War and Peace (171 page)

Pierre answered that he would not tell him his name, and was beginning with a blush, while trying to invent a name, to speak of the reasons for which he was unable to do so, but the Frenchman hurriedly interrupted him.

“Enough!” he said. “I understand your reasons; you are an officer … a staff officer, perhaps. You have borne arms against us. That’s not my business. I owe you my life. That’s enough for me. I am at your disposal. You are a nobleman?” he added, with an intonation of inquiry. Pierre bowed.

“Your baptismal name, if you please? I ask nothing more. M. Pierre, you say? Perfect! That’s all I want to know.”

When they had brought in the mutton, an omelette, a samovar, vodka, and wine from a Russian cellar brought with them by the French, Ramballe begged Pierre to share his dinner; and at once with the haste and greediness of a healthy, hungry man, set to work on the viands himself, munching vigorously with his strong teeth, and continually smacking his lips and exclaiming,
“Excellent! exquis!”
His face became flushed and perspiring.
Pierre was hungry, and pleased to share the repast. Morel, the orderly, brought in a pot of hot water, and put a bottle of red wine to warm in it. He brought in too a bottle of kvass from the kitchen for them to taste. This beverage was already known to the French, and had received a nickname. They called it
limonade de cochon
, and Morel praised this “pigs’ lemonade,” which he had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they had picked up as they crossed Moscow, he left the kvass for Morel, and attacked the bottle of bordeaux. He wrapped a napkin round the bottle, and poured out wine for himself and Pierre. The wine, and the satisfaction of his hunger, made the captain even more lively, and he chatted away without a pause all dinner-time.

“Yes, my dear M. Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for saving me from that maniac. I have bullets enough in my body, you know. Here is one from Wagram” (he pointed to his side), “and two from Smolensk” (he showed the scar on his cheek). “And this leg which won’t walk, as you see. It was at the great battle of la Moskowa on the 7th that I got that.
Sacré Dieu
, it was fine! You ought to have seen that; it was a deluge of fire. You cut us out a tough job; you can boast of that, my word on it! And on my word, in spite of the cough I caught, I should be ready to begin again. I pity those who did not see it.”

“I was there,” said Pierre.

“Really!” pursued the Frenchman. “Well, so much the better. You are fine enemies, though. The great redoubt was well held, by my pipe. And you made us pay heavily for it too. I was at it three times, as I’m sitting here. Three times we were upon the cannons, and three times we were driven back like cardboard figures. Oh, it was fine, M. Pierre. Your grenadiers were superb, God’s thunder. I saw them six times in succession close the ranks and march as though on parade. Fine fellows. Our king of Naples, who knows all about it, cried, Bravo! Ah, ah, soldiers like ourselves,” he said after a moment’s silence. “So much the better, so much the better, M. Pierre. Terrible in war … gallant, with the fair” (he winked with a smile)—“there you have the French, M. Pierre, eh?”

The captain was so naïvely and good-humouredly gay and obtuse and self-satisfied that Pierre almost winked in response, as he looked good-humouredly at him. Probably the word “gallant” brought the captain to reflect on the state of things in Moscow.

“By the way, tell me, is it true that all the women have left Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to fear?”

“Would not the French ladies quit Paris, if the Russians were to enter it?” said Pierre.

“Ha—ha—ha!…” The Frenchman gave vent to a gay, sanguine chuckle, slapping Pierre on the shoulder. “That’s a good one, that is,” he went on. “Paris … But Paris …”

“Paris is the capital of the world,” said Pierre, finishing the sentence for him.

The captain looked at Pierre. He had the habit of stopping short in the middle of conversation, and staring intently with his laughing genial eyes.

“Well, if you had not told me you are a Russian, I would have wagered you were a Parisian. You have that indescribable something …” and uttering this compliment, he again gazed at him mutely.

“I have been in Paris. I spent years there,” said Pierre.

“One can see that! Paris! A man who does not know Paris is a savage … A Parisian can be told two leagues off. Paris—it is Talma, la Duschénois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards.” Perceiving that the conclusion of his phrase was somewhat of an anticlimax, he added hurriedly, “There is only one Paris in the world.… You have been in Paris, and you remain Russian. Well, I don’t think the less of you for that.”

