceivable.
-
-To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man must first of all be
-conscious of himself as living. A man is only conscious of himself as
-a living being by the fact that he wills, that is, is conscious of
-his volition. But his will—which forms the essence of his life—man
-recognizes (and can but recognize) as free.
-
-If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always directed by
-one and the same law (whether he observes the necessity of taking
-food, using his brain, or anything else) he cannot recognize this
-never-varying direction of his will otherwise than as a limitation of
-it. Were it not free it could not be limited. A man’s will seems to him
-to be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as free.
-
-You say: I am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let it fall.
-Everyone understands that this illogical reply is an irrefutable
-demonstration of freedom.
-
-That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is not subject to
-reason.
-
-If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate and independent
-source of self-consciousness it would be subject to reasoning and
-to experience, but in fact such subjection does not exist and is
-inconceivable.
-
-A series of experiments and arguments proves to every man that he, as
-an object of observation, is subject to certain laws, and man submits to
-them and never resists the laws of gravity or impermeability once he
-has become acquainted with them. But the same series of experiments
-and arguments proves to him that the complete freedom of which he is
-conscious in himself is impossible, and that his every action depends
-on his organization, his character, and the motives acting upon him; yet
-man never submits to the deductions of these experiments and arguments.
-Having learned from experiment and argument that a stone falls
-downwards, a man indubitably believes this and always expects the law
-that he has learned to be fulfilled.
-
-But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws, he does
-not and cannot believe this.
-
-However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the
-same conditions and with the same character he will do the same thing as
-before, yet when under the same conditions and with the same character
-he approaches for the thousandth time the action that always ends in the
-same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before the experiment
-that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or sage, however
-incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him that it is
-impossible to imagine two different courses of action in precisely the
-same conditions, feels that without this irrational conception (which
-constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot imagine life. He feels
-that however impossible it may be, it is so, for without this conception
-of freedom not only would he be unable to understand life, but he would
-be unable to live for a single moment.
-
-He could not live, because all man’s efforts, all his impulses to life,
-are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and
-obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and
-disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger,
-virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom.
-
-A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of
-life.
-
-If the conception of freedom appears to reason to be a senseless
-contradiction like the possibility of performing two actions at one and
-the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that only
-proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.
-
-This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom, uncontrolled by
-experiment or argument, recognized by all thinkers and felt by everyone
-without exception, this consciousness without which no conception of man
-is possible constitutes the other side of the question.
-
-Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-seeing God.
-What is sin, the conception of which arises from the consciousness of
-man’s freedom? That is a question for theology.
-
-The actions of men are subject to general immutable laws expressed in
-statistics. What is man’s responsibility to society, the conception of
-which results from the conception of freedom? That is a question for
-jurisprudence.
-
-Man’s actions proceed from his innate character and the motives acting
-upon him. What is conscience and the perception of right and wrong
-in actions that follows from the consciousness of freedom? That is a
-question for ethics.
-
-Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears subject
-to laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from that
-connection appears to be free. How should the past life of nations and
-of humanity be regarded—as the result of the free, or as the result of
-the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for history.
-
-Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of knowledge—thanks
-to that most powerful engine of ignorance, the diffusion of printed
-matter—has the question of the freedom of will been put on a level on
-which the question itself cannot exist. In our time the majority of
-so-called advanced people—that is, the crowd of ignoramuses—have taken
-the work of the naturalists who deal with one side of the question for a
-solution of the whole problem.
-
-They say and write and print that the soul and freedom do not exist,
-for the life of man is expressed by muscular movements and muscular
-movements are conditioned by the activity of the nerves; the soul and
-free will do not exist because at an unknown period of time we sprang
-from the apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that thousands of
-years ago that same law of necessity which with such ardor they are now
-trying to prove by physiology and comparative zoology was not merely
-acknowledged by all the religions and all the thinkers, but has never
-been denied. They do not see that the role of the natural sciences in
-this matter is merely to serve as an instrument for the illumination
-of one side of it. For the fact that, from the point of view of
-observation, reason and the will are merely secretions of the brain, and
-that man following the general law may have developed from lower animals
-at some unknown period of time, only explains from a fresh side
-the truth admitted thousands of years ago by all the religious and
-philosophic theories—that from the point of view of reason man is
-subject to the law of necessity; but it does not advance by a hair’s
-breadth the solution of the question, which has another, opposite, side,
-based on the consciousness of freedom.
-
-If men descended from the apes at an unknown period of time, that is
-as comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at a
-certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is the
-time, in the second case it is the origin); and the question of how
-man’s consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of
-necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by comparative
-physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a rabbit, or an ape, we can
-observe only the muscular nervous activity, but in man we observe
-consciousness as well as the muscular and nervous activity.
