War and Peace (165 page)

“Let the boyards be brought to me,” he said, addressing his suite. A general, with a brilliant suite of adjutants, galloped off at once to fetch the boyards.

Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched, and was again standing on the same spot on the Poklonny Hill, waiting for the deputation. His speech to the boyards had by now taken definite shape in his mind. The speech was full of dignity and of greatness, as Napoleon understood it. Napoleon was himself carried away by the magnanimity with which he intended to act in Moscow. In imagination he had already fixed the days for a
“réunion dans le palais des Czars
,” at which the great Russian nobles were to mingle with the courtiers of the French Emperor. In thought he had appointed a governor capable of winning the hearts of the people.
Having heard that Moscow was full of religious institutions, he had mentally decided that his bounty was to be showered on these institutions. He imagined that as in Africa he had had to sit in a mosque wearing a burnous, in Moscow he must be gracious and bountiful as the Tsars. And being, like every Frenchman, unable to imagine anything moving without a reference to
sa chère, sa tendre, sa pauvre mère
, he decided finally to touch the Russian heart, that he would have inscribed on all these charitable foundations in large letters, “Dedicated to my beloved mother,” or simply, “
Maison de ma mère
,” he decided. “But am I really in Moscow? Yes, there she lies before me; but why is the deputation from the city so long in coming?” he wondered.

Meanwhile a whispered and agitated consultation was being held among his generals and marshals in the rear of the suite. The adjutants sent to bring the deputation had come back with the news that Moscow was empty, that every one had left or was leaving the city. The faces of all the suite were pale and perturbed. It was not that Moscow had been abandoned by its inhabitants (grave as that fact appeared) that alarmed them. They were in alarm at the idea of making the fact known to the Emperor; they could not see how, without putting his majesty into the terrible position, called by the French
ridicule
, to inform him that he had been waiting so long for the boyards in vain, that there was a drunken mob, but no one else in Moscow. Some of the suite maintained that come what may, they must anyway scrape up a deputation of some sort; others opposed this view, and asserted that the Emperor must be carefully and skilfully prepared, and then told the truth.

“We shall have to tell him all the same,” said some gentleman of the suite.… “But, gentlemen …”

The position was the more difficult as the Emperor, pondering on his magnanimous plans, was walking patiently up and down before the map of the city, shading his eyes to look from time to time along the road to Moscow, with a proud and happy smile.

“But it’s awkward …” the gentlemen-in-waiting kept repeating, shrugging their shoulders and unable to bring themselves to settle the terrible word in their minds: “
le ridicule
.…”

Meanwhile the Emperor, weary of waiting in vain, and with his actor’s instinct feeling that the great moment, being too long deferred, was beginning to lose its grandeur, made a sign with his hand. A solitary cannon shot gave the signal, and the invading army marched into Moscow—at the Tver, the Kaluga, and the Dorogomilov gates. More
and more rapidly, vying with one another, at a quick run and a trot, the troops marched in, concealed in the clouds of dust they raised, and making the air ring with their deafening shouts.

Tempted on by the advance of the army, Napoleon too rode as far as the Dorogomilov gate, but there he halted again, and dismounting walked about the Kamerkolezhsky wall for a long time, waiting for the deputation.

Moscow meanwhile was empty. There were still people in the city; a fiftieth part of all the former inhabitants still remained in it, but it was empty.

It was deserted as a dying, queenless hive is deserted.

In a queenless hive there is no life left. Yet at a superficial glance it seems as much alive as other hives.

In the hot rays of the midday sun the bees soar as gaily around the queenless hive as around other living hives; from a distance it smells of honey like the rest, and bees fly into and out of it just the same. Yet one has but to watch it a little to see that there is no life in the hive. The flight of the bees is not as in living hives, the smell and the sound that meet the beekeeper are changed. When the beekeeper strikes the wall of the sick hive, instead of the instant, unanimous response, the buzzing of tens of thousands of bees menacingly arching their backs, and by the rapid stroke of their wings making that whirring, living sound, he is greeted by a disconnected, droning hum from different parts of the deserted hive. From the alighting board comes not as of old the spirituous, fragrant smell of honey and bitterness, and the whiff of heat from the multitudes within. A smell of chill emptiness and decay mingles with the scent of honey. Around the entrance there is now no throng of guards, arching their backs and trumpeting the menace, ready to die in its defence. There is heard no more the low, even hum, the buzz of toil, like the singing of boiling water, but the broken, discordant uproar of disorder comes forth. The black, long-shaped, honey-smeared workers fly timidly and furtively in and out of the hive: they do not sting, but crawl away at the sight of danger. Of old they flew in only with their bags of honey, and flew out empty: now they fly out with their burdens. The beekeeper opens the lower partition and peeps into the lower half
of the hive. Instead of the clusters of black, sleek bees, clinging on each other’s legs, hanging to the lower side of the partition, and with an unbroken hum of toil building at the wax, drowsy, withered bees wander listlessly about over the roof and walls of the hive. Instead of the cleanly glued-up floor, swept by the bees’ wings, there are now bits of wax, excrement, dying bees feebly kicking, and dead bees lying not cleared away on the floor.

