War and Peace
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