2.txt

“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.