War and Peace
to the Emperor and that the latter disliked his face and personality
generally, and in the cold, repellent glance the Emperor gave him, he
now found further confirmation of this surmise. The courtiers explained
the Emperor’s neglect of him by His Majesty’s displeasure at
Bolkónski’s not having served since 1805.
“I know myself that one cannot help one’s sympathies and
antipathies,” thought Prince Andrew, “so it will not do to present
my proposal for the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor
personally, but the project will speak for itself.”
He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend
of his father’s. The field marshal made an appointment to see him,
received him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few
days later Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see the
Minister of War, Count Arakchéev.
On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakchéev’s waiting
room at nine in the morning.
He did not know Arakchéev personally, had never seen him, and all he
had heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man.
“He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not
concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been commissioned to
consider my project, so he alone can get it adopted,” thought Prince
Andrew as he waited among a number of important and unimportant people
in Count Arakchéev’s waiting room.
During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen the
anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such rooms
were well known to him. Count Arakchéev’s anteroom had quite a
special character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting their
turn for an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the faces of
those of higher rank expressed a common feeling of awkwardness, covered
by a mask of unconcern and ridicule of themselves, their situation, and
the person for whom they were waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and
down, others whispered and laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname
“Síla Andréevich” and the words, “Uncle will give it to us
hot,” in reference to Count Arakchéev. One general (an important
personage), evidently feeling offended at having to wait so long, sat
crossing and uncrossing his legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.
But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all
faces—that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the
adjutant on duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look and
was told that his turn would come in due course. After some others had
been shown in and out of the minister’s room by the adjutant on duty,
an officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and frightened air
was admitted at that terrible door. This officer’s audience lasted a
long time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a harsh voice was heard
from the other side of the door, and the officer—with pale face and
trembling lips—came out and passed through the waiting room, clutching
his head.
After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer on
duty said in a whisper, “To the right, at the window.”
Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man of
forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep wrinkles,
scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an overhanging red
nose. Arakchéev turned his head toward him without looking at him.
“What is your petition?” asked Arakchéev.
“I am not petitioning, your excellency,” returned Prince Andrew
quietly.
Arakchéev’s eyes turned toward him.
“Sit down,” said he. “Prince Bolkónski?”
“I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has
deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me...”
“You see, my dear sir, I have read your project,” interrupted
Arakchéev, uttering only the first words amiably and then—again
without looking at Prince Andrew—relapsing gradually into a tone of
grumbling contempt. “You are proposing new military laws? There are
many laws but no one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody
designs laws, it is easier writing than doing.”
“I came at His Majesty the Emperor’s wish to learn from your
excellency how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have
presented,” said Prince Andrew politely.
“I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to the
committee. I do not approve of it,” said Arakchéev, rising and taking
a paper from his writing table. “Here!” and he handed it to Prince
Andrew.
Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital letters,
misspelled, and without punctuation: “Unsoundly constructed because
resembles an imitation of the French military code and from the Articles
of War needlessly deviating.”
“To what committee has the memorandum been referred?” inquired
Prince Andrew.
“To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that
your honor should be appointed a member, but without a salary.”
Prince Andrew smiled.
“I don’t want one.”
“A member without salary,” repeated Arakchéev. “I have the
honor... Eh! Call the next one! Who else is there?” he shouted, bowing
to Prince Andrew.
CHAPTER V
While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the committee
Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances, particularly those he
knew to be in power and whose aid he might need. In Petersburg he now
experienced the same feeling he had had on the eve of a battle, when
troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly attracted to the ruling
circles where the future, on which the fate of millions depended, was
being shaped. From the irritation of the older men, the curiosity of the
uninitiated, the reserve of the initiated, the hurry and preoccupation
of everyone, and the innumerable committees and commissions of whose
existence he learned every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in
Petersburg a vast civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in
chief of which was a mysterious person he did not know, but who was
supposed to be a man of genius—Speránski. And this movement of
reconstruction of which Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speránski
its chief promoter, began to interest him so keenly that the question
of the army regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his
consciousness.
Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception in the
highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The reforming
party cordially welcomed and courted him, in the first place because
he was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly because by
liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of being a liberal.
The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured the innovations,
turned to him expecting his sympathy in their disapproval of the
reforms, simply because he was the son of his father. The feminine
society world welcomed him gladly, because he was rich, distinguished, a
good match, and almost a newcomer, with a halo of romance on account
of his supposed death and the tragic loss of his wife. Besides this
the general opinion of all who had known him previously was that he had
greatly improved during these last five years, having softened and grown
more manly, lost his former affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony,
and acquired the serenity that comes with years. People talked about
him, were interested in him, and wanted to meet him.
The day after his interview with Count Arakchéev, Prince Andrew spent
the evening at Count Kochubéy’s. He told the count of his interview
with Síla Andréevich (Kochubéy spoke of Arakchéev by that nickname
with the same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the Minister of
War’s anteroom).
“Mon cher, even in this case you can’t do without Michael
Mikháylovich Speránski. He manages everything. I’ll speak to him. He
has promised to come this evening.”
“What has Speránski to do with the army regulations?” asked Prince
Andrew.
Kochubéy shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkónski’s
simplicity.
“We were talking to him about you a few days ago,” Kochubéy
continued, “and about your freed plowmen.”
“Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?” said an old man
of Catherine’s day, turning contemptuously toward Bolkónski.
“It was a small estate that brought in no profit,” replied Prince
Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to irritate the old man
uselessly.
“Afraid of being late...” said the old man, looking at Kochubéy.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” he continued. “Who
will plow the land if they are set free? It is easy to write laws, but
difficult to rule.... Just the same as now—I ask you, Count—who will
be heads of the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?”
“Those who pass the examinations, I suppose,” replied Kochubéy,
crossing his legs and glancing round.
“Well, I have Pryánichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a
priceless man, but he’s sixty. Is he to go up for examination?”
“Yes, that’s a difficulty, as education is not at all general,
but...”
Count Kochubéy did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the arm,
and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of about forty with a large open
forehead and a long face of unusual and peculiar whiteness, who was
just entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with a
cross suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It was
Speránski. Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt a throb
within him, as happens at critical moments of life. Whether it was from
respect, envy, or anticipation, he did not know. Speránski’s whole
figure was of a peculiar type that made him easily recognizable. In
the society in which Prince Andrew lived he had never seen anyone who
together with awkward and clumsy gestures possessed such calmness and
self-assurance; he had never seen so resolute yet gentle an expression
as that in those half-closed, rather humid eyes, or so firm a smile that
expressed nothing; nor had he heard such a refined, smooth, soft
voice; above all he had never seen such delicate whiteness of face or
hands—hands which were broad, but very plump, soft, and white. Such
whiteness and softness Prince Andrew had only seen on the faces of
soldiers who had been long in hospital. This was Speránski, Secretary
of State, reporter to the Emperor and his companion at Erfurt, where he
had more than once met and talked with Napoleon.
Speránski did not shift his eyes from one face to another as people
involuntarily do on entering a large company and was in no hurry to
speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance that he would be listened to, and
he looked only at the person with whom he was conversing.
Prince Andrew followed Speránski’s every word and movement with
particular attention. As happens to some people, especially to men
who judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting
anyone new—especially anyone whom, like Speránski, he knew by
reputation—expected to discover in him the perfection of human
qualities.
Speránski told Kochubéy he was sorry he had been unable to come sooner
as he had been detained at the palace. He did not say that the Emperor
had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation of modesty.
When Kochubéy introduced Prince Andrew, Speránski slowly turned
his eyes to Bolkónski with his customary smile and looked at him in
silence.
“I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard of you, as
everyone has,” he said after a pause.
Kochubéy said a few words about the reception Arakchéev had given
Bolkónski. Speránski smiled more markedly.
“The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend
Monsieur Magnítski,” he said, fully articulating every word and
syllable, “and if you like I can put you in touch with him.” He