War and Peace (57 page)

At the beginning of March the old count, Ilya Andreivitch Rostov, was very busily engaged in arranging a dinner at the English Club, to be given in honour of Prince Bagration.

The count, in his dressing-gown, was continually walking up and down in the big hall, seeing the club manager, the celebrated Feoktista, and the head cook, and giving them instructions relative to asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish, for Prince Bagration’s dinner. From the day of its foundation, the count had been a member of the club, and was its steward. He had been entrusted with the organisation of the banquet to Bagration by the club, because it would have been hard to find any one so well able to organise a banquet on a large and hospitable scale, and still more hard to find any one so able and willing to advance his own money, if funds were needed, for the organisation of the fête. The cook and the club manager listened to the count’s orders with good-humoured faces, because they knew that with no one better than with him could one make a handsome profit out of a dinner costing several thousands.

“Well, then, mind there are scallops, scallops in pie-crust, you know.”

“Cold
entrées
, I suppose—three?…” questioned the cook.

The count pondered.

“Couldn’t do with less, three … 
mayonnaise
, one,” he said, crooking his finger.

“Then it’s your excellency’s order to take the big sturgeons?” asked the manager.

“Yes; it can’t be helped, we must take them, if they won’t knock the price down. Ah, mercy on us, I was forgetting. Of course we must have another
entrée
on the table. Ah, good heavens!” he clutched at his head. “And who’s going to get me the flowers? Mitenka! Hey, Mitenka! You gallop, Mitenka,” he said to the steward who came in at his call, “you gallop off to the Podmoskovny estate” (the count’s property in the environs of Moscow), “and tell Maksimka the gardener to set the serfs to work to get decorations from the greenhouses. Tell him everything from his conservatories is to be brought here, and is to be packed in felt. And that I’m to have two hundred pots here by Friday.”

After giving further and yet further directions of all sorts, he was just going off to the countess to rest from his labours, but he recollected something else, turned back himself, brought the cook and manager back, and began giving orders again. They heard in the doorway a light, manly tread and a jingling of spurs, and the young count came in, handsome and rosy, with his darkening moustache, visibly sleeker and in better trim for his easy life in Moscow.

“Ah, my boy! my head’s in a whirl,” said the old gentleman, with a somewhat shamefaced smile at his son. “You might come to my aid! We have still the singers to get, you see. The music is all settled, but shouldn’t we order some gypsy singers? You military gentlemen are fond of that sort of thing.”

“Upon my word, papa, I do believe that Prince Bagration made less fuss over getting ready for the battle of Schöngraben than you are making now,” said his son, smiling.

The old count pretended to be angry.

“Well, you talk, you try!” And the count turned to the cook, who with a shrewd and respectful face looked observantly and sympathetically from father to son.

“What are the young people coming to, eh, Feoktista?” said he; “they laugh at us old fellows!”

“To be sure, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good dinner, but to arrange it all and serve it up, that’s no affair of theirs!”

“True, true!” cried the count; and gaily seizing his son by both hands, he cried: “Do you know now I’ve got hold of you! Take a sledge and pair
this minute and drive off to Bezuhov, and say that Count Ilya Andreivitch has sent, say, to ask him for strawberries and fresh pineapples. There’s no getting them from any one else. If he’s not at home himself, you go in and give the message to the princesses; and, I say, from there you drive off to the Gaiety—Ipatka the coachman knows the place—and look up Ilyushka there, the gypsy who danced at Count Orlov’s, do you remember, in a white Cossack dress, and bring him here to me.”

“And bring his gypsy girls here with him?” asked Nikolay, laughing.

“Come, come!…”

At this moment Anna Mihalovna stepped noiselessly into the room with that air of Christian meekness, mingled with practical and anxious preoccupation, that never left her face. Although Anna Mihalovna came upon the count in his dressing-gown every day, he was invariably disconcerted at her doing so, and apologised for his costume.

