War and Peace (131 page)

When Mihail Ivanitch went in, there were tears in his eyes, called up by the memory of the time when he had written what he was now reading. He took the letter out of Mihail Ivanitch’s hand, put it in his pocket, folded up his papers and called in Alpatitch, who had been waiting a long while to see him.

He had noted down on a sheet of paper what he wanted in Smolensk, and he began walking up and down the room, as he gave his instructions to Alpatitch, standing at the door.

“First, letter paper, do you hear, eight quires, like this pattern, you see; gilt edged … take the pattern, so as to be sure to match it; varnish, sealing-wax—according to Mihail Ivanitch’s list.”

He walked up and down the room and glanced at the memorandum.

“Then deliver the letter about the enrolment to the governor in person.”

Then bolts for the doors of the new building were wanted, and must be of a new pattern, which the old prince had himself designed. Then an iron-bound box was to be ordered for keeping his will in.

Giving Alpatitch his instructions occupied over two hours. The prince still would not let him go. He sat down, sank into thought, and closing his eyes, dropped into a doze. Alpatitch made a slight movement.

“Well, go along, go along,” said the old prince; “if anything is wanted I’ll send.”

Alpatitch went away. The prince went back to the bureau; glancing
into it, he passed his hand over his papers, closed it again, and sat down to the table to write to the governor.

It was late when he sealed the letter and got up. He was sleepy, but he knew he would not sleep, and that he would be haunted by most miserable thoughts in bed. He called Tihon, and went through the rooms with him, to tell him where to make up his bed for that night. He walked about, measuring every corner.

There was no place that pleased him, but worst of all was the couch in the study that he had been used to. That couch had become an object of dread to him, probably from the painful thoughts he had thought lying on it. No place was quite right, but best of them all was the corner in the divan-room, behind the piano; he had never slept there yet.

Tihon brought the bedstead in with the footmen, and began putting it up.

“That’s not right, that’s not right!” cried the old prince. With his own hands he moved the bed an inch further from the corner, and then closer to it again.

“Well, at last, I have done everything; now I shall rest,” thought the prince, and he left it to Tihon to undress him.

Frowning with vexation at the effort he had to make to take off his coat and trousers, the prince undressed, dropped heavily down on his bed, and seemed to sink into thought, staring contemptuously at his yellow, withered legs. He was not really thinking, but simply pausing before the effort to lift his legs up and lay them in the bed. “Ugh, how hard it is! Ugh, if these toils could soon be over, and if
you
would let me go!” he mused. Pinching his lips tightly, he made that effort for the twenty thousandth time, and lay down. But he had hardly lain down, when all at once the bed seemed to rock regularly to and fro under him, as though it were heaving and jolting. He had this sensation almost every night. He opened his eyes that were closing themselves.

“No peace, damn them!” he grumbled, with inward rage at some persons unknown. “Yes, yes, there was something else of importance—something of great importance I was saving up to think of in bed. The bolts? No, I did speak about them. No, there was something, something in the drawing-room. Princess Marya talked some nonsense. Dessalle—he’s a fool—said something, something in my pocket—I don’t remember.”

“Tishka! what were we talking about at dinner?”

“About Prince Mihail …”

“Stay, stay”—the prince slapped his hand down on the table. “Yes, I know, Prince Andrey’s letter. Princess Marya read it. Dessalle said something about Vitebsk. I’ll read it now.”

He told Tihon to get the letter out of his pocket, and to move up the little table with the lemonade and the spiral wax candle on it, and putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only then in the stillness of the night, as he read the letter, in the faint light under the green shade, for the first time he grasped for an instant its meaning. “The French are at Vitebsk, in four days’ march they may be at Smolensk; perhaps they are there by now. Tishka!” Tihon jumped up. “No, nothing, nothing!” he cried.

He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And there rose before his mind the Danube, bright midday, the reeds, the Russian camp, and he, a young general, without one wrinkle on his brow, bold, gay, ruddy, entering Potyomkin’s gay-coloured tent, and the burning sensation of envy of the favourite stirs within him as keenly as at the time. And he recalls every word uttered at the first interview with Potyomkin. And then he sees a plump, short woman with a sallow, fat face, the mother empress, her smiles and words at her first gracious reception for him; and then her face as she lay on the bier, and the quarrel with Zubov over her coffin for the right to kiss her hand.

