War and Peace (118 page)

Balashov, feeling it incumbent upon him to reply, said Russia did not look at things in such a gloomy light. Napoleon was silent, still looking ironically at him and obviously not listening to him. Balashov said that in Russia the best results were hoped for from the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as though to say, “I know it’s your duty to say that, but you don’t believe in it yourself; you are convinced by me.” Towards the end of Balashov’s speech, Napoleon pulled out his snuff-box again, took a sniff from it and tapped twice with his foot on the ground as a signal. The door opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, threading his way in respectfully, handed the Emperor his hat and gloves, another handed him a pocket-handkerchief. Napoleon, without bestowing a glance upon them, turned to Balashov.

“Assure the Emperor Alexander from me,” he said, taking his hat, “that I am devoted to him as before; I know him thoroughly, and I prize very highly his noble qualities. I detain you no longer, general; you shall receive my letter to the Emperor.” And Napoleon walked rapidly to the door. There was a general stampede from the great reception-room down the staircase.

After all Napoleon had said to him, after those outbursts of wrath, and after the last frigidly uttered words, “I will not detain you, general; you shall receive my letter,” Balashov felt certain that Napoleon would not care to see him again, would avoid indeed seeing again the envoy who
had been treated by him with contumely, and had been the eyewitness of his undignified outburst of fury. But to his surprise Balashov received through Duroc an invitation to dine that day at the Emperor’s table.

There were present at dinner, Bessières, Caulaincourt, and Berthier.

Napoleon met Balashov with a good-humoured and friendly air. He had not the slightest appearance of embarrassment or regret for his outbreak in the morning. On the contrary he seemed trying to encourage Balashov. It was evident that it had long been Napoleon’s conviction that no possibility existed of his making mistakes. To his mind all he did was good, not because it was in harmony with any preconceived notion of good or bad, but simply because it was
he
who did it.

The Emperor was in excellent spirits after his ride about Vilna, greeted and followed with acclamations by crowds of the inhabitants. From every window in the streets through which he had passed draperies and flags with his monogram had been hanging, and Polish ladies had been waving handkerchiefs to welcome him.

At dinner he sat Balashov beside him, and addressed him affably. He addressed him indeed as though he regarded Balashov as one of his own courtiers, as one of the people, who would sympathise with his plans and be sure to rejoice at his successes. He talked, among other things, of Moscow, and began asking Balashov questions about the ancient Russian capital, not simply as a traveller of inquiring mind asks about a new place he intends to visit, but apparently with the conviction that Balashov as a Russian must be flattered at his interest in it.

“How many inhabitants are there in Moscow, how many horses? Is it true that Moscow is called the holy city? How many churches are there in Moscow?” he asked.

And when he was told there were over two hundred churches, he said: “Why is there such a great number of churches?”

“The Russians are very religious,” replied Balashov.

“A great number, however, of monasteries and churches is always a sign of the backwardness of a people,” said Napoleon, looking at Caulaincourt for appreciation of this remark.

Balashov ventured respectfully to differ from the opinion of the French Emperor.

“Every country has its customs,” he observed.

“But there’s nothing like that anywhere else in Europe,” said Napoleon.

“I beg your majesty’s pardon,” said Balashov; “besides Russia, there is
Spain, where there is also a great number of churches and monasteries.”

This reply of Balashov’s, which suggested a covert allusion to the recent discomfiture of the French in Spain, was highly appreciated when Balashov repeated it at the court of the Emperor Alexander, though at the time at Napoleon’s dinner-table it was very little appreciated and passed indeed unnoticed.

From the indifferent and perplexed faces of the marshals present it was obvious that they were puzzled to discover wherein lay the point of the retort, suggested by Balashov’s intonation. “If there were a point, we fail to catch it, or the remark was perhaps really pointless,” their expression seemed to say. So little effect had this retort that Napoleon indeed certainly saw nothing in it; and he naively asked Balashov through what towns the direct road from Vilna to Moscow passed. Balashov, who had been all dinner-time on his guard, replied that as, according to the proverb, every road leads to Rome, every road leads to Moscow; that there were very many roads, and among them was the road to
Poltava
, the one selected by Charles XII. Balashov could not help flushing with delight at the felicity of this reply. Balashov had hardly uttered the last word “Poltava” when Caulaincourt began talking of the badness of the road from Petersburg to Moscow and his own Petersburg reminiscences.

