War and Peace (141 page)

Kutuzov smacked his lips together and shook his head, as he listened to the matter.

“Into the stove … into the fire with it! And I tell you once for all, my dear fellow,” he said, “all such things put into the fire. Let them cut the corn and burn the wood to their heart’s content. It’s not by my orders and it’s not with my permission, but I can’t pursue the matter. It can’t be helped. You can’t hew down trees without the chips flying.” He
glanced once more at the paper. “Oh, this German preciseness,” he commented, shaking his head.

“Well, now, that’s all,” said Kutuzov, as he signed the last paper, and rising clumsily, and straightening his fat, white neck, he went to the door with a more cheerful countenance.

The priest’s wife, with the colour rushing to her face, snatched up the dish, and though she had been so long preparing, she did not succeed in presenting it at the right moment. With a low bow she offered it to Kutuzov. Kutuzov screwed up his eyes. He smiled, chucked her under the chin, and said:

“And what a pretty face! Thank you, my dear!”

He took some gold coins out of his trouser pocket, and put them on the dish. “Well, and how are we getting on?” he said, going towards the room that had been assigned him. The priest’s wife, with smiling dimples on her rosy face, followed to show him the room. The adjutant came out to Prince Andrey in the porch, and invited him to lunch. Half an hour later Kutuzov sent for Prince Andrey. He was reclining in a low chair, still in the same unbuttoned military coat. He had a French novel in his hand, and at Prince Andrey’s entrance laid a paper-knife in it and put it aside. It was
Les Chevaliers du Cygne
, a work by Madame de Genlis, as Prince Andrey saw by the cover.

“Well, sit down; sit down here. Let us have a little talk,” said Kutuzov. “It’s sad; very sad. But remember, my dear, think of me as a father, another father, to you …!”

Prince Andrey told Kutuzov all he knew about his father’s end, and what he had seen at Bleak Hills.

“To think what we have been brought to!” Kutuzov cried suddenly, in a voice full of feeling, Prince Andrey’s story evidently bringing vividly before him the position of Russia.

“Wait a bit; wait a bit!” he added, with a vindictive look in his face, and apparently unwilling to continue a conversation that stirred him too deeply, he said:

“I sent for you to keep you with me.”

“I thank your highness!” answered Prince Andrey, “but I am afraid I am no more good for staff work,” he said, with a smile, which Kutuzov
noticed. He looked at him inquiringly. “And the great thing is,” added Prince Andrey, “I am used to my regiment. I like the officers; and I think the men have come to like me. I should be sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honour of being in attendance on you, believe me …”

Kutuzov’s podgy face beamed with a shrewd, good-natured, and yet subtly ironical expression. He cut Bolkonsky short.

“I’m sure you would have been of use to me. But you’re right; you’re right. It’s not here that we want men. There are always a multitude of counsellors; but men are scarce. The regiments wouldn’t be what they are if all the would-be counsellors would serve in them like you. I remember you at Austerlitz. I remember, I remember you with the flag!” said Kutuzov, and a flush of pleasure came into Prince Andrey’s face at this reminiscence. Kutuzov held out his hand to him, offering him his cheek to kiss, and again Prince Andrey saw tears in the old man’s eye. Though Prince Andrey knew Kutuzov’s tears were apt to come easily, and that he was particularly affectionate and tender with him from the desire to show sympathy with his loss, yet he felt this reminder of Austerlitz agreeable and flattering.