“Don’t mention it, my dear count,” she said, closing her eyes meekly. “I am just going to see Bezuhov,” she said. “Young Bezuhov has arrived, and now we shall get all we want, count, from his greenhouses. I was wanting to see him on my own account, too. He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is now on the staff.”

The count was overjoyed at Anna Mihalovna’s undertaking one part of his commissions, and gave orders for the carriage to be brought round for her.

“Tell Bezuhov to come. I’ll put his name down. Brought his wife with him?” he asked.

Anna Mihalovna turned up her eyes, and an expression of profound sadness came into her face.

“Ah, my dear, he’s very unhappy,” she said. “If it’s true what we have been hearing, it’s awful. How little did we think of this when we were rejoicing in happiness! and such a lofty, angelic nature, that young Bezuhov! Yes, I pity him from my soul, and will do my utmost to give him any consolation in my power.”

“Why, what is the matter?” inquired both the Rostovs, young and old together.

Anna Mihalovna heaved a deep sigh.

“Dolohov, Marya Ivanovna’s son,” she said in a mysterious whisper, “has, they say, utterly compromised her. He brought him forward, invited him to his house in Petersburg, and now this!… She has come here, and that scapegrace has come after her,” said Anna Mihalovna. She wished to express nothing but sympathy with Pierre, but in her involuntary
intonations and half smile, she betrayed her sympathy with the scapegrace, as she called Dolohov. “Pierre himself, they say, is utterly crushed by his trouble.”

“Well, any way, tell him to come to the club—it will divert his mind. It will be a banquet on a grand scale.”

On the next day, the 3rd of March, at about two in the afternoon, the two hundred and fifty members of the English Club and fifty of their guests were awaiting the arrival of their honoured guest, the hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagration.

On receiving the news of the defeat of Austerlitz, all Moscow had at first been thrown into bewilderment. At that period the Russians were so used to victories, that on receiving news of a defeat, some people were simply incredulous, while others sought an explanation of so strange an event in exceptional circumstances of some kind. At the English Club, where every one of note, every one who had authentic information and weight gathered together, during December, when the news began to arrive, not a word was said about the war and about the last defeat; it was as though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The men who took the lead in conversation at the club, such as Count Rostoptchin, Prince Yury Vladimirovitch Dolgoruky, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemsky, did not put in an appearance at the club, but met together in their intimate circles at each other’s houses.

That section of Moscow society which took its opinions from others (to which, indeed, Count Ilya Andreivitch Rostov belonged) remained for a short time without leaders and without definite views upon the progress of the war. People felt in Moscow that something was wrong, and that it was difficult to know what to think of the bad news, and so better to be silent. But a little later, like jurymen coming out of their consultation room, the leaders reappeared to give their opinion in the club, and a clear and definite formula was found. Causes had been discovered to account for the fact—so incredible, unheard-of, and impossible—that the Russians had been beaten, and all became clear, and the same version was repeated from one end of Moscow to the other. These causes were: the treachery of the Austrians; the defective commissariat; the treachery of the Pole Przhebyshevsky and the Frenchman Langeron; the incapacity of Kutuzov; and (this was murmured in subdued tones) the youth and inexperience of the Emperor, who had put faith in men of no character and ability. But the army, the Russian army, said every one, had been extraordinary, and had performed miracles of valour. The soldiers,
the officers, the generals—all were heroes. But the hero among heroes was Prince Bagration, who had distinguished himself in his Schöngraben engagement and in the retreat from Austerlitz, where he alone had withdrawn his column in good order, and had succeeded in repelling during the whole day an enemy twice as numerous. What contributed to Bagration’s being chosen for the popular hero at Moscow was the fact that he was an outsider, that he had no connections in Moscow. In his person they could do honour to the simple fighting Russian soldier, unsupported by connections and intrigues, and still associated by memories of the Italian campaign with the name of Suvorov. And besides, bestowing upon him such honours was the best possible way of showing their dislike and disapproval of Kutuzov.

“If there had been no Bagration, somebody would have to invent him,” said the wit, Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire.