After the days he had spent alone with his gloomy thoughts, Pierre, under the influence of the wine he had drunk, could not help taking pleasure in conversing with this good-humoured and naïve person.

“To return to your ladies, they are said to be beautiful. What a silly idea to go and bury themselves in the steppes, when the French army is in Moscow. What a chance they have lost. Your peasants are different; but you civilised people ought to know better than that. We have taken Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome, Warsaw—all the capitals in the world. We are feared, but we are loved. We are worth knowing. And then the Emperor …” he was beginning, but Pierre interrupted him.

“The Emperor,” repeated Pierre, and his face suddenly wore a mournful and embarrassed look. “What of the Emperor?”

“The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius—that is the Emperor. It is I, Ramballe, who tell you that. I was his enemy eight years ago. My father was an emigrant count. But he has conquered me, that man. He has taken hold of me. I could not resist the spectacle of the greatness and glory with which he was covering France. When I understood what he wanted, when I saw he was preparing a bed of laurels for
us, I said to myself: ‘That is a monarch.’ And I gave myself up to him. Oh yes, he is the greatest man of the centuries, past and to come.”

“And is he in Moscow?” Pierre asked, hesitating and looking guilty.

The Frenchman gazed at Pierre’s guilty face, and grinned.

“No, he will make his entry to-morrow,” he said, and went on with his talk.

Their conversation was interrupted by several voices shouting at the gates, and Morel coming in to tell the captain that some Würtemberg hussars had come and wanted to put up their horses in the yard in which the captain’s had been put up. The difficulty arose chiefly from the hussars not understanding what was said to them.

The captain bade the senior sergeant be brought to him, and in a stern voice asked him to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding officer, and on what pretext he dared attempt to occupy quarters already occupied. The German, who knew very little French, succeeded in answering the first two questions, but in reply to the last one, which he did not understand, he answered in broken French and German that he was quartermaster of the regiment, and had received orders from his superior officer to occupy all the houses in the row. Pierre, who knew German, translated the German’s words to the captain, and translated the captain’s answer back for the Würtemberg hussar. On understanding what was said to him, the German gave in, and took his men away.

The captain went out to the entrance and gave some loud commands.

When he came back into the room, Pierre was sitting where he had been sitting before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He really was at that moment suffering. As soon as the captain had gone out, and Pierre had been left alone, he suddenly came to himself, and recognised the position he was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken, not that these lucky conquerors were making themselves at home there and patronising him, bitterly as Pierre felt it, that tortured him at that moment. He was tortured by the consciousness of his own weakness. The few glasses of wine he had drunk, the chat with this good-natured fellow, had dissipated that mood of concentrated gloom, which he had been living in for the last few days, and which was essential for carrying out his design. The pistol and the dagger and the peasant’s coat were ready, Napoleon was making his entry on the morrow. Pierre felt it as praiseworthy and as beneficial as ever to slay the miscreant; but he felt now that he would not do it. He struggled against the
consciousness of his own weakness, but he vaguely felt that he could not overcome it, that his past gloomy train of ideas, of vengeance, murder, and self-sacrifice, had been blown away like dust at contact with the first human being.

The captain came into the room, limping a little, and whistling some tune.

The Frenchman’s chatter that had amused Pierre struck him now as revolting. And his whistling a tune, and his gait, and his gesture in twisting his moustaches, all seemed insulting to Pierre now.

“I’ll go away at once, I won’t say another word to him,” thought Pierre. He thought this, yet went on sitting in the same place. Some strange feeling of weakness riveted him to his place; he longed to get up and go, and could not.

The captain, on the contrary, seemed in exceedingly good spirits. He walked a couple of times up and down the room. His eyes sparkled and his moustaches slightly twitched as though he were smiling to himself at some amusing notion.

“Charming fellow the colonel of these Würtembergers,” he said all at once. “He’s a German, but a good fellow if ever there was one. But a German.”