-
-The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can solve this
-question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side of the walls of
-a church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief
-superintendent of the work, should in an access of zeal plaster over the
-windows, icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should be
-delighted that from their point of view as plasterers, everything is now
-so smooth and regular.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-For the solution of the question of free will or inevitability, history
-has this advantage over other branches of knowledge in which the
-question is dealt with, that for history this question does not refer
-to the essence of man’s free will but its manifestation in the past and
-under certain conditions.
-
-In regard to this question, history stands to the other sciences as
-experimental science stands to abstract science.
-
-The subject for history is not man’s will itself but our presentation of
-it.
-
-And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by the
-incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not exist as it does
-for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History surveys a presentation of
-man’s life in which the union of these two contradictions has already
-taken place.
-
-In actual life each historic event, each human action, is very clearly
-and definitely understood without any sense of contradiction, although
-each event presents itself as partly free and partly compulsory.
-
-To solve the question of how freedom and necessity are combined and
-what constitutes the essence of these two conceptions, the philosophy
-of history can and should follow a path contrary to that taken by other
-sciences. Instead of first defining the conceptions of freedom and
-inevitability in themselves, and then ranging the phenomena of life
-under those definitions, history should deduce a definition of the
-conception of freedom and inevitability themselves from the immense
-quantity of phenomena of which it is cognizant and that always appear
-dependent on these two elements.
-
-Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or of an individual
-we may consider, we always regard it as the result partly of man’s free
-will and partly of the law of inevitability.
-
-Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and the incursions
-of the barbarians, or of the decrees of Napoleon III, or of someone’s
-action an hour ago in choosing one direction out of several for his
-walk, we are unconscious of any contradiction. The degree of freedom and
-inevitability governing the actions of these people is clearly defined
-for us.
-
-Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to
-differences in the point of view from which we regard the event, but
-every human action appears to us as a certain combination of freedom and
-inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure of
-freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more
-freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we perceive, and
-the more inevitability the less freedom.
-
-The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases
-according to the point of view from which the action is regarded, but
-their relation is always one of inverse proportion.
-
-A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry mother
-exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man trained
-to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a defenseless
-man—seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject to the law of
-necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which these people were
-placed, and more free to one who does not know that the man was himself
-drowning, that the mother was hungry, that the soldier was in the ranks,
-and so on. Similarly a man who committed a murder twenty years ago and
-has since lived peaceably and harmlessly in society seems less guilty
-and his action more due to the law of inevitability, to someone who
-considers his action after twenty years have elapsed than to one who
-examined it the day after it was committed. And in the same way every
-action of an insane, intoxicated, or highly excited man appears less
-free and more inevitable to one who knows the mental condition of him
-who committed the action, and seems more free and less inevitable to one
-who does not know it. In all these cases the conception of freedom
-is increased or diminished and the conception of compulsion is
-correspondingly decreased or increased, according to the point of view
-from which the action is regarded. So that the greater the conception of
-necessity the smaller the conception of freedom and vice versa.
-
-Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of jurisprudence,
-and history itself understand alike this relation between necessity and
-freedom.
-
-All cases without exception in which our conception of freedom and
-necessity is increased and diminished depend on three considerations:
-
-(1) The relation to the external world of the man who commits the deeds.
-
-(2) His relation to time.
-
-(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action.
-
-The first consideration is the clearness of our perception of the man’s
-relation to the external world and the greater or lesser clearness
-of our understanding of the definite position occupied by the man
-in relation to everything coexisting with him. This is what makes it
-evident that a drowning man is less free and more subject to necessity
-than one standing on dry ground, and that makes the actions of a man
-closely connected with others in a thickly populated district, or of one
-bound by family, official, or business duties, seem certainly less free
-and more subject to necessity than those of a man living in solitude and
-seclusion.
-
-If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to everything around
-him, each action of his seems to us free. But if we see his relation
-to anything around him, if we see his connection with anything
-whatever—with a man who speaks to him, a book he reads, the work on
-which he is engaged, even with the air he breathes or the light that
-falls on the things about him—we see that each of these circumstances
-has an influence on him and controls at least some side of his activity.
-And the more we perceive of these influences the more our conception of
-his freedom diminishes and the more our conception of the necessity that
-weighs on him increases.
-
-The second consideration is the more or less evident time relation of
-the man to the world and the clearness of our perception of the place
-the man’s action occupies in time. That is the ground which makes the
-fall of the first man, resulting in the production of the human race,
-appear evidently less free than a man’s entry into marriage today. It is
-the reason why the life and activity of people who lived centuries ago
-and are connected with me in time cannot seem to me as free as the life
-of a contemporary, the consequences of which are still unknown to me.
