War and Peace (177 page)

The Tsar listened without a word, not looking at Michaud.

“Has the enemy entered the city?” he asked.

“Yes, sire, and by now the city is in ashes. I left it all in flames,” said Michaud resolutely; but glancing at the Tsar, Michaud was horrified at what he had done. The Tsar was breathing hard and rapidly, his lower lip was twitching, and his fine blue eyes were for a moment wet with tears.

But that lasted only a moment. The Tsar suddenly frowned, as though vexed with himself for his own weakness; and raising his head, he addressed Michaud in a firm voice:

“I see, colonel, from all that is happening to us that Providence requires great sacrifices of us. I am ready to submit to His will in everything; but tell me, Michaud, how did you leave the army, seeing my ancient capital thus abandoned without striking a blow? Did you not perceive discouragement?”

Seeing that his most gracious sovereign had regained his composure, Michaud too regained his; but to the Tsar’s direct question of a matter of fact which called for a direct answer, he had not yet an answer ready. “Sire, will you permit me to speak frankly, as a loyal soldier?” he said, to gain time.

“Colonel, I always expect it,” said the Tsar. “Hide nothing from me; I want to know absolutely how it is.”

“Sire!” said Michaud, with a delicate, scarcely perceptible smile on his lips, as he had now had time to prepare his answer in the form of a light and respectful play of words. “Sire! I left the whole army, from the commanders to the lowest soldier without exception, in extreme, in desperate terror.”

“How so?” the Tsar interrupted, frowning sternly. “My Russians let themselves be cast down by misfortune?… Never …”

This was just what Michaud was waiting for to get in his phrases.

“Sire,” he said, with a respectful playfulness of expression, “they fear only that your majesty through goodness of heart may let yourself be persuaded to make peace. They burn to fight,” said the plenipotentiary of the Russian people, “and to prove to your majesty by the sacrifice of their lives how devoted they are …”

“Ah!” said the Tsar, reassured, slapping Michaud on the shoulder, with a friendly light in his eyes. “You tranquillise me, colonel …”

The Tsar looked down, and for some time he was silent. “Well, go back to the army,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height and with a genial and majestic gesture addressing Michaud, “and tell our brave fellows, tell all my good subjects wherever you go, that when I have not a soldier left, I will put myself at the head of my dear nobility, of my good peasants, and so use the last resources of my empire. It offers me still more than my enemies suppose,” said the Tsar, more and more stirred. “But if it should be written in the decrees of divine Providence,” he said, and his fine, mild eyes, shining with emotion, were raised towards heaven, “that my dynasty should cease to reign on the throne of my ancestors, then after exhausting every means in my power, I would let my beard grow to here” (the Tsar put his hand halfway down his
breast), “and go and eat potatoes with the meanest of my peasants rather than sign the shame of my country and my dear people, whose sacrifice I know how to appreciate.” Uttering these words in a voice of much feeling, the Tsar turned quickly away, as though wishing to conceal from Michaud the tears that were starting into his eyes, and he walked to the further end of his study. After standing there some instants, he strode back to Michaud, and with a vigorous action squeezed his arm below the elbow. The Tsar’s fine, mild face was flushed, and his eyes gleamed with energy and anger. “Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you here; perhaps one day we shall recall it with pleasure.… Napoleon or me,” he said, touching his breast, “we can no longer reign together. I have learned to know him. He will not deceive me again …” And the Tsar paused, frowning. Hearing these words, seeing the look of firm determination in the Tsar’s eyes, Michaud, though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul, felt (as he used to recount later) at that solemn moment moved to enthusiasm by what he had just heard; and in the following phrase he sought to give expression to his own feelings and those of the Russian people, whose representative he considered himself to be.

“Sire!” he said, “your majesty is signing at this moment the glory of the nation and the salvation of Europe!”

With a motion of his head the Tsar dismissed Michaud.