“Go your own way, and God bless you in it.… I know your path is the path of honour!” He paused. “I missed you at Bucharest. I wanted some one to send …” And changing the subject, Kutuzov began talking of the Turkish war, and of the peace that had been concluded. “Yes, I have been roundly abused,” he said, “both for the war and the peace … but it all happened in the nick of time.” “ ‘Everything comes in time for him who knows how to wait,’ ” he said, quoting the French proverb. “And there were as many counsellors there as here,…” he went on, returning to the superfluity of advisers, a subject which evidently occupied his mind. “Ugh, counsellors and counsellors!” he said. “If we had listened to all of them, we should be in Turkey now. We should not have made peace, and the war would never have been over. Always in haste, and more haste, worse speed. Kamensky would have come to grief there, if he hadn’t died. He went storming fortresses with thirty thousand men. It’s easy enough to take fortresses, but it’s hard to finish off a campaign successfully. Storms and attacks are not what’s wanted, but
time
and
patience
. Kamensky sent his soldiers to attack Rustchuk, but I trusted to them alone—time and patience—and I took more fortresses than Kamensky, and made the Turks eat horseflesh!” He shook his head. “And the French shall, too. Take my word for it,” cried Kutuzov, growing
warmer and slapping himself on the chest, “I’ll make them eat horseflesh!” And again his eye was dim with tears.

“We shall have to give battle, though, shan’t we?” said Prince Andrey.

“We must, if every one wants to; there is no help for it.… But, mark my words, my dear boy! The strongest of all warriors are these two—time and patience. They do it all, and our wise counsellors
n’entendent pas de cette oreille, voilà le mal
. Some say ay, and some say no. What’s one to do?” he asked, evidently expecting a reply. “Come, what would you have me do?” he repeated, and his eyes twinkled with a profound, shrewd expression. “I’ll tell you what to do,” he said, since Prince Andrey still did not answer. “I’ll tell you what to do, and what I do.
Dans le doute, mon cher
”—he paused—“
abstiens-toi
.” He articulated deliberately the French saying.

“Well, good-bye, my dear. Remember, with all my heart, I feel for your sorrow, and that for you I’m not his highness, nor prince, nor commander-in-chief, but simply a father to you. If you want anything, come straight to me. Good-bye, my dear boy!” Again he embraced and kissed him.

And before Prince Andrey had closed the door, Kutuzov settled himself comfortably with a sigh, and renewed the unfinished novel of Madame Genlis,
Les Chevaliers du Cygne
.

How, and why it was, Prince Andrey could not explain, but after this interview with Kutuzov, he went back to his regiment feeling reassured as to the future course of the war, and as to the man to whom its guidance was intrusted. The more clearly he perceived the absence of everything personal in the old leader, who seemed to have nothing left of his own but habits of passions, and instead of an intellect grasping events and making plans, had only the capacity for the calm contemplation of the course of events, the more confident he felt that all would be as it should be. “He will put in nothing of himself. He will contrive nothing, will undertake nothing,” thought Prince Andrey; “but he will hear everything, will think of everything, will put everything in its place, will not hinder anything that could be of use, and will not allow anything that could do harm. He knows that there is something stronger and more important than his will—that is the inevitable march of events, and he can see them, can grasp their significance, and, seeing their significance, can abstain from meddling, from following his own will, and aiming at something else. And the chief reason,” thought Prince Andrey, “why one believes in him is that he’s Russian, in spite of Madame Genlis’s
novel and the French proverbs, that his voice shook when he said, ‘What we have been brought to!’ and that he choked when he said ‘he would make them eat horseflesh!’ ”

It was this feeling, more or less consciously shared by all, that determined the unanimous approval given to the appointment of Kutuzov to the chief command, in accordance with national sentiment, and in opposition to the intrigues at court.

After the Tsar had left Moscow, the life of that city flowed on in its old accustomed channel, and the current of that life ran so much as usual that it was difficult to remember the days of patriotic fervour and enthusiasm, and hard to believe that Russia actually was in danger, and that the members of the English club were also her devoted sons, ready to make any sacrifice for her sake. The one thing that recalled the general patriotic fervour of the days of the Tsar’s presence in Moscow was the call for contributions of men and money, and these demands were presented at once in a legal, official form, so that they seemed inevitable. As the enemy drew nearer to Moscow the attitude taken by its inhabitants in regard to their position did not become more serious, but, on the contrary, more frivolous, as is always the case with people who see a great danger approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonably says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not in a man’s power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second. So it was now with the inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since there had been so much gaiety in Moscow as that year.