He sat down facing Pierre.

“By the way, you know German?”

Pierre looked at him in silence.

“How do you say ‘
asile
’ in German?”

“
Asile?
” repeated Pierre. “
Asile
in German is
Unterkunft
.”

“What do you say?” the captain queried quickly and doubtfully.

“
Unterkunft
,” repeated Pierre.

“
Onterkoff
,” said the captain, and for several seconds he looked at Pierre with his laughing eyes. “The Germans are awful fools, aren’t they, M. Pierre?” he concluded.

“Well, another bottle of this Moscow claret, eh? Morel, warm us another bottle!” the captain shouted gaily.

Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain looked at Pierre in the candle-light, and was obviously struck by the troubled face of his companion. With genuine regret and sympathy in his face, Ramballe approached Pierre, and bent over him.

“Eh, we are sad!” he said, touching Pierre on the hand. “Can I have hurt you? No, really, have you anything against me?” he questioned. “Perhaps it is owing to the situation of affairs?”

Pierre made no reply, but looked cordially into the Frenchman’s eyes. This expression of sympathy was pleasant to him.

“My word of honour, to say nothing of what I owe you, I have a liking for you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and death. With my hand and my heart, I say so,” he said, slapping himself on the chest.

“Thank you,” said Pierre. The captain gazed at Pierre as he had gazed at him when he learnt the German for “refuge,” and his face suddenly brightened.

“Ah, in that case, I drink to our friendship,” he cried gaily, pouring out two glasses of wine.

Pierre took the glass and emptied it. Ramballe emptied his, pressed Pierre’s hand once more, and leaned his elbow on the table in a pose of pensive melancholy.

“Yes, my dear friend, such are the freaks of fortune,” he began. “Who would have said I should be a soldier and captain of dragoons in the service of Bonaparte, as we used to call him. And yet here I am at Moscow with him. I must tell you, my dear fellow,” he continued in the mournful and measured voice of a man who intends to tell a long story, “our name is one of the most ancient in France.”

And with the easy and naïve unreserve of a Frenchman, the captain told Pierre the history of his forefathers, his childhood, boyhood, and manhood, and all his relations, his fortunes, and domestic affairs. “
Ma pauvre mère
,” took, of course, a prominent part in this recital.

“But all that is only the setting of life; the real thing is love. Love! Eh, M. Pierre?” he said, warming up. “Another glass.”

Pierre again emptied his glass, and filled himself a third.

“O women! women!” and the captain, gazing with moist eyes at Pierre, began talking of love and his adventures with the fair sex. They were very numerous, as might readily be believed, judging from the officer’s conceited, handsome face and the eager enthusiasm with which he talked of women. Although all Ramballe’s accounts of his love affairs were characterised by that peculiar nastiness in which the French find the unique charm and poetry of love, the captain told his stories with such genuine conviction that he was the only man who had tasted and known all the sweets of love, and he described the women he had known in such an alluring fashion that Pierre listened to him with curiosity.

It was evident that
l’amour
the Frenchman was so fond of was neither that low and simple kind of love Pierre had at one time felt for his
wife, nor the romantic love, exaggerated by himself, that he felt for Natasha. For both those kinds of love Ramballe had an equal contempt—one was
l’amour des charretiers
, the other
l’amour des nigauds. L’amour
for which the Frenchman had a weakness consisted principally in an unnatural relation to the woman, and in combinations of monstrous circumstances which lent the chief charm to the feeling.

Thus the captain related the touching history of his love for a fascinating marquise of five-and-thirty, and at the same time for a charming, innocent child of seventeen, the daughter of the fascinating marquise. The conflict of generosity between mother and daughter, ending in the mother sacrificing herself and offering her daughter in marriage to her lover, even now, though it was a memory in the remote past, moved the captain deeply. Then he related an episode in which the husband played the part of the lover, and he—the lover—the part of the husband, and several comic episodes among his reminiscences of Germany, where
Unterkunft
means
asile
, where the husbands eat cabbage soup, and where the young girls are too flaxen-haired.