War and Peace
“That’s so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good
dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that’s not their
business!”
“That’s it, that’s it!” exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing
his son by both hands, he cried, “Now I’ve got you, so take the
sleigh and pair at once, and go to Bezúkhov’s, and tell him ‘Count
Ilyá has sent you to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.’ We
can’t get them from anyone else. He’s not there himself, so you’ll
have to go in and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the
Rasgulyáy—the coachman Ipátka knows—and look up the gypsy
Ilyúshka, the one who danced at Count Orlóv’s, you remember, in a
white Cossack coat, and bring him along to me.”
“And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?” asked Nicholas,
laughing. “Dear, dear!...”
At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the businesslike,
preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never left her face, Anna
Mikháylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon the count in his
dressing gown every day, he invariably became confused and begged her to
excuse his costume.
“No matter at all, my dear count,” she said, meekly closing her
eyes. “But I’ll go to Bezúkhov’s myself. Pierre has arrived, and
now we shall get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him
in any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Borís. Thank God, Borís
is now on the staff.”
The count was delighted at Anna Mikháylovna’s taking upon herself one
of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.
“Tell Bezúkhov to come. I’ll put his name down. Is his wife with
him?” he asked.
Anna Mikháylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was depicted
on her face.
“Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate,” she said. “If what
we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing
when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul
as young Bezúkhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to give
him what consolation I can.”
“Wh-what is the matter?” asked both the young and old Rostóv.
Anna Mikháylovna sighed deeply.
“Dólokhov, Mary Ivánovna’s son,” she said in a mysterious
whisper, “has compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him
up, invited him to his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here
and that daredevil after her!” said Anna Mikháylovna, wishing to show
her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half smile
betraying her sympathy for the “daredevil,” as she called Dólokhov.
“They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune.”
“Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the club—it will all blow
over. It will be a tremendous banquet.”
Next day, the third of March, soon after one o’clock, two hundred and
fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting the
guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagratión, to
dinner.
On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow had
been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to victories
that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not believe it,
while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so strange an
event. In the English Club, where all who were distinguished, important,
and well informed foregathered when the news began to arrive in
December, nothing was said about the war and the last battle, as
though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The men who set the tone
in conversation—Count Rostopchín, Prince Yúri Dolgorúkov, Valúev,
Count Markóv, and Prince Vyázemski—did not show themselves at the
club, but met in private houses in intimate circles, and the
Moscovites who took their opinions from others—Ilyá Rostóv among
them—remained for a while without any definite opinion on the subject
of the war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt that something was
wrong and that to discuss the bad news was difficult, and so it was best
to be silent. But after a while, just as a jury comes out of its room,
the bigwigs who guided the club’s opinion reappeared, and everybody
began speaking clearly and definitely. Reasons were found for the
incredible, unheard-of, and impossible event of a Russian defeat,
everything became clear, and in all corners of Moscow the same things
began to be said. These reasons were the treachery of the Austrians, a
defective commissariat, the treachery of the Pole Przebyszéwski and of
the Frenchman Langeron, Kutúzov’s incapacity, and (it was whispered)
the youth and inexperience of the sovereign, who had trusted worthless
and insignificant people. But the army, the Russian army, everyone
declared, was extraordinary and had achieved miracles of valor. The
soldiers, officers, and generals were heroes. But the hero of heroes was
Prince Bagratión, distinguished by his Schön Grabern affair and by
the retreat from Austerlitz, where he alone had withdrawn his column
unbroken and had all day beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous
as his own. What also conduced to Bagratión’s being selected as
Moscow’s hero was the fact that he had no connections in the city
and was a stranger there. In his person, honor was shown to a simple
fighting Russian soldier without connections and intrigues, and to one
who was associated by memories of the Italian campaign with the name of
Suvórov. Moreover, paying such honor to Bagratión was the best way of
expressing disapproval and dislike of Kutúzov.