While half of Russia was conquered, and the inhabitants of Moscow were fleeing to remote provinces, and one levy of militia after another was being raised for the defence of the country, we, not living at the time, cannot help imagining that all the people in Russia, great and small alike, were engaged in doing nothing else but making sacrifices, saving their country, or weeping over its downfall. The tales and descriptions of that period without exception tell us of nothing but the self-sacrifice, the patriotism, the despair, the grief, and the heroism of the Russians. In reality, it was not at all like that. It seems so to us, because we see out of the past only the general historical interest of that period, and we do not see all the personal human interests of the men of that time. And yet in reality these personal interests of the immediate present are of so much greater importance than public interests, that they prevent the public interest from ever being felt—from being noticed at all, indeed. The
majority of the people of that period took no heed of the general progress of public affairs, and were only influenced by their immediate personal interests. And those very people played the most useful part in the work of the time.

Those who were striving to grasp the general course of events, and trying by self-sacrifice and heroism to take a hand in it, were the most useless members of society; they saw everything upside down, and all that they did with the best intentions turned out to be useless folly, like Pierre’s regiment, and Mamonov’s, that spent their time pillaging the Russian villages, like the lint scraped by the ladies, that never reached the wounded, and so on. Even those who, being fond of talking on intellectual subjects and expressing their feelings, discussed the position of Russia, unconsciously imported into their talk a shade of hypocrisy or falsity or else of useless fault-finding and bitterness against persons, whom they blamed for what could be nobody’s fault.

In historical events we see more plainly than ever the law that forbids us to taste of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It is only unself-conscious activity that bears fruit, and the man who plays a part in an historical drama never understands its significance. If he strives to comprehend it, he is stricken with barrenness

The significance of the drama taking place in Russia at that time was the less easy to grasp, the closer the share a man was taking in it. In Petersburg, and in the provinces remote from Moscow, ladies and gentlemen in volunteer uniforms bewailed the fate of Russia and the ancient capital, and talked of self-sacrifice, and so on. But in the army, which had retreated behind Moscow, men scarcely talked or thought at all about Moscow, and, gazing at the burning city, no one swore to be avenged on the French, but every one was thinking of the next quarter’s pay due to him, of the next halting-place, of Matryoshka the canteen-woman, and so on.

Nikolay Rostov, without any idea of self-sacrifice, simply because the war had happened to break out before he left the service, took an immediate and continuous part in the defence of his country, and consequently he looked upon what was happening in Russia without despair or gloomy prognostications. If he had been asked what he thought of the present position of Russia, he would have said that it was not his business to think about it, that that was what Kutuzov and the rest of them were for, but that he had heard that the regiments were being filled up to their full complements, and that they must therefore be going to fight for a
good time longer, and that under the present circumstances he might pretty easily obtain the command of a regiment within a couple of years.

Since this was his point of view, it was with no regret at taking no part in the approaching battle, but with the greatest satisfaction—which he did not conceal, and his comrades fully understood—that he received the news of his appointment to go to Voronezh to purchase remounts for his division.

A few days before the battle of Borodino, Nikolay received the sums of money and official warrants required, and, sending some hussars on before him, he drove with posting-horses to Voronezh.

Only one who has had the same experience—that is, has spent several months continuously in the atmosphere of an army in the field—can imagine the delight Nikolay felt when he got out of the region overspread by the troops with their foraging parties, trains of provisions, and hospitals; when he saw no more soldiers, army waggons, and filthy traces of the camp, but villages of peasants and peasant women, gentlemen’s country houses, fields with grazing oxen, and station-houses and sleepy overseers, he rejoiced as though he were seeing it all for the first time. What in particular remained for a long while a wonder and a joy to him was the sight of women, young and healthy, without dozens of officers hanging about every one of them; and women, too, who were pleased and flattered at an officer’s cracking jokes with them.

In the happiest frame of mind, Nikolay reached the hotel at Voronezh at night, ordered everything of which he had so long been deprived in the army, and next day, after shaving with special care and putting on the full-dress uniform he had not worn for so long past, he drove off to present himself to the authorities.