Of Kutuzov people did not speak at all, or whispered abuse of him, calling him the court weathercock and the old satyr.

All Moscow was repeating the words of Prince Dolgorukov: “Chop down trees enough and you’re bound to cut your finger,” which in our defeat suggested a consolatory reminder of former victories, and the saying of Rostoptchin, that French soldiers have to be excited to battle by high-sounding phrases; that Germans must have it logically proved to them that it is more dangerous to run away than to go forward; but that all Russian soldiers need is to be held back and urged not to be too reckless! New anecdotes were continually to be heard on every side of individual feats of gallantry performed by our officers and men at Austerlitz. Here a man had saved a flag, another had killed five Frenchmen, another had kept five cannons loaded single-handed. The story was told of Berg, by those who did not know him, that wounded in his right hand, he had taken his sword in his left and charged on the enemy. Nothing was said about Bolkonsky, and only those who had known him intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a wife with child, and his queer old father.

On the 3rd of March all the rooms of the English Club were full of the hum of voices, and the members and guests of the club, in uniforms and frock-coats, some even in powder and Russian kaftans, were standing
meeting, parting, and running to and fro like bees swarming in spring. Powdered footmen in livery, wearing slippers and stockings, stood at every door, anxiously trying to follow every movement of the guests and club members, so as to proffer their services. The majority of those present were elderly and respected persons, with broad, self-confident faces, fat fingers, and resolute gestures and voices. Guests and members of this class sat in certain habitual places, and met together in certain habitual circles. A small proportion of those present were casual guests—chiefly young men, among them Denisov, Rostov, and Dolohov, who was now an officer in the Semyonovsky regiment again. The faces of the younger men, especially the officers, wore that expression of condescending deference to their elders which seems to say to the older generation, “Respect and deference we are prepared to give you, but remember all the same the future is for us.” Nesvitsky, an old member of the club, was there too. Pierre, who at his wife’s command had let his hair grow and left off spectacles, was walking about the rooms dressed in the height of the fashion, but looking melancholy and depressed. Here, as everywhere, he was surrounded by the atmosphere of people paying homage to his wealth, and he behaved to them with the careless, contemptuous air of sovereignty that had become habitual with him.

In years, he belonged to the younger generation, but by his wealth and connections he was a member of the older circles, and so he passed from one set to the other. The most distinguished of the elder members formed the centres of circles, which even strangers respectfully approached to listen to the words of well-known men. The larger groups were formed round Count Rostoptchin, Valuev, and Naryshkin. Rostoptchin was describing how the Russians had been trampled underfoot by the fleeing Austrians, and had had to force a way with the bayonet through the fugitives. Valuev was confidentially informing his circle that Uvarov had been sent from Petersburg to ascertain the state of opinion in Moscow in regard to Austerlitz.

In the third group Naryshkin was repeating the tale of the meeting of the Austrian council of war, at which, in reply to the stupidity of the Austrian general, Suvorov crowed like a cock. Shinshin, who stood near, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutuzov, it seemed, had not even been able to learn from Suvorov that not very difficult art of crowing like a cock—but the elder club members looked sternly at the wit, giving him thereby to understand that even such a reference to Kutuzov was out of place on that day.

Count Ilya Andreitch Rostov kept anxiously hurrying in his soft boots to and fro from the dining-room to the drawing-room, giving hasty greetings to important and unimportant persons, all of whom he knew, and all of whom he treated alike, on an equal footing. Now and then his eyes sought out the graceful, dashing figure of his young son, rested gleefully on him, and winked to him. Young Rostov was standing at the window with Dolohov, whose acquaintance he had lately made, and greatly prized. The old count went up to them, and shook hands with Dolohov.

“I beg you will come and see us; so you’re a friend of my youngster’s … been together, playing the hero together out there.… Ah! Vassily Ignatitch … a good day to you, old man,” he turned to an old gentleman who had just come in, but before he had time to finish his greetings to him there was a general stir, and a footman running in with an alarmed countenance, announced: “He has arrived!”