War and Peace
previously had listened to the discussion at the Austerlitz council of
war. He evidently listened only because he had ears which, though there
was a piece of tow in one of them, could not help hearing; but it
was evident that nothing the general could say would surprise or even
interest him, that he knew all that would be said beforehand, and heard
it all only because he had to, as one has to listen to the chanting of
a service of prayer. All that Denísov had said was clever and to the
point. What the general was saying was even more clever and to
the point, but it was evident that Kutúzov despised knowledge
and cleverness, and knew of something else that would decide the
matter—something independent of cleverness and knowledge. Prince
Andrew watched the commander in chief’s face attentively, and the only
expression he could see there was one of boredom, curiosity as to the
meaning of the feminine whispering behind the door, and a desire to
observe propriety. It was evident that Kutúzov despised cleverness and
learning and even the patriotic feeling shown by Denísov, but despised
them not because of his own intellect, feelings, or knowledge—he did not
try to display any of these—but because of something else. He despised
them because of his old age and experience of life. The only instruction
Kutúzov gave of his own accord during that report referred to looting by
the Russian troops. At the end of the report the general put before
him for signature a paper relating to the recovery of payment from army
commanders for green oats mown down by the soldiers, when landowners
lodged petitions for compensation.
After hearing the matter, Kutúzov smacked his lips together and shook
his head.
“Into the stove... into the fire with it! I tell you once for all, my
dear fellow,” said he, “into the fire with all such things! Let them cut
the crops and burn wood to their hearts’ content. I don’t order it
or allow it, but I don’t exact compensation either. One can’t get on
without it. ‘When wood is chopped the chips will fly.’” He looked at the
paper again. “Oh, this German precision!” he muttered, shaking his head.
CHAPTER XVI
“Well, that’s all!” said Kutúzov as he signed the last of the documents,
and rising heavily and smoothing out the folds in his fat white neck he
moved toward the door with a more cheerful expression.
The priest’s wife, flushing rosy red, caught up the dish she had after
all not managed to present at the right moment, though she had so long
been preparing for it, and with a low bow offered it to Kutúzov.
He screwed up his eyes, smiled, lifted her chin with his hand, and said:
“Ah, what a beauty! Thank you, sweetheart!”
He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and put them on the
dish for her. “Well, my dear, and how are we getting on?” he asked,
moving to the door of the room assigned to him. The priest’s wife
smiled, and with dimples in her rosy cheeks followed him into the room.
The adjutant came out to the porch and asked Prince Andrew to lunch with
him. Half an hour later Prince Andrew was again called to Kutúzov.
He found him reclining in an armchair, still in the same unbuttoned
overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he closed as Prince
Andrew entered, marking the place with a knife. Prince Andrew saw by the
cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.
“Well, sit down, sit down here. Let’s have a talk,” said Kutúzov. “It’s
sad, very sad. But remember, my dear fellow, that I am a father to you,
a second father....”
Prince Andrew told Kutúzov all he knew of his father’s death, and what
he had seen at Bald Hills when he passed through it.
“What... what they have brought us to!” Kutúzov suddenly cried in an
agitated voice, evidently picturing vividly to himself from Prince
Andrew’s story the condition Russia was in. “But give me time, give me
time!” he said with a grim look, evidently not wishing to continue this
agitating conversation, and added: “I sent for you to keep you with me.”
“I thank your Serene Highness, but I fear I am no longer fit for the
staff,” replied Prince Andrew with a smile which Kutúzov noticed.
Kutúzov glanced inquiringly at him.
“But above all,” added Prince Andrew, “I have grown used to my regiment,
am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men also like me. I should be
sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of being with you,
believe me...”
A shrewd, kindly, yet subtly derisive expression lit up Kutúzov’s podgy
face. He cut Bolkónski short.
“I am sorry, for I need you. But you’re right, you’re right! It’s not
here that men are needed. Advisers are always plentiful, but men are
not. The regiments would not be what they are if the would-be advisers
served there as you do. I remember you at Austerlitz.... I remember,
yes, I remember you with the standard!” said Kutúzov, and a flush of
pleasure suffused Prince Andrew’s face at this recollection.
Taking his hand and drawing him downwards, Kutúzov offered his cheek to
be kissed, and again Prince Andrew noticed tears in the old man’s eyes.
Though Prince Andrew knew that Kutúzov’s tears came easily, and that he
was particularly tender to and considerate of him from a wish to
show sympathy with his loss, yet this reminder of Austerlitz was both
pleasant and flattering to him.
