War and Peace (164 page)

“No, it’s not he. How can you be so absurd!”

“Mamma,” cried Natasha. “On my word of honour, I assure you, it is he. Stop, stop,” she shouted to the coachman; but the coachman could not stop, because more carts and carriages were coming out of Myeshtchansky Street, and people were shouting at the Rostovs to move on, and not to keep the rest of the traffic waiting.

All the Rostovs did, however, though now at a much greater distance, see Pierre, or a man extraordinarily like him, wearing a coachman’s coat, and walking along the street with bent head and a serious face beside a little, beardless old man, who looked like a footman. This old man noticed a face poked out of the carriage window staring at them, and respectfully touching Pierre’s elbow, he said something to him, pointing towards the carriage. It was some time before Pierre understood what he was saying; he was evidently deeply absorbed in his own thoughts. At last he looked in the direction indicated, and recognising Natasha, he moved instantly towards the carriage, as though yielding to the first impulse. But after taking a dozen steps towards it, he stopped short, apparently recollecting something. Natasha’s head beamed out of the carriage window with friendly mockery.

“Pyotr Kirillitch, come here! We recognized you, you see! It’s a wonder!” she cried, stretching out a hand to him. “How is it? Why are you like this?”

Pierre took her outstretched hand, and awkwardly kissed it as he ran beside the still moving carriage.

“What has happened, count?” the countess asked him, in a surprised and commiserating tone.

“Eh? Why? Don’t ask me,” said Pierre, and he looked up at Natasha, the charm of whose radiant, joyous eyes he felt upon him without looking at her.

“What are you doing, or are you staying in Moscow?”

Pierre was silent.

“In Moscow?” he queried. “Yes, in Moscow. Good-bye.”

“Oh, how I wish I were a man, I would stay with you. Ah, how splendid that is!” said Natasha. “Mamma, do let me stay.”

Pierre looked absently at Natasha, and was about to say something, but the countess interrupted him.

“You were at the battle, we have been told.”

“Yes, I was there,” answered Pierre. “To-morrow there will be a battle again …” he was beginning, but Natasha interposed:

“But what is the matter, count? You are not like yourself …”

“Oh, don’t ask me, don’t ask me, I don’t know myself. To-morrow … No! Good-bye; good-bye,” he said; “it’s an awful time!” And he left the carriage and walked away to the pavement.

For a long while Natasha’s head was still thrust out of the carriage window, and she beamed at him with a kindly and rather mocking, joyous smile.

From the time of his disappearance, two days before, Pierre had been living in the empty abode of his dead benefactor, Osip Bazdyev. This was how it had come to pass.

On waking up the morning after his return to Moscow and his interview with Count Rastoptchin, Pierre could not for some time make out where he was and what was expected of him. When the names of the persons waiting to see him were announced to him—among them a Frenchman, who had brought a letter from his wife, the Countess Elena Vassilyevna—he felt suddenly overcome by that sense of the hopelessness and intricacy of his position to which he was particularly liable. He suddenly felt that everything was now at an end, everything was in a muddle, everything was breaking down, that no one was right nor wrong, that there was no future before him, and that there was no possible escape from the position. Smiling unnaturally and muttering to himself, he sat on the sofa in a pose expressive of utter hopelessness, or got up, approached the door, and peeped through the crack into the reception-room, where his visitors were awaiting him, then turned back with a gesture of despair and took up a book. The butler came in for the second time with a message that the Frenchman who had brought the letter from the countess was very desirous of seeing him if only for a minute, and that they had sent from the widow of Osip Alexyevitch
Bazdyev to ask him to take charge of some books, as Madame Bazdyev was going away into the country.

“Oh, yes, in a minute; wait … No, no; go and say, I am coming immediately,” said Pierre.

As soon as the butler had left the room, Pierre had taken up his hat, which was lying on the table, and gone out by the other door. He found no one in the corridor. Pierre walked the whole length of the corridor to the staircase, and frowning and rubbing his forehead with both hands, he went down as far as the first story landing. The porter was standing at the front door. A second staircase led from the landing to the back entrance. Pierre went down the back stairs and out into the yard. No one had seen him. But as soon as he turned out at the gates into the street, the coachman, standing by the carriages, and the gate-porter saw him and took off their caps to him. Aware of their eyes fixed on him, Pierre did, as the ostrich does, hiding its head in a bush to escape being seen; ducking his head and quickening his pace he hurried along the street.

