War and Peace
Rostóv, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one officer
and then at the other.
“No, gentlemen, no... you mustn’t think... I quite understand.
You’re wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of
the regiment I’d... Ah well, I’ll show that in action, and for me
the honor of the flag... Well, never mind, it’s true I’m to blame,
to blame all round. Well, what else do you want?...”
“Come, that’s right, Count!” cried the staff captain, turning
round and clapping Rostóv on the shoulder with his big hand.
“I tell you,” shouted Denísov, “he’s a fine fellow.”
“That’s better, Count,” said the staff captain, beginning to
address Rostóv by his title, as if in recognition of his confession.
“Go and apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!”
“Gentlemen, I’ll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me,”
said Rostóv in an imploring voice, “but I can’t apologize, by God I
can’t, do what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little boy
asking forgiveness?”
Denísov began to laugh.
“It’ll be worse for you. Bogdánich is vindictive and you’ll pay
for your obstinacy,” said Kírsten.
“No, on my word it’s not obstinacy! I can’t describe the feeling.
I can’t...”
“Well, it’s as you like,” said the staff captain. “And what has
become of that scoundrel?” he asked Denísov.
“He has weported himself sick, he’s to be stwuck off the list
tomowwow,” muttered Denísov.
“It is an illness, there’s no other way of explaining it,” said
the staff captain.
“Illness or not, he’d better not cwoss my path. I’d kill him!”
shouted Denísov in a bloodthirsty tone.
Just then Zherkóv entered the room.
“What brings you here?” cried the officers turning to the newcomer.
“We’re to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his
whole army.”
“It’s not true!”
“I’ve seen him myself!”
“What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?”
“Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how
did you come here?”
“I’ve been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil,
Mack. An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on
Mack’s arrival... What’s the matter, Rostóv? You look as if you’d
just come out of a hot bath.”
“Oh, my dear fellow, we’re in such a stew here these last two
days.”
The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by
Zherkóv. They were under orders to advance next day.
“We’re going into action, gentlemen!”
“Well, thank God! We’ve been sitting here too long!”
CHAPTER VI
Kutúzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges over
the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October 23 the
Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the Russian
baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were defiling
through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.
It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out
before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the
bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain, and
then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects could
be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down below,
the little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed houses, its
cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed jostling
masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels, an island,
and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the confluence of
the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky left bank of the
Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic background of green
treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a convent stood out beyond a
wild virgin pine forest, and far away on the other side of the Enns the
enemy’s horse patrols could be discerned.
Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in command of
the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the country through
his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvítski, who had been sent to
the rearguard by the commander in chief, was sitting on the trail of a
gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied him had handed him a knapsack
and a flask, and Nesvítski was treating some officers to pies and real
doppelkümmel. The officers gladly gathered round him, some on their
knees, some squatting Turkish fashion on the wet grass.
“Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It’s
a fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?” Nesvítski
was saying.
“Thank you very much, Prince,” answered one of the officers, pleased
to be talking to a staff officer of such importance. “It’s a lovely
place! We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a
splendid house!”
“Look, Prince,” said another, who would have dearly liked to take
another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining the
countryside—“See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look there
in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging something.
They’ll ransack that castle,” he remarked with evident approval.
“So they will,” said Nesvítski. “No, but what I should like,”
added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, “would be
to slip in over there.”
He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed and
gleamed.
“That would be fine, gentlemen!”
The officers laughed.
“Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls
among them. On my word I’d give five years of my life for it!”
“They must be feeling dull, too,” said one of the bolder officers,
laughing.
Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out something to
the general, who looked through his field glass.
“Yes, so it is, so it is,” said the general angrily, lowering the
field glass and shrugging his shoulders, “so it is! They’ll be fired
on at the crossing. And why are they dawdling there?”
On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and from
their battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant report of
a shot, and our troops could be seen hurrying to the crossing.
Nesvítski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.
“Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?” he said.
“It’s a bad business,” said the general without answering him,
“our men have been wasting time.”
“Hadn’t I better ride over, your excellency?” asked Nesvítski.
“Yes, please do,” answered the general, and he repeated the order
that had already once been given in detail: “and tell the hussars
that they are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the
inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected.”
“Very good,” answered Nesvítski.
He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the knapsack
and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.
“I’ll really call in on the nuns,” he said to the officers who
watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the
hill.
“Now then, let’s see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!”
said the general, turning to an artillery officer. “Have a little fun
to pass the time.”
“Crew, to your guns!” commanded the officer.
In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and began
loading.
“One!” came the command.
Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening
metallic roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our
troops below the hill and fell far short of the enemy, a little smoke
showing the spot where it burst.
The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone got
up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as plainly
visible as if but a stone’s throw away, and the movements of the
approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came fully
out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the solitary shot
and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a single joyous and
spirited impression.
CHAPTER VII
Two of the enemy’s shots had already flown across the bridge, where
there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvítski, who had
alighted from his horse and whose big body was jammed against the
railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood a few
steps behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each time Prince
Nesvítski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed him back again
and pressed him against the railings, and all he could do was to smile.
“What a fine fellow you are, friend!” said the Cossack to a convoy
soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were
crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. “What a fellow!
You can’t wait a moment! Don’t you see the general wants to pass?”
But the convoyman took no notice of the word “general” and shouted
at the soldiers who were blocking his way. “Hi there, boys! Keep to
the left! Wait a bit.” But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder to
shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a dense
mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvítski saw the rapid, noisy
little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying round the piles of
the bridge chased each other along. Looking on the bridge he saw equally
uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder straps, covered shakos,
knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and, under the shakos, faces with
broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and listless tired expressions, and
feet that moved through the sticky mud that covered the planks of the
bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of
white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with
a type of face different from that of the men, squeezed his way along;
sometimes like a chip of wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot,
an orderly, or a townsman was carried through the waves of infantry;
and sometimes like a log floating down the river, an officers’ or
company’s baggage wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on
all sides, moved across the bridge.
“It’s as if a dam had burst,” said the Cossack hopelessly. “Are
there many more of you to come?”
“A million all but one!” replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat,
with a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man.
“If he” (he meant the enemy) “begins popping at the bridge now,”
said the old soldier dismally to a comrade, “you’ll forget to
scratch yourself.”
That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a cart.
“Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?” said an
orderly, running behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it.
And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry soldiers who
had evidently been drinking.
“And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt
end of his gun...” a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said
gaily, with a wide swing of his arm.
“Yes, the ham was just delicious...” answered another with a loud
laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvítski did not learn who
had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.
“Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they’ll
all be killed,” a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.
“As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean,” said a young soldier
with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, “I felt like
dying of fright. I did, ‘pon my word, I got that frightened!” said
he, as if bragging of having been frightened.
That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had gone
before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a German, and
seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine brindled cow with
a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A woman with an unweaned