“Had there been no Bagratión, it would have been necessary to
invent him,” said the wit Shinshín, parodying the words of Voltaire.
Kutúzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers,
calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.
All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorúkov’s saying: “If you go on
modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay,” suggesting
consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and the
words of Rostopchín, that French soldiers have to be incited to battle
by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to show them
that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but that Russian
soldiers only need to be restrained and held back! On all sides, new and
fresh anecdotes were heard of individual examples of heroism shown by
our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a standard, another
had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five cannon singlehanded.
Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know him, as having, when
wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the left, and gone
forward. Of Bolkónski, nothing was said, and only those who knew him
intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a pregnant wife
with his eccentric father.
CHAPTER III
On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were filled
with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in springtime.
The members and guests of the club wandered hither and thither, sat,
stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in evening dress,
and a few here and there with powdered hair and in Russian kaftáns.
Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and smart stockings,
stood at every door anxiously noting visitors’ every movement in order
to offer their services. Most of those present were elderly, respected
men with broad, self-confident faces, fat fingers, and resolute gestures
and voices. This class of guests and members sat in certain habitual
places and met in certain habitual groups. A minority of those present
were casual guests—chiefly young men, among whom were Denísov,
Rostóv, and Dólokhov—who was now again an officer in the Semënov
regiment. The faces of these young people, especially those who were
military men, bore that expression of condescending respect for their
elders which seems to say to the older generation, “We are prepared to
respect and honor you, but all the same remember that the future belongs
to us.”
Nesvítski was there as an old member of the club. Pierre, who at his
wife’s command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles,
went about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull. Here,
as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience to
his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people, he
treated them with absent-minded contempt.
By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his wealth
and connections he belonged to the groups of old and honored guests, and
so he went from one group to another. Some of the most important old men
were the center of groups which even strangers approached respectfully
to hear the voices of well-known men. The largest circles formed round
Count Rostopchín, Valúev, and Narýshkin. Rostopchín was describing
how the Russians had been overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to
force their way through them with bayonets.
Valúev was confidentially telling that Uvárov had been sent from
Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.
In the third circle, Narýshkin was speaking of the meeting of the
Austrian Council of War at which Suvórov crowed like a cock in reply to
the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshín, standing close
by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutúzov had evidently failed to
learn from Suvórov even so simple a thing as the art of crowing like a
cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the wit, making him
feel that in that place and on that day, it was improper to speak so of
Kutúzov.
Count Ilyá Rostóv, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft
boots between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the
important and unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all
equals, while his eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up
young son, resting on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostóv
stood at a window with Dólokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately
made and highly valued. The old count came up to them and pressed
Dólokhov’s hand.
“Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been together
out there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasíli Ignátovich...
How d’ye do, old fellow?” he said, turning to an old man who was
passing, but before he had finished his greeting there was a general
stir, and a footman who had run in announced, with a frightened face:
“He’s arrived!”
Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and—like rye shaken together
in a shovel—the guests who had been scattered about in different rooms
came together and crowded in the large drawing room by the door of the
ballroom.
Bagratión appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or sword,
which, in accord with the club custom, he had given up to the hall
porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded whip
over his shoulder, as when Rostóv had seen him on the eve of the battle
of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian and foreign
Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast. Evidently just
before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and whiskers trimmed,
which changed his appearance for the worse. There was something naïvely
festive in his air, which, in conjunction with his firm and virile
features, gave him a rather comical expression. Bekleshëv and Theodore
Uvárov, who had arrived with him, paused at the doorway to allow him,
as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagratión was embarrassed, not
wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and this caused some delay
at the doors, but after all he did at last enter first. He walked shyly
and awkwardly over the parquet floor of the reception room, not knowing
what to do with his hands; he was more accustomed to walk over a plowed
field under fire, as he had done at the head of the Kursk regiment at
Schön Grabern—and he would have found that easier. The committeemen