Of all the business awaiting Pierre that morning, the task of sorting the books and papers of Osip Alexyevitch seemed to him the most urgent.

He hailed the first cab-driver he came across, and told him to drive to Patriarch’s Ponds, where was the house of the widow of Bazdyev.

Continually watching the loaded vehicles moving out of Moscow from all directions, and balancing his bulky person carefully not to slip out of the rickety old chaise, Pierre had the happy sensation of a runaway schoolboy, as he chatted with his driver.

The latter told him that to-day arms were being given out in the Kremlin, and that next day every one would be driven out beyond the Three Hills Gate, and there there was to be a great battle.

On reaching the Patriarch’s Ponds, Pierre looked for Bazdyev’s house, where he had not been for a long while past. He went up to a little garden gate. Gerasim, the yellow, beardless old man Pierre had seen five years before at Torzhok with Osip Alexyevitch, came out on hearing him knock.

“At home?” asked Pierre.

“Owing to present circumstances, Sofya Danilovna and her children have gone away into the country, your excellency.”

“I’ll come in, all the same; I want to look through the books,” said Pierre.

“Pray do, you are very welcome; the brother of my late master—the
heavenly kingdom be his!—Makar Alexyevitch has remained, but your honour is aware he is in feeble health,” said the old servant.

Makar Alexyevitch was, as Pierre knew, a brother of Osip Alexyevitch, a half-mad creature, besotted by drink.

“Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in,” said Pierre, and he went into the house. A tall, bald old man in a dressing-gown, with a red nose and goloshes on his bare feet, was standing in the vestibule; seeing Pierre, he muttered something angrily, and walked away into the corridor.

“He was a great intellect, but now, as your honour can see, he has grown feeble,” said Gerasim. “Will you like to go into the study?” Pierre nodded. “As it was sealed up, so it has remained. Sofya Danilovna gave orders that if you sent for the books they were to be handed over.”

Pierre went into the gloomy study, which he had entered with such trepidation in the lifetime of his benefactor. Now covered with dust, and untouched since the death of Osip Alexyevitch, the room was gloomier than ever.

Gerasim opened one blind, and went out of the room on tiptoe. Pierre walked round the study, went up to the bookcase, where the manuscripts were kept, and took one of the most important, at one time a sacred relic of the order. This consisted of the long Scottish acts of the order, with Bazdyev’s notes and commentaries. He sat down to the dusty writing-table and laid the manuscripts down before him, opened and closed them, and at last, pushing them away, sank into thought, with his elbow on the table and his head in his hand.

Several times Gerasim peeped cautiously into the study and saw that Pierre was sitting in the same attitude.

More than two hours passed by. Gerasim ventured to make a slight noise at the door to attract Pierre’s attention. Pierre did not hear him.

“Is the driver to be dismissed, your honour?”

“Oh yes,” said Pierre, waking up from his reverie, and hurriedly getting up. “Listen,” he said, taking Gerasim by the button of his coat and looking down at the old man with moist, shining, eager eyes. “Listen! You know that to-morrow there is to be a battle …”

“They have been saying so …” answered Gerasim.

“I beg you not to tell any one who I am. And do what I tell you . .”

“Certainly, sir,” said Gerasim. “Would your honour like something to eat?”

“No, but I want something else. I want a peasant dress and a pistol,” said Pierre, suddenly flushing red.

“Certainly, sir,” said Gerasim, after a moment’s thought.

All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor’s study, pacing restlessly from one corner to the other, as Gerasim could hear, and talking to himself; and he spent the night on a bed made up for him there.

Gerasim accepted Pierre’s taking up his abode there with the imperturbability of a servant, who had seen many queer things in his time, and he seemed, indeed, pleased at having some one to wait upon. Without even permitting himself to wonder with what object it was wanted, he obtained for Pierre that evening a coachman’s coat and cap, and promised next day to procure the pistol he required. Makar Alexyevitch twice that evening approached the door, shuffling in his goloshes, and stood there, gazing with an ingratiating air at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned to him, he wrapped his dressing-gown round him with a shamefaced and wrathful look, and hastily retreated. Pierre put on the coachman’s coat, procured and carefully fumigated for him by Gerasim, and went out with the latter to buy a pistol at the Suharev Tower. It was there he had met the Rostovs.

On the night of the 1st of September Kutuzov gave the Russian troops the command to fall back across Moscow to the Ryazan road.