-
-The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends in this
-respect on the greater or lesser lapse of time between the performance
-of the action and our judgment of it.
-
-If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in approximately the same
-circumstances as those I am in now, my action appears to me undoubtedly
-free. But if I examine an act performed a month ago, then being in
-different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing that if that act had
-not been committed much that resulted from it—good, agreeable, and even
-essential—would not have taken place. If I reflect on an action still
-more remote, ten years ago or more, then the consequences of my action
-are still plainer to me and I find it hard to imagine what would have
-happened had that action not been performed. The farther I go back
-in memory, or what is the same thing the farther I go forward in my
-judgment, the more doubtful becomes my belief in the freedom of my
-action.
-
-In history we find a very similar progress of conviction concerning
-the part played by free will in the general affairs of humanity. A
-contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the doing of all the
-known participants, but with a more remote event we already see its
-inevitable results which prevent our considering anything else possible.
-And the farther we go back in examining events the less arbitrary do
-they appear.
-
-The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the result of the
-crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still seem
-to us, though already questionably, to be the outcome of their heroes’
-will. But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying its definite
-place in history and without which we cannot imagine the modern history
-of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the Crusades that event appeared
-as merely due to the will of certain people. In regard to the migration
-of the peoples it does not enter anyone’s head today to suppose that
-the renovation of the European world depended on Attila’s caprice. The
-farther back in history the object of our observation lies, the more
-doubtful does the free will of those concerned in the event become and
-the more manifest the law of inevitability.
-
-The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that
-endless chain of causation inevitably demanded by reason, in which each
-phenomenon comprehended, and therefore man’s every action, must have
-its definite place as a result of what has gone before and as a cause of
-what will follow.
-
-The better we are acquainted with the physiological, psychological, and
-historical laws deduced by observation and by which man is controlled,
-and the more correctly we perceive the physiological, psychological,
-and historical causes of the action, and the simpler the action we are
-observing and the less complex the character and mind of the man in
-question, the more subject to inevitability and the less free do our
-actions and those of others appear.
-
-When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a
-crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we ascribe a
-greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we most urgently
-demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of a virtuous act we
-rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case we recognize in it
-more individuality, originality, and independence. But if even one of
-the innumerable causes of the act is known to us we recognize a certain
-element of necessity and are less insistent on punishment for the crime,
-or the acknowledgment of the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom
-of the apparently original action. That a criminal was reared among male
-factors mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father
-or mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more
-comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems less
-deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The founder of a
-sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when we know how or by
-what the way was prepared for his activity. If we have a large range
-of examples, if our observation is constantly directed to seeking the
-correlation of cause and effect in people’s actions, their actions
-appear to us more under compulsion and less free the more correctly we
-connect the effects with the causes. If we examined simple actions and
-had a vast number of such actions under observation, our conception of
-their inevitability would be still greater. The dishonest conduct of the
-son of a dishonest father, the misconduct of a woman who had fallen
-into bad company, a drunkard’s relapse into drunkenness, and so on are
-actions that seem to us less free the better we understand their cause.
-If the man whose actions we are considering is on a very low stage of
-mental development, like a child, a madman, or a simpleton—then,
-knowing the causes of the act and the simplicity of the character and
-intelligence in question, we see so large an element of necessity and so
-little free will that as soon as we know the cause prompting the action
-we can foretell the result.
-
-On these three considerations alone is based the conception of
-irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating circumstances admitted
-by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less
-according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in
-which the man was placed whose action is being judged, and according
-to the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of the
-action and its investigation, and according to the greater or lesser
-understanding of the causes that led to the action.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually diminishes
-or increases according to the greater or lesser connection with the
-external world, the greater or lesser remoteness of time, and the
-greater or lesser dependence on the causes in relation to which we
-contemplate a man’s life.
-
-So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the
-external world is well known, where the time between the action and
-its examination is great, and where the causes of the action are most
-accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability and a
-minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent on external
-conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and the causes of
-whose action are beyond our ken, we get the conception of a minimum of
-inevitability and a maximum of freedom.
-
-In neither case—however we may change our point of view, however plain
-we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and the external
-world, however inaccessible it may be to us, however long or short the
-period of time, however intelligible or incomprehensible the causes
-of the action may be—can we ever conceive either complete freedom or
-complete necessity.