Rastoptchin’s posters, with a print at the top of a gin-shop, a potman, and the Moscow artisan, Karpushka Tchigirin, “who, having gone into the militia, heard that Bonaparte meant to come to Moscow, was mightily wroth thereat, used very bad language about all the French, came out of the gin-shop and began to address the people assembled
under the eagles,” were as much read and discussed as the last
bouts rimés
of Vassily Lvovitch Pushkin.

In the corner room of the club the members gathered together to read these posters; and some liked the way Karpushka was made to jeer at the French, saying that “they would be blown out with Russian cabbage, that Russian porridge would rip their guts open, and cabbage soup would finish them off; that they were all dwarfs, and a village lass could toss three of them on her pitchfork single-handed!”

Some people did not approve of this tone, and said it was vulgar and stupid. People said that Rastoptchin had sent all Frenchmen, and even foreigners, out of Moscow, and that there had been spies and agents of Napoleon among them. But they talked of this principally in order to repeat the witticisms uttered by Rastoptchin on the occasion. The foreigners had been put on a barque sailing to Nizhny, and Rastoptchin had said to them: “Keep yourselves to yourselves, get into the barque, and take care it does not become the barque of Charon to you.” People talked too of all the government offices having been removed from Moscow, and added Shinshin’s joke, that for that alone Moscow ought to be grateful to Napoleon. People said that Mamonov’s regiment was costing him eight hundred thousand; that Bezuhov was spending even more on his; but that the noblest proof of Bezuhov’s patriotism was that he was going to put on the uniform himself and ride at the head of his regiment, without any charge for seats to spectators.

“You have no mercy on any one,” said Julie Drubetskoy, gathering up a pinch of scraped lint in her slender fingers covered with rings.

Julie was intending to leave Moscow next day, and was giving a farewell
soirée
.

“
Bezuhov est ridicule
, but he is so good-natured, so nice; how can you take pleasure in being so
caustique
?”

“Forfeit!” said a young man in a volunteer’s uniform, whom Julie called “
mon chevalier
,” and was taking with her to Nizhny.

In Julie’s circle, as in many circles in Moscow, it was a principle now to speak nothing but Russian, and those who made a mistake by speaking French had to pay a forfeit for the benefit of the committee of voluntary subscriptions.

“Another forfeit for a Gallicism,” said a Russian writer who happened to be present. “ ‘Take pleasure!’ is not Russian.”

“You have no mercy on any one,” Julie went on to the volunteer, paying no attention to the remark of the author.

“
Caustique
, I admit,” she said, “and I’ll pay for the pleasure of telling you the truth. I am ready to pay even more; but I am not responsible for Gallicisms,” she said to the writer. “I have neither the time nor the money to engage a teacher and learn Russian like Prince Galitzin. Ah, here he is!” added Julie. “
Quand on
 … No, no,” she protested to the volunteer, “you’re not going to catch me. When one speaks of the sun, one sees its rays. We were just talking of you,” she said, smiling affably to Pierre, and adding, with the easy lying characteristic of society women, “We were saying your regiment was certain to be a finer one than Mamonov’s.”

“Oh, don’t talk to me about my regiment,” answered Pierre, kissing his hostess’s hand, and sitting down beside her. “I am so heartily sick of it!”

“You will take the command of it yourself, of course?” said Julie with a sly and sarcastic look towards the volunteer.

The latter was by no means so ready to be caustic in Pierre’s presence, and his countenance betokened perplexity as to what Julie’s smile could signify. In spite of his absent-mindedness and good nature, Pierre’s presence never failed to cut short any attempt at ridicule at his expense.

“No,” answered Pierre, laughing and looking at his huge, bulky figure; “I should make too good a target for the French, and indeed I’m afraid I could hardly scramble on to a horse’s back.”

Among the people picked out as subjects for gossip, Julie’s friends happened to pitch on the Rostovs. “Their pecuniary position is very serious, I am told,” said Julie. “And the count is so unreasonable. The Razumovskys wanted to buy his house and his estate in the environs, and the matter is still dragging on. He will ask too much.”

“No, I fancy purchase will be concluded in a few days,” said some one. “Though it’s madness to buy anything in Moscow just now.”