War and Peace
followed to check the soldiers and were involuntarily drawn into doing
the same. In Carriage Row carriages had been left in the shops, and
generals flocked there to select calèches and coaches for themselves.
The few inhabitants who had remained invited commanding officers to
their houses, hoping thereby to secure themselves from being plundered.
There were masses of wealth and there seemed no end to it. All around
the quarters occupied by the French were other regions still unexplored
and unoccupied where, they thought, yet greater riches might be found.
And Moscow engulfed the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is
spilled on dry ground both the dry ground and the water disappear and
mud results; and in the same way the entry of the famished army into the
rich and deserted city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction
of both the army and the wealthy city.
The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme féroce de
Rostopchíne, * the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality,
however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning
of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people, responsible
for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a position in which
any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite apart from whether it
had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior fire engines. Deserted
Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of shavings has to burn on
which sparks continually fall for several days. A town built of wood,
where scarcely a day passes without conflagrations when the house owners
are in residence and a police force is present, cannot help burning when
its inhabitants have left it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke
pipes, make campfires of the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and
cook themselves meals twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to
billet troops in the villages of any district and the number of fires in
that district immediately increases. How much then must the probability
of fire be increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops
are quartered. “Le patriotisme féroce de Rostopchíne” and the barbarity
of the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire by
the soldiers’ pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the carelessness of
enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even if there was any
arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any reason to burn the
houses—in any case a troublesome and dangerous thing to do), arson
cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same thing would have happened
without any incendiarism.
* To Rostopchín’s ferocious patriotism.
However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchín’s
ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later
on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is
impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of the
fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house must
burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers are allowed to
live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by its inhabitants, it
is true, but by those who had abandoned it and not by those who remained
in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not remain intact like
Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its inhabitants
abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and salt, nor
bring them the keys of the city.
CHAPTER XXVII
The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating starwise as it did,
only reached the quarter where Pierre was staying by the evening of the
second of September.
After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances,
Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely obsessed
by one persistent thought. He did not know how or when this thought had
taken such possession of him, but he remembered nothing of the past,
understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and heard appeared to
him like a dream.
He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of life’s demands
that enmeshed him, and which in his present condition he was unable
to unravel. He had gone to Joseph Alexéevich’s house, on the plea of
sorting the deceased’s books and papers, only in search of rest from
life’s turmoil, for in his mind the memory of Joseph Alexéevich was
connected with a world of eternal, solemn, and calm thoughts, quite
contrary to the restless confusion into which he felt himself being
drawn. He sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph Alexéevich’s study he
really found it. When he sat with his elbows on the dusty writing table
in the deathlike stillness of the study, calm and significant memories
of the last few days rose one after another in his imagination,
particularly of the battle of Borodinó and of that vague sense of his
own insignificance and insincerity compared with the truth, simplicity,
and strength of the class of men he mentally classed as they. When
Gerásim roused him from his reverie the idea occurred to him of taking
part in the popular defense of Moscow which he knew was projected. And
with that object he had asked Gerásim to get him a peasant’s coat and
a pistol, confiding to him his intentions of remaining in Joseph
Alexéevich’s house and keeping his name secret. Then during the first
day spent in inaction and solitude (he tried several times to fix his
attention on the Masonic manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea
that had previously occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of
his name in connection with Bonaparte’s more than once vaguely presented
itself. But the idea that he, L’russe Besuhof, was destined to set a
limit to the power of the Beast was as yet only one of the fancies that
often passed through his mind and left no trace behind.
When, having bought the coat merely with the object of taking part among
the people in the defense of Moscow, Pierre had met the Rostóvs and
Natásha had said to him: “Are you remaining in Moscow?... How splendid!”
the thought flashed into his mind that it really would be a good thing,
even if Moscow were taken, for him to remain there and do what he was
predestined to do.
Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and not lagging in
any way behind them, Pierre went to the Three Hills gate. But when he
returned to the house convinced that Moscow would not be defended, he
suddenly felt that what before had seemed to him merely a possibility
had now become absolutely necessary and inevitable. He must remain in
Moscow, concealing his name, and must meet Napoleon and kill him, and
either perish or put an end to the misery of all Europe—which it seemed
to him was solely due to Napoleon.
Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on Bonaparte’s life in 1809
by a German student in Vienna, and knew that the student had been shot.
And the risk to which he would expose his life by carrying out his
design excited him still more.
Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to this purpose.
The first was a feeling of the necessity of sacrifice and suffering in
view of the common calamity, the same feeling that had caused him to go
to Mozháysk on the twenty-fifth and to make his way to the very thick
of the battle and had now caused him to run away from his home and, in
place of the luxury and comfort to which he was accustomed, to sleep
on a hard sofa without undressing and eat the same food as Gerásim.
The other was that vague and quite Russian feeling of contempt for
everything conventional, artificial, and human—for everything the
majority of men regard as the greatest good in the world. Pierre had
first experienced this strange and fascinating feeling at the Slobóda
Palace, when he had suddenly felt that wealth, power, and life—all that
men so painstakingly acquire and guard—if it has any worth has so only
by reason of the joy with which it can all be renounced.
It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to spend his last
penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for no
apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money he
possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions which from
an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it were, his personal
power and strength, affirming the existence of a higher, nonhuman
criterion of life.
From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling for the first time
at the Slobóda Palace he had been continuously under its influence, but
only now found full satisfaction for it. Moreover, at this moment Pierre
was supported in his design and prevented from renouncing it by what he
had already done in that direction. If he were now to leave Moscow like
everyone else, his flight from home, the peasant coat, the pistol, and
his announcement to the Rostóvs that he would remain in Moscow would all
become not merely meaningless but contemptible and ridiculous, and to
this Pierre was very sensitive.
Pierre’s physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded to his
mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food, the vodka he drank during
those days, the absence of wine and cigars, his dirty unchanged linen,
two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa without bedding—all
this kept him in a state of excitement bordering on insanity.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The French had already entered
Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of acting he only thought about
his undertaking, going over its minutest details in his mind. In his
fancy he did not clearly picture to himself either the striking of the
blow or the death of Napoleon, but with extraordinary vividness and
melancholy enjoyment imagined his own destruction and heroic endurance.
“Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!” he thought.
“Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly... with pistol or dagger?
But that is all the same! ‘It is not I but the hand of Providence that
punishes thee,’ I shall say,” thought he, imagining what he would say
when killing Napoleon. “Well then, take me and execute me!” he went on,
speaking to himself and bowing his head with a sad but firm expression.
While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was talking to himself
in this way, the study door opened and on the threshold appeared
the figure of Makár Alexéevich, always so timid before but now quite
transformed.
His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and distorted. He
was obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he grew confused at first, but
noticing embarrassment on Pierre’s face immediately grew bold and,
staggering on his thin legs, advanced into the middle of the room.
“They’re frightened,” he said confidentially in a hoarse voice. “I say I
won’t surrender, I say... Am I not right, sir?”
He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the table seized it
with unexpected rapidity and ran out into the corridor.
Gerásim and the porter, who had followed Makár Alexéevich, stopped him
in the vestibule and tried to take the pistol from him. Pierre, coming
out into the corridor, looked with pity and repulsion at the half-crazy
old man. Makár Alexéevich, frowning with exertion, held on to the pistol
and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic fancy in his head.
“To arms! Board them! No, you shan’t get it,” he yelled.
“That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodness—please, sir, to
let go! Please, sir...” pleaded Gerásim, trying carefully to steer Makár
Alexéevich by the elbows back to the door.
“Who are you? Bonaparte!...” shouted Makár Alexéevich.
“That’s not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and rest. Allow me to
have the pistol.”
“Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?” shouted Makár
Alexéevich, brandishing the pistol. “Board them!”