-
-(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the
-influence of the external world, we never get a conception of freedom
-in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds
-him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My action seems
-to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my arm in every
-direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in which there was
-least obstruction to that action either from things around me or from
-the construction of my own body. I chose one out of all the possible
-directions because in it there were fewest obstacles. For my action
-to be free it was necessary that it should encounter no obstacles. To
-conceive of a man being free we must imagine him outside space, which is
-evidently impossible.
-
-(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time of the
-deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I examine
-an action committed a second ago I must still recognize it as not
-being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which it was
-committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself: could I have
-abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has already passed? To
-convince myself of this I do not lift it the next moment. But I am
-not now abstaining from doing so at the first moment when I asked the
-question. Time has gone by which I could not detain, the arm I then
-lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now refrain from lifting,
-nor is the air in which I lifted it the same that now surrounds me. The
-moment in which the first movement was made is irrevocable, and at that
-moment I could make only one movement, and whatever movement I made
-would be the only one. That I did not lift my arm a moment later does
-not prove that I could have abstained from lifting it then. And since I
-could make only one movement at that single moment of time, it could not
-have been any other. To imagine it as free, it is necessary to imagine
-it in the present, on the boundary between the past and the future—that
-is, outside time, which is impossible.
-
-(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be
-increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is,
-an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of the
-expression of will in any action, our own or another’s, the first demand
-of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause, for without a
-cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to perform an action
-independently of any cause, but my wish to perform an action without a
-cause is the cause of my action.
-
-But even if—imagining a man quite exempt from all influences, examining
-only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any cause—we were
-to admit so infinitely small a remainder of inevitability as equaled
-zero, we should even then not have arrived at the conception of complete
-freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by the external world, standing
-outside of time and independent of cause, is no longer a man.
-
-In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite devoid of
-freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability.
-
-(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space
-in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for the
-number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of space. And
-therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men are defined,
-there is no complete inevitability but a certain measure of freedom
-remains.
-
-(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action we are
-examining and the judgment upon it, that period will be finite, while
-time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never be absolute
-inevitability.
-
-(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any action, we
-shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and so again we
-never reach absolute inevitability.
-
-But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of freedom to
-equal zero, we assumed in some given case—as for instance in that of a
-dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot—complete absence of freedom, by
-so doing we should destroy the very conception of man in the case we are
-examining, for as soon as there is no freedom there is also no man. And
-so the conception of the action of a man subject solely to the law of
-inevitability without any element of freedom is just as impossible as
-the conception of a man’s completely free action.
-
-And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of
-inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of an
-infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of time,
-and an infinite series of causes.
-
-To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of
-inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond time,
-and free from dependence on cause.
-
-In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom
-we should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of
-inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content.
-
-In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability we
-should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time, and
-cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and unlimited would
-be nothing, or mere content without form.
-
-We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man’s
-whole outlook on the universe is constructed—the incomprehensible
-essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.
-
-Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it
-visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time is
-infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable otherwise.
-(3) The connection between cause and effect has no beginning and can
-have no end.
-
-Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me,
-consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time by the fixed
-moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as living,
-consequently I am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I feel myself
-to be the cause of every manifestation of my life.
-
-Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability. Consciousness
-gives expression to the essence of freedom.
-
-Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man’s
-consciousness. Inevitability without content is man’s reason in its
-three forms.
-
-Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines. Freedom
-is the content. Inevitability is the form.
-
-Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one another
-as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and separately
-incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability.
-
-Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man’s life.
-
-Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define one
-another as form and content, no conception of life is possible.
-
-All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation of free
-will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws of reason.
-
-All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain
-relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence of
-life to the laws of reason.
-
-The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious of
-them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity, animal
-force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life in man and
-we call that freedom.
-
-But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but
-felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which we
-know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the first
-knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton’s law), so too the
-force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which everyone is
-conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know the laws of
-inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that every man dies,
-up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and historic laws).
-
-All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the
-laws of reason.
-
-Man’s free will differs from every other force in that man is directly
-conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way differs from
-any other force. The forces of gravitation, electricity, or chemical
-affinity are only distinguished from one another in that they are
-differently defined by reason. Just so the force of man’s free will
-is distinguished by reason from the other forces of nature only by the
-definition reason gives it. Freedom, apart from necessity, that is,
-apart from the laws of reason that define it, differs in no way from
-gravitation, or heat, or the force that makes things grow; for reason,
-it is only a momentary undefinable sensation of life.
-
-And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly bodies,
-the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity, or
-of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of
-astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the
-same way does the force of free will form the content of history.
-But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of this
-unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the
-subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free will
-in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause forms
-the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of
-metaphysics.
-
-In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of
-inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital force is
-only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above what we know
-of the essence of life.