After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon’s study, which had four days before been the study of the Emperor Alexander. Napoleon sat down, stirring his coffee in a Sèvres cup, and motioned Balashov to a seat beside him.

There is a well-known after-dinner mood which is more potent than any rational consideration in making a man satisfied with himself and disposed to regard every one as a friend. Napoleon was under the influence of this mood. He fancied himself surrounded by persons who adored him. He felt no doubt that Balashov too after his dinner was his friend and his worshipper. Napoleon addressed him with an amicable and rather ironical smile.

“This is the very room, I am told, in which the Emperor Alexander used to sit. Strange, isn’t it, general?” he said, obviously without the slightest misgiving that this remark could be other than agreeable to the Russian, since it afforded a proof of his, Napoleon’s, superiority over Alexander.

Balashov could make no reply to this, and he bowed in silence.

“Yes, four days ago, Wintzengerode and Stein were deliberating in this very room,” Napoleon continued, with the same confident and ironical smile. “What I can’t understand,” he said, “is the Emperor Alexander’s gathering round him all my personal enemies. That I do not understand. Didn’t he consider that I might do the same?” he asked Balashov; and obviously the question brought him back to a reminiscence of the morning’s anger, which was still fresh in him. “And let him know that I will do so,” Napoleon said, getting up and pushing away his cup. “I’ll drive all his kith and kin out of Germany—the Würtembergs and Badens and Weimars … Yes, I’ll drive them out. Let him get a refuge ready for them in Russia.”

Balashov bowed his head, with an air that indicated that he would be glad to withdraw, and was simply listening because he had no alternative but to listen to what was said to him. Napoleon did not notice this expression. He was addressing Balashov now, not as the envoy of his enemy, but as a man now quite devoted to him and certain to rejoice at the humiliation of his former master.

“And why has the Emperor Alexander taken the command of his troops? What’s that for? War is my profession, but his work is to reign and not to command armies. What has induced him to take such a responsibility on himself?”

Napoleon again took his snuff-box, walked several times in silence up and down the room, and all at once surprised Balashov by coming close up to him. And with a faint smile, as confidently, rapidly, and swiftly, as though he were doing something that Balashov could not but regard as an honour and a pleasure, he put his hand up to the face of the Russian general of forty, and gave him a little pinch on the ear with a smile on his lips.

To have the ear pulled by the Emperor was regarded as the greatest honour and mark of favour at the French court.

“Well, you say nothing, admirer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander,” he said, as though it were comic that there should be in his presence a courtier and worshipper of any man other than him, Napoleon. “Are the horses ready for the general?” he added, with a slight nod in acknowledgment of Balashov’s bow. “Give him mine; he has
a long way to go
.…”

The letter taken back by Balashov was Napoleon’s last letter to Alexander. Every detail of the conversation was transmitted to the Russian Emperor, and the war began.

After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrey went away to Petersburg, telling his family that he had business there. In reality his object was to meet Anatole Kuragin there. He thought it necessary to meet him, but on inquiring for him when he reached Petersburg, he found he was no longer there. Pierre had let his brother-in-law know that Prince Andrey was on his track. Anatole Kuragin had promptly obtained a commission from the minister of war, and had gone to join the army in Moldavia. While in Petersburg Prince Andrey met Kutuzov, his old general, who was always friendly to him, and Kutuzov proposed that he should accompany him to Moldavia, where the old general was being sent to take command of the army. Prince Andrey received an appointment on the staff of the commander, and went to Turkey.