“Oh, to make haste, to make haste back to that time, and oh, that the present might soon be over and they might leave me in peace!”

Bleak Hills, the estate of Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky, was sixty versts from Smolensk, a little to the rear of it, and three versts from the main road to Moscow.

The same evening on which the old prince gave Alpatitch his instructions, Dessalle asked for a few words with Princess Marya, and told her that since the prince was not quite well and was taking no steps to secure his own safety, though from Prince Andrey’s letter it was plain that to stay on at Bleak Hills was not free from danger, he respectfully advised her to write herself, and send by Alpatitch a letter to the governor at Smolensk, and to ask him to let her know the position of affairs and the degree of danger they were running at Bleak Hills. Dessalle wrote the letter to the governor for Princess Marya and she signed it, and the letter
was given to Alpatitch with instructions to give it to the governor, and in case there was danger, to come back as quickly as possible.

When he had received all his orders, Alpatitch put on his white beaver hat—a gift from the prince—and carrying a stick in his hand, like the prince, went out, accompanied by all his household, to get into the leather gig harnessed to three sleek, roan horses.

The bells were tied up and stuffed with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bleak Hills to drive with bells. But Alpatitch loved to have bells ringing when he went a long journey. All Alpatitch’s satellites, the counting-house clerk, the servants’ cook and the head cook, two old women, a foot-boy, a coachman, and various other servants saw him off.

His daughter put chintz-covered, down pillows under him and behind his back. His old sister-in-law slyly popped in a kerchief full of things. One of the coachmen helped him to get in.

“There, there, women’s fuss! Women folk, women folk!” said Alpatitch, puffing and talking rapidly, just as the old prince used to talk. He sat down in the gig, giving the counting-house clerk his last directions about the work to be done in the fields; and then dropping his imitation of the prince, Alpatitch took his hat off his bald head and crossed himself three times.

“If there’s anything … you turn back, Yakov Alpatitch; for Christ’s sake, think of us,” his wife called to him, alluding to the rumours of war and of the enemy near.

“Ah, these women and their fuss!” Alpatitch muttered to himself as he drove off, looking about him at the fields. He saw rye turning yellow, thick oats still green, and here and there patches still black, where they were only just beginning the second ploughing. Alpatitch drove on, admiring the crop of corn, singularly fine that season, staring at the rye fields, in some of which reaping was already beginning, meditating like a true husbandman on the sowing and the harvest, and wondering whether he had forgotten any of the prince’s instructions. He stopped twice to feed his horses on the way, and towards the evening of the 4th of August reached the town.

All the way Alpatitch had met and overtaken waggons and troops, and as he drove into Smolensk he heard firing in the distance, but he scarcely heeded the sound. What struck him more than anything was that close to Smolensk he saw a splendid field of oats being mown down by some soldiers evidently for forage; there was a camp, too, pitched in the middle
of it. This did make an impression upon Alpatitch, but he soon forgot it in thinking over his own affairs.

All the interests of Alpatitch’s life had been for over thirty years bounded by the will of the prince, and he never stepped outside that limit. Anything that had nothing to do with carrying out the prince’s orders had no interest, had in fact no existence for Alpatitch.

On reaching Smolensk on the evening of the 4th of August, Alpatitch put up where he had been in the habit of putting up for the last thirty years, at a tavern kept by a former house-porter, Ferapontov, beyond the Dnieper in the Gatchensky quarter. Twelve years before, Ferapontov had profited by Alpatitch’s good offices to buy timber from the old prince, and had begun going into trade; and by now he had a house, an inn and a corn-dealer’s shop in the town. Ferapontov was a stout, dark, ruddy peasant of forty, with thick lips, a thick, knobby nose, similar knobby bumps over his black, knitted brows, and a round belly.

He was standing in his print shirt and his waistcoat in front of his shop, which looked into the street. He saw Alpatitch, and went up to him.