-
-So also in history what is known to us we call laws of inevitability,
-what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for history only an
-expression for the unknown remainder of what we know about the laws of
-human life.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-History examines the manifestations of man’s free will in connection
-with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is, it
-defines this freedom by the laws of reason, and so history is a science
-only in so far as this free will is defined by those laws.
-
-The recognition of man’s free will as something capable of influencing
-historical events, that is, as not subject to laws, is the same for
-history as the recognition of a free force moving the heavenly bodies
-would be for astronomy.
-
-That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of laws,
-that is, of any science whatever. If there is even a single body
-moving freely, then the laws of Kepler and Newton are negatived and no
-conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists. If
-any single action is due to free will, then not a single historical law
-can exist, nor any conception of historical events.
-
-For history, lines exist of the movement of human wills, one end
-of which is hidden in the unknown but at the other end of which a
-consciousness of man’s will in the present moves in space, time, and
-dependence on cause.
-
-The more this field of motion spreads out before our eyes, the more
-evident are the laws of that movement. To discover and define those laws
-is the problem of history.
-
-From the standpoint from which the science of history now regards its
-subject on the path it now follows, seeking the causes of events in
-man’s free will, a scientific enunciation of those laws is impossible,
-for however man’s free will may be restricted, as soon as we recognize
-it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law becomes
-impossible.
-
-Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal, that
-is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity, can we convince
-ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of the causes, and then
-instead of seeking causes, history will take the discovery of laws as
-its problem.
-
-The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of
-thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously
-with the self-destruction toward which—ever dissecting and dissecting
-the causes of phenomena—the old method of history is moving.
-
-All human sciences have traveled along that path. Arriving at
-infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons the
-process of analysis and enters on the new process of the integration
-of unknown, infinitely small, quantities. Abandoning the conception
-of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property common to all
-unknown, infinitely small, elements.
-
-In another form but along the same path of reflection the other sciences
-have proceeded. When Newton enunciated the law of gravity he did not say
-that the sun or the earth had a property of attraction; he said that all
-bodies from the largest to the smallest have the property of attracting
-one another, that is, leaving aside the question of the cause of the
-movement of the bodies, he expressed the property common to all bodies
-from the infinitely large to the infinitely small. The same is done by
-the natural sciences: leaving aside the question of cause, they seek for
-laws. History stands on the same path. And if history has for its object
-the study of the movement of the nations and of humanity and not the
-narration of episodes in the lives of individuals, it too, setting
-aside the conception of cause, should seek the laws common to all the
-inseparably interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will.
-
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the mere
-recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth that moves
-sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the ancients. By disproving
-that law it might have been possible to retain the old conception of
-the movements of the bodies, but without disproving it, it would seem
-impossible to continue studying the Ptolemaic worlds. But even after
-the discovery of the law of Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still
-studied for a long time.
-
-From the time the first person said and proved that the number of births
-or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this or that
-mode of government is determined by certain geographical and economic
-conditions, and that certain relations of population to soil produce
-migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history had been built
-were destroyed in their essence.
-
-By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have been
-retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to continue
-studying historic events as the results of man’s free will. For if a
-certain mode of government was established or certain migrations
-of peoples took place in consequence of such and such geographic,
-ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will of those
-individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of government
-or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as the cause.
-
-And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with the
-laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative philology,
-and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions.
-
-The struggle between the old views and the new was long and stubbornly
-fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on guard for the
-old views and accused the new of violating revelation. But when truth
-conquered, theology established itself just as firmly on the new
-foundation.
-
-Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding between
-the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the same way
-stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of subverting
-revelation.
-
-In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes
-passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret for
-the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the other
-is the passion for destruction.
-
-To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical philosophy,
-it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would destroy faith in
-God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the miracle of Joshua the
-son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of Copernicus and Newton, to
-Voltaire for example, it seemed that the laws of astronomy destroyed
-religion, and he utilized the law of gravitation as a weapon against
-religion.
-
-Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of
-inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and evil,
-and all the institutions of state and church that have been built up on
-those conceptions.
-
-So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of
-inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion, though
-the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus in
-astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation on which
-the institutions of state and church are erected.
-
-As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of history
-now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the recognition or
-nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the measure of visible
-phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability of the earth, in history
-it is the independence of personality—free will.
-
-As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth
-lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth’s fixity and of
-the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing
-the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and cause
-lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one’s own
-personality. But as in astronomy the new view said: “It is true that we
-do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility
-we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not
-feel) we arrive at laws,” so also in history the new view says: “It is
-true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our
-free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on
-the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws.”
-
-In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an
-unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel;
-in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom
-that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not
-conscious.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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