“Go your way and God be with you. I know your path is the path of
honor!” He paused. “I missed you at Bucharest, but I needed someone to
send.” And changing the subject, Kutúzov began to speak of the Turkish
war and the peace that had been concluded. “Yes, I have been much
blamed,” he said, “both for that war and the peace... but everything
came at the right time. Tout vient à point à celui qui sait attendre. *
And there were as many advisers there as here...” he went on, returning
to the subject of “advisers” which evidently occupied him. “Ah, those
advisers!” said he. “If we had listened to them all we should not have
made peace with Turkey and should not have been through with that war.
Everything in haste, but more haste, less speed. Kámenski would have
been lost if he had not died. He stormed fortresses with thirty thousand
men. It is not difficult to capture a fortress but it is difficult to
win a campaign. For that, not storming and attacking but patience and
time are wanted. Kámenski sent soldiers to Rustchuk, but I only employed
these two things and took more fortresses than Kámenski and made them
Turks eat horseflesh!” He swayed his head. “And the French shall too,
believe me,” he went on, growing warmer and beating his chest, “I’ll
make them eat horseflesh!” And tears again dimmed his eyes.
* “Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.”
“But shan’t we have to accept battle?” remarked Prince Andrew.
“We shall if everybody wants it; it can’t be helped.... But believe
me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and
time, they will do it all. But the advisers n’entendent pas de cette
oreille, voilà le mal. * Some want a thing—others don’t. What’s one to
do?” he asked, evidently expecting an answer. “Well, what do you want
us to do?” he repeated and his eye shone with a deep, shrewd look.
“I’ll tell you what to do,” he continued, as Prince Andrew still did not
reply: “I will tell you what to do, and what I do. Dans le doute, mon
cher,” he paused, “abstiens-toi” *(2)—he articulated the French proverb
deliberately.
* “Don’t see it that way, that’s the trouble.”
* (2) “When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing.”
“Well, good-by, my dear fellow; remember that with all my heart I share
your sorrow, and that for you I am not a Serene Highness, nor a prince,
nor a commander in chief, but a father! If you want anything come
straight to me. Good-by, my dear boy.”
Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but before the latter
had left the room Kutúzov gave a sigh of relief and went on with his
unfinished novel, Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.
Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why it was, but after that
interview with Kutúzov he went back to his regiment reassured as to
the general course of affairs and as to the man to whom it had been
entrusted. The more he realized the absence of all personal motive in
that old man—in whom there seemed to remain only the habit of passions,
and in place of an intellect (grouping events and drawing conclusions)
only the capacity calmly to contemplate the course of events—the more
reassured he was that everything would be as it should. “He will not
bring in any plan of his own. He will not devise or undertake
anything,” thought Prince Andrew, “but he will hear everything, remember
everything, and put everything in its place. He will not hinder
anything useful nor allow anything harmful. He understands that there is
something stronger and more important than his own will—the inevitable
course of events, and he can see them and grasp their significance,
and seeing that significance can refrain from meddling and renounce his
personal wish directed to something else. And above all,” thought Prince
Andrew, “one believes in him because he’s Russian, despite the novel
by Genlis and the French proverbs, and because his voice shook when he
said: ‘What they have brought us to!’ and had a sob in it when he said
he would ‘make them eat horseflesh!’”
On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the unanimity and
general approval were founded with which, despite court influences, the
popular choice of Kutúzov as commander in chief was received.
CHAPTER XVII
After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on there in its usual
course, and its course was so very usual that it was difficult to
remember the recent days of patriotic elation and ardor, hard to believe
that Russia was really in danger and that the members of the English
Club were also sons of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice everything
for it. The one thing that recalled the patriotic fervor everyone had
displayed during the Emperor’s stay was the call for contributions of
men and money, a necessity that as soon as the promises had been made
assumed a legal, official form and became unavoidable.
With the enemy’s approach to Moscow, the Moscovites’ view of their
situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even
more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger
approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices that
speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a
man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it;
the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and
painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man’s power to
foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is
therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to
think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to
the first voice, but in society to the second. So it was now with the
inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people had been as gay in
Moscow as that year.
Rostopchín’s broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a potman,
and a Moscow burgher called Karpúshka Chigírin, “who—having been a
militiaman and having had rather too much at the pub—heard that Napoleon
wished to come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the French in very bad
language, came out of the drink shop, and, under the sign of the
eagle, began to address the assembled people,” were read and discussed,
together with the latest of Vasíli Lvóvich Púshkin’s bouts rimés.
In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to read these
broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpúshka jeered at the French,
saying: “They will swell up with Russian cabbage, burst with our