The first troops moved that night, marching deliberately and in steady order. But at dawn the retreating troops on reaching the Dorogomilov bridge saw before them, crowding on the other side, and hurrying over the bridge, and blocking the streets and alleys on the same side, and bearing down upon them from behind, immense masses of soldiers. And the troops were overtaken by causeless panic and haste. There was a general rush forward towards the bridge, on to the bridge, to the fords and to the boats. Kutuzov had himself driven by back streets to the other side of Moscow.

At ten o’clock in the morning of the 2nd of September the only troops left in the Dorogomilov suburbs were the regiments of the rearguard, and the crush was over. The army was already on the further side of Moscow, and out of the town altogether.

At the same time, at ten o’clock in the morning of the 2nd of September, Napoleon was standing in the midst of his troops on Poklonny
Hill, gazing at the spectacle that lay before him. From the 26th of August to the 2nd of September, from the day of Borodino to the entrance into Moscow, all that agitating, that memorable week, there had been that extraordinarily beautiful autumn weather, which always comes as a surprise, when though the sun is low in the sky it shines more warmly than in spring, when everything is glistening in the pure, limpid air, so that the eyes are dazzled, while the chest is braced and refreshed inhaling the fragrant autumn air; when the nights even are warm, and when in these dark, warm nights golden stars are continually falling from the sky, to the delight or terror of all who watch them.

At ten o’clock on the 2nd of September the morning light was full of the beauty of fairyland. From Poklonny Hill Moscow lay stretching wide below with her river, her gardens, and her churches, and seemed to be living a life of her own, her cupolas twinkling like stars in the sunlight.

At the sight of the strange town, with its new forms of unfamiliar architecture, Napoleon felt something of that envious and uneasy curiosity that men feel at the sight of the aspects of a strange life, knowing nothing of them. It was clear that that town was teeming with vigorous life. By those indefinable tokens by which one can infallibly tell from a distance a live body from a dead one, Napoleon could detect from Poklonny Hill the throb of life in the town, and could feel, as it were, the breathing of that beautiful, great being. Every Russian gazing at Moscow feels she is the mother; every foreigner gazing at her, and ignorant of her significance as the mother city, must be aware of the feminine character of the town, and Napoleon felt it.

“This Asiatic city with the innumerable churches, Moscow the holy. Here it is at last, the famous city! It was high time,” said Napoleon; and dismounting from his horse he bade them open the plan of Moscow before him, and sent for his interpreter, Lelorme d’Ideville.

“A city occupied by the enemy is like a girl who has lost her honour,” he thought (it was the phrase he had uttered to Tutchkov at Smolensk). And from that point of view he gazed at the Oriental beauty who lay for the first time before his eyes. He felt it strange himself that the desire so long cherished, and thought so impossible, had at last come to pass. In the clear morning light he gazed at the town, and then at the plan, looking up its details, and the certainty of possessing it agitated and awed him.

“But how could it be otherwise?” he thought. “Here is this capital, she lies at my feet awaiting her fate. Where is Alexander now, and what
is he thinking? A strange, beautiful, and grand city! And a strange and grand moment is this! In what light must I appear to them?” he mused, thinking of his soldiers. “Here is the city—the reward for all those of little faith,” he thought, looking round at his suite and the approaching troops, forming into ranks.

“One word of mine, one wave of my arm, and the ancient capital of the Tsar is no more. But my clemency is ever prompt to stoop to the vanquished. I must be magnanimous and truly great. But no, it is not true that I am in Moscow,” the idea suddenly struck him. “She lies at my feet, though, her golden domes and crosses flashing and twinkling in the sun. But I will spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe the great words of justice and mercy … Alexander will feel that more bitterly than anything; I know him.” (It seemed to Napoleon that the chief import of what had happened lay in his personal contest with Alexander.) “From the heights of the Kremlin—yes, that’s the Kremlin, yes—I will dictate to them the laws of justice, I will teach them the meaning of true civilisation, I will make the generations of boyards to enshrine their conqueror’s name in love. I will tell the deputation that I have not sought, and do not seek, war; but I have been waging war only with the deceitful policy of their court; that I love and respect Alexander, and that in Moscow I will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and my peoples. I have no wish to take advantage of the fortune of war to humiliate their honoured Emperor. ‘Boyards,’ I will say to them, ‘I do not seek war; I seek the peace and welfare of all my subjects.’ But I know their presence will inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do, clearly, impressively, and greatly. But can it be true that I am in Moscow! Yes, there she is!”