Prince Andrey did not think it proper to write to Kuragin to challenge him to a duel. He thought that a challenge coming from him, without any new pretext for a duel, would be compromising for the young Countess Rostov, and therefore he was seeking to encounter Kuragin in person in order to pick a quarrel with him that would serve as a pretext for a duel. But in the Turkish army too Prince Andrey failed to come across Kuragin. The latter had returned to Russia shortly after Prince Andrey reached the Turkish army. In a new country, amid new surroundings, Prince Andrey found life easier to bear. After his betrothed’s betrayal of him, which he felt the more keenly, the more studiously he strove to conceal its effect on him from others, he found it hard to bear the conditions of life in which he had been happy, and felt still more irksome the freedom and independence he had once prized so highly. He could not now think the thoughts that had come to him for the first time on the field of Austerlitz, that he had loved to develop with Pierre, and that had enriched his solitude at Bogutcharovo, and later on in Switzerland and in Rome. Now he dreaded indeed those ideas that had then opened to him boundless vistas of light. Now he was occupied only with the most practical interests lying close at hand, and in no way associated with those old ideals. He clutched at these new interests the more eagerly the more the old ideals were hidden from him. It was as though the infinite, fathomless arch of heaven that had once stood over him had been suddenly transformed into a low, limited vault weighing upon him, with everything in it clear, but nothing eternal and mysterious.

Of the pursuits that presented themselves, military service was the simplest and the most familiar to him. He performed the duties of a general on duty on Kutuzov’s staff with zeal and perseverance, surprising Kutuzov by his eagerness for work and his conscientiousness. When he missed Kuragin in Turkey, Prince Andrey did not feel it necessary to gallop back to Russia in search of him. Yet in spite of all his contempt for Kuragin, in spite of all the arguments by which he sought to persuade himself that Kuragin was not worth his stooping to quarrel with him, he knew that whatever length of time might elapse, when he did meet him, he would be unable to help challenging him as a starving man cannot help rushing upon food. And the consciousness that the insult was not yet avenged, that his wrath had not been expended, but was still stored up in his heart, poisoned the artificial composure, which Prince Andrey succeeded in obtaining in Turkey in the guise of studiously busy and somewhat ambitious and vain energy.

In 1812, when the news of the war with Napoleon reached Bucharest (where Kutuzov had been fourteen months, spending days and nights together with his Wallachian mistress), Prince Andrey asked to be transferred to the western army. Kutuzov, who was by now sick of Bolkonsky’s energy, and felt it a standing reproach to his sloth, was very ready to let him go, and gave him a commission for Barclay de Tolly.

Before joining the army of the west, which was in May encamped at Drissa, Prince Andrey went to Bleak Hills, which was directly in his road, only three versts from the Smolensk high-road. The last three years of Prince Andrey’s life had been so full of vicissitudes, he had passed through such changes of thought and feeling, and seen such varied life (he had travelled both in the east and the west), that it struck him as strange and amazing to find at Bleak Hills life going on in precisely the same routine as ever. He rode up the avenue to the stone gates of the house, feeling as though it were the enchanted, sleeping castle. The same sedateness, the same cleanliness, the same silence reigned in the house; there was the same furniture, the same walls, the same sounds, the same smell, and the same timid faces, only a little older. Princess Marya was just the same timid, plain girl, no longer in her first youth, wasting the best years of her life in continual dread and suffering, and getting no benefit or happiness out of her existence. Mademoiselle Bourienne was just the same self-satisfied, coquettish girl, enjoying every moment of her life, and filled with the most joyous hopes for the future. She seemed only to have gained boldness, so Prince
Andrey thought. The tutor he had brought back from Switzerland, Dessalle, was wearing a coat of Russian cut, and talked broken Russian to the servants, but he was just the same narrow-minded, cultivated, conscientious, pedantic preceptor. The only physical change apparent in the old prince was the loss of a tooth, that left a gap at the side of his mouth. In character he was the same as ever, only showing even more irritability and scepticism as to everything that happened in the world. Nikolushka was the only one who had changed: he had grown taller, and rosy, and had curly dark hair. When he was merry and laughing, he unconsciously lifted the upper lip of his pretty little mouth, just as his dead mother, the little princess, used to do. He was the only one not in bondage to the law of sameness that reigned in that spellbound sleeping castle. But though externally all was exactly as of old, the inner relations of all the persons concerned had changed since Prince Andrey had seen them last. The household was split up into two hostile camps, which held aloof from one another, and only now came together in his presence, abandoning their ordinary habits on his account. To one camp belonged the old prince, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and the architect; to the other—Princess Marya, Dessalle, Nikolushka, and all the nurses.