The commander of the militia of the district was a civilian general, an old gentleman, who evidently found amusement in his military duties and rank. He gave Nikolay a brusque reception (supposing that this was the military manner), and cross-examining him with an important air, as though he had a right to do so, he expressed his approval and disapproval, as though called upon to give his verdict on the management of the war. Nikolay was in such high spirits that this only amused him.

From the commander of militia, he went to the governor’s. The governor was a brisk little man, very affable and unpretentious. He mentioned to Nikolay the stud-farms, where he might obtain horses, recommended him to a horse-dealer in the town, and a gentleman living
twenty versts from the town, who had the best horses, and promised him every assistance.

“You are Count Ilya Andreitch’s son? My wife was a great friend of your mamma’s. We receive on Thursdays: to-day is Thursday, pray come in, quite without ceremony,” said the governor, as he took leave of him.

Nikolay took a posting carriage, and making his quartermaster get in beside him, galloped straight off from the governor’s to the gentleman with the stud of fine horses twenty versts away.

During the early days of his stay in Voronezh, everything seemed easy and pleasant to Nikolay, and, as is always the case, when a man is himself in a happy frame of mind, everything went well and prospered with him.

The country gentleman turned out to be an old cavalry officer, a bachelor, a great horse-fancier, a sportsman, and the owner of a smoking-room, of hundred-year-old herb-brandy, of some old Hungarian wine, and of superb horses.

In a couple of words, Nikolay had bought for six thousand roubles seventeen stallions, all perfect examples of their several breeds (as he said), as show specimens of his remounts. After dining and drinking a glass or so too much of the Hungarian wine, Rostov, exchanging kisses with the country gentleman, with whom he was already on the friendliest terms, galloped back over the most atrociously bad road in the happiest frame of mind, continually urging the driver on, so that he might be in time for the
soirée
at the governor’s.

After dressing, scenting himself, and douching his head with cold water, Nikolay made his appearance at the governor’s, a little late, but with the phrase, “Better late than never,” ready on the tip of his tongue.

It was not a ball, and nothing had been said about dancing; but every one knew that Katerina Petrovna would play waltzes and écossaises on the clavichord, and that there would be dancing, and every one reckoning on it, had come dressed for a ball.

Provincial life in the year 1812 went on exactly the same as always, the only difference being that the provincial towns were livelier owing to the presence of many wealthy families from Moscow, that, as in everything going on at that time in Russia, there was perceptible in the gaiety a certain devil-may-care, desperate recklessness, and also that the small talk indispensable between people was now not about the weather and common acquaintances, but about Moscow and the army and Napoleon.

The gathering at the governor’s consisted of the best society in Voronezh.

There were a great many ladies, among them several Moscow acquaintances of Nikolay’s; but among the men there was no one who could be compared with the cavalier of St. George, the gallant hussar, the good-natured, well-bred Count Rostov. Among the men there was an Italian prisoner—an officer of the French army; and Nikolay felt that the presence of this prisoner gave an added lustre to him—the Russian hero. He was, as it were, a trophy of victory. Nikolay felt this, and it seemed to him as though every one looked at the Italian in the same light, and he treated the foreign officer with gracious dignity and reserve.

As soon as Nikolay came in in his full-dress uniform of an officer of hussars, diffusing a fragrance of scent and wine about him, and said himself and heard several times said to him, the words, “Better late than never,” people clustered round him. All eyes were turned on him, and he felt at once that he had stepped into a position that just suited him in a provincial town—a position always agreeable, but now after his long privation of such gratifications, intoxicatingly delightful—that of a universal favourite. Not only at the posting-stations, at the taverns, and in the smoking-room of the horse-breeding gentleman, had he found servant-girls flattered by his attention, but here, at the governor’s assembly, there were (so it seemed to Nikolay) an inexhaustible multitude of young married ladies and pretty girls, who were only waiting with impatience for him to notice them. The ladies and the young girls flirted with him, and the old people began even from this first evening bestirring themselves to try and get this gallant young rake of an hussar married and settled down. Among the latter was the governor’s wife herself, who received Rostov as though he were a near kinsman, and called him “Nikolay.”