“You’re kindly welcome, Yakov Alpatitch. Folk are going out of the town, while you come into it,” said he.

“How’s that? Out of town?” said Alpatitch.

“To be sure, I always say folks are fools. Always frightened of the French.”

“Women’s nonsense, women’s nonsense!” replied Alpatitch.

“That’s just what I think, Yakov Alpatitch. I say there’s a notice put up that they won’t let them come in, so to be sure that’s right. But the peasants are asking as much as three roubles for a cart and horse—they’ve no conscience!”

Yakov Alpatitch heard without heeding. He asked for a samovar, and for hay for his horses; and after drinking tea lay down to sleep.

All night long the troops were moving along the street by the tavern. Next day Alpatitch put on a tunic, which he kept for wearing in town, and went out to execute his commissions. It was a sunny morning, and by eight o’clock it was hot. “A precious day for the harvest,” as Alpatitch thought. From early morning firing could be heard from beyond the town.

At eight o’clock the boom of cannon mingled with the rattle of musketry. The streets were thronged with people, hurrying about, and also
with soldiers, but drivers plied for hire, the shopkeepers stood at their shops, and services were being held in the churches just as usual. Alpatitch went to the shops, to the government offices, to the post and to the governor’s. Everywhere that he went every one was talking of the war, and of the enemy who was attacking the town. All were asking one another what was to be done, and trying to calm each other’s fears.

At the governor’s house, Alpatitch found a great number of people, and saw Cossacks, and a travelling carriage belonging to the governor at the entrance. On the steps Yakov Alpatitch met two gentlemen, one of whom he knew. This gentleman, a former police-captain, was speaking with great heat.

“Well, this is no jesting matter,” he said. “Good luck for him who has only himself to think of. It’s bad enough for one alone, but when one has a family of thirteen and a whole property.… Things have come to such a pass that we shall all be ruined; what’s one to say of the government after that?… Ugh, I’d hang the brigands.…”

“Come, come, hush!” said the other.

“What do I care! let him hear! Why, we’re not dogs!” said the former police-captain, and looking round, he caught sight of Alpatitch.

“Ah, Yakov Alpatitch, how do you come here?”

“By command of his excellency to his honour the governor,” answered Alpatitch, lifting his head proudly and putting his hand into his bosom, as he always did when he mentioned the old prince.… “His honour was pleased to bid me inquire into the position of affairs,” he said.

“Well, you may as well know then,” cried the gentleman; “they have brought matters to such a pass that there are no carts to be got, nothing!… That’s it again, do you hear?” he said, pointing in the direction from which the sounds of firing came.

“They have brought us all to ruin … the brigands!” he declared again, and he went down the steps.

Alpatitch shook his head and went up. The waiting-room was full of merchants, women, and clerks, looking dumbly at one another. The door of the governor’s room opened, all of them got up and made a forward movement. A clerk ran out of the room, said something to a merchant, called a stout official with a cross on his neck to follow him, and vanished again, obviously trying to avoid all the looks and the questions addressed to him. Alpatitch moved forward, and the next time the same clerk emerged, he put his hand into his buttoned coat, and addressed him, handing him the two letters.

“To his honour the Baron Ash from the general-in-chief Prince Bolkonsky,” he boomed out with so much pomposity and significance that the clerk turned to him and took the letters. A few minutes afterwards Alpatitch was shown into the presence of the governor, who said to him hurriedly, “Inform the prince and the princess that I knew nothing about it. I acted on the highest instructions—here.…”

He gave Alpatitch a document.

“Still, as the prince is not well my advice to him is to go to Moscow. I’m setting off myself immediately. Tell them …” But the governor did not finish; a dusty and perspiring officer ran into the room and began saying something in French. A look of horror came into the governor’s face.

“You can go,” he said, nodding to Alpatitch, and he put some questions to the officer. Eager, panic-stricken, helpless glances were turned upon Alpatitch when he came out of the governor’s room. Alpatitch could not help listening now to firing, which seemed to come closer and to be getting hotter, as he hurried back to the inn. The document the governor had given to Alpatitch ran as follows: