War and Peace
general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years, flushed by a
glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with the signet
ring, and Zherkóv, uneasily glancing at them all, and Prince Andrew,
pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering eyes.
In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French, and
the accountant with the naïve face was feeling its texture, shaking his
head in perplexity—perhaps because the banner really interested him,
perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was, to look on at
a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next hut there was a
French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our dragoons. Our officers
were flocking in to look at him. Prince Bagratión was thanking the
individual commanders and inquiring into details of the action and our
losses. The general whose regiment had been inspected at Braunau was
informing the prince that as soon as the action began he had withdrawn
from the wood, mustered the men who were woodcutting, and, allowing the
French to pass him, had made a bayonet charge with two battalions and
had broken up the French troops.
“When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was
disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: ‘I’ll let them
come on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion’—and
that’s what I did.”
The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not managed
to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened. Perhaps
it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid all that
confusion what did or did not happen?
“By the way, your excellency, I should inform you,” he
continued—remembering Dólokhov’s conversation with Kutúzov and his
last interview with the gentleman-ranker—“that Private Dólokhov,
who was reduced to the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my
presence and particularly distinguished himself.”
“I saw the Pávlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,” chimed
in Zherkóv, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the hussars all
that day, but had heard about them from an infantry officer. “They
broke up two squares, your excellency.”
Several of those present smiled at Zherkóv’s words, expecting one of
his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to
the glory of our arms and of the day’s work, they assumed a serious
expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie
devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagratión turned to the old colonel:
“Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically:
infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were
abandoned in the center?” he inquired, searching with his eyes for
someone. (Prince Bagratión did not ask about the guns on the left
flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned at the very
beginning of the action.) “I think I sent you?” he added, turning to
the staff officer on duty.
“One was damaged,” answered the staff officer, “and the other I
can’t understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had only
just left.... It is true that it was hot there,” he added, modestly.
Someone mentioned that Captain Túshin was bivouacking close to the
village and had already been sent for.
“Oh, but you were there?” said Prince Bagratión, addressing Prince
Andrew.
“Of course, we only just missed one another,” said the staff
officer, with a smile to Bolkónski.
“I had not the pleasure of seeing you,” said Prince Andrew, coldly
and abruptly.
All were silent. Túshin appeared at the threshold and made his way
timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past the
generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always was by the
sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of the banner and
stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.
“How was it a gun was abandoned?” asked Bagratión, frowning, not so
much at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom Zherkóv
laughed loudest.
Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his guilt
and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive present
themselves to Túshin in all their horror. He had been so excited that
he had not thought about it until that moment. The officers’ laughter
confused him still more. He stood before Bagratión with his lower
jaw trembling and was hardly able to mutter: “I don’t know... your
excellency... I had no men... your excellency.”
“You might have taken some from the covering troops.”
Túshin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that
was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into
trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagratión as a schoolboy who
has blundered looks at an examiner.
The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagratión, apparently not wishing
to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture to
intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Túshin from under his brows and his
fingers twitched nervously.
“Your excellency!” Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt
voice, “you were pleased to send me to Captain Túshin’s battery. I
went there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two
guns smashed, and no supports at all.”
Prince Bagratión and Túshin looked with equal intentness at
Bolkónski, who spoke with suppressed agitation.
“And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion,” he
continued, “we owe today’s success chiefly to the action of that
battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Túshin and his company,”
and without awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.
Prince Bagratión looked at Túshin, evidently reluctant to show
distrust in Bolkónski’s emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully
to credit it, bent his head, and told Túshin that he could go. Prince
Andrew went out with him.
“Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!” said Túshin.
Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He felt
sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had hoped.
“Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will
all this end?” thought Rostóv, looking at the changing shadows before
him. The pain in his arm became more and more intense. Irresistible
drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his eyes, and the
impression of those voices and faces and a sense of loneliness merged
with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers—wounded and
unwounded—it was they who were crushing, weighing down, and twisting
the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm and shoulder. To
rid himself of them he closed his eyes.
For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things
appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand,
Sónya’s thin little shoulders, Natásha’s eyes and laughter,
Denísov with his voice and mustache, and Telyánin and all that affair
with Telyánin and Bogdánich. That affair was the same thing as this
soldier with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and this soldier
that were so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and
always dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them, but
they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair’s breadth.
It would not ache—it would be well—if only they did not pull it, but
it was impossible to get rid of them.
He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung less
than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling snow were
fluttering in that light. Túshin had not returned, the doctor had not
come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was sitting naked at
the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow body.
“Nobody wants me!” thought Rostóv. “There is no one to help me or
pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved.” He sighed
and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.
“Eh, is anything hurting you?” asked the soldier, shaking his shirt
out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt and
added: “What a lot of men have been crippled today—frightful!”
Rostóv did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes
fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,
bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his
healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. “And why
did I come here?” he wondered.
Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant of
Bagratión’s detachment was reunited to Kutúzov’s army.
BOOK THREE: 1805
CHAPTER I
Prince Vasíli was not a man who deliberately thought out his plans.
Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own advantage. He
was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom getting on had
become a habit. Schemes and devices for which he never rightly accounted
to himself, but which formed the whole interest of his life,
were constantly shaping themselves in his mind, arising from the
circumstances and persons he met. Of these plans he had not merely one
or two in his head but dozens, some only beginning to form themselves,
some approaching achievement, and some in course of disintegration. He
did not, for instance, say to himself: “This man now has influence, I
must gain his confidence and friendship and through him obtain a special
grant.” Nor did he say to himself: “Pierre is a rich man, I must
entice him to marry my daughter and lend me the forty thousand rubles
I need.” But when he came across a man of position his instinct
immediately told him that this man could be useful, and without any
premeditation Prince Vasíli took the first opportunity to gain his
confidence, flatter him, become intimate with him, and finally make his
request.
He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him an appointment as
Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at that time conferred the status of
Councilor of State, and insisted on the young man accompanying him to
Petersburg and staying at his house. With apparent absent-mindedness,
yet with unhesitating assurance that he was doing the right thing,
Prince Vasíli did everything to get Pierre to marry his daughter. Had
he thought out his plans beforehand he could not have been so natural
and shown such unaffected familiarity in intercourse with everybody both
above and below him in social standing. Something always drew him toward
those richer and more powerful than himself and he had rare skill in
seizing the most opportune moment for making use of people.
Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezúkhov and a rich man, felt
himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset and
preoccupied that only in bed was he able to be by himself. He had to
sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the purpose of
which was not clear to him, to question his chief steward, to visit his
estate near Moscow, and to receive many people who formerly did not
even wish to know of his existence but would now have been offended
and grieved had he chosen not to see them. These different
people—businessmen, relations, and acquaintances alike—were all
disposed to treat the young heir in the most friendly and flattering
manner: they were all evidently firmly convinced of Pierre’s noble
qualities. He was always hearing such words as: “With your remarkable
kindness,” or, “With your excellent heart,” “You are yourself so
honorable, Count,” or, “Were he as clever as you,” and so on,
till he began sincerely to believe in his own exceptional kindness and
extraordinary intelligence, the more so as in the depth of his heart it
had always seemed to him that he really was very kind and intelligent.
Even people who had formerly been spiteful toward him and evidently