The beekeeper opens the upper door and examines the super of the hive. In place of close rows of bees, sealing up every gap left in the combs and fostering the brood, he sees only the skilful, complex, edifice of combs, and even in this the virginal purity of old days is gone. All is forsaken; and soiled, black, stranger bees scurry swiftly and stealthily about the combs in search of plunder; while the dried-up, shrunken, listless, old-looking bees of the hive wander slowly about, doing nothing to hinder them, having lost every desire and sense of life. Drones, gadflies, wasps and butterflies flutter about aimlessly, brushing their wings against the walls of the hive. Here and there, between the cells full of dead brood and honey, is heard an angry buzz; here and there a couple of bees from old habit and custom, though they know not why they do it, are cleaning the hive, painfully dragging away a dead bee or a wasp, a task beyond their strength. In another corner two other old bees are languidly fighting or cleaning themselves or feeding one another, themselves unaware whether with friendly or hostile intent. Elsewhere a crowd of bees, squeezing one another, is falling upon some victim, beating and crushing it; and the killed or enfeebled bee drops slowly, light as a feather, on to the heap of corpses. The beekeeper parts the two centre partitions to look at the nursery. Instead of the dense, black rings of thousands of bees, sitting back to back, watching the high mysteries of the work of generation, he sees hundreds of dejected, lifeless, and slumbering wrecks of bees. Almost all have died, unconscious of their coming end, sitting in the holy place, which they had watched—now no more. They reek of death and corruption. But a few of them still stir, rise up, fly languidly and settle on the hand of the foe, without the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are dead and as easily brushed aside as fishes’ scales. The beekeeper closes the partition, chalks a mark on the hive, and choosing his own time, breaks it up and burns it.

So was Moscow deserted, as Napoleon, weary, uneasy and frowning, paced up and down at the Kamerkolezhsky wall awaiting that merely
external, but still to his mind essential observance of the proprieties—a deputation.

Some few men were still astir in odd corners of Moscow, aimlessly following their old habits, with no understanding of what they were doing.

When, with due circumspectness, Napoleon was informed that Moscow was deserted, he looked wrathfully at his informant, and turning his back on him, went on pacing up and down in silence.

“My carriage,” he said. He sat down in his carriage beside the adjutant on duty, and drove into the suburbs.

“Moscow deserted! What an incredible event!” he said to himself.

He did not drive right into the town, but put up for the night at an inn in the Dorogomilov suburb. The dramatic scene had not come off.

The Russian troops were crossing Moscow from two o’clock at night to two o’clock in the day, and took with them the last departing inhabitants and wounded soldiers.

The greatest crush took place on the Kamenny bridge, the Moskvoryetsky bridge, and Yauzsky bridge. While the troops, parting in two about the Kremlin, were crowding on to the Moskvoryetsky and Kamenny bridges, an immense number of soldiers availed themselves of the stoppage and the block to turn back, and slipping stealthily and quietly by Vassily the Blessed, and under the Borovitsky gates, they made their way uphill to the Red Square, where some instinct told them they could easily carry off other people’s property. Every passage and alley of the Gostinny bazaar was filled with a crowd, such as throngs there at sales. But there were no ingratiating, alluring voices of shopmen, no hawkers, no motley, female mob of purchasers—everywhere were the uniforms and overcoats of soldiers without guns, going out in silence with loads of booty, and coming in empty-handed. The shopkeepers and shopmen (they were few) were walking about among the soldiers, like men distraught, opening and shutting their shops, and helping their assistants to carry away their wares. There were drummers in the square before the bazaar beating the muster-call. But the roll of the drum made the pillaging soldiers not run up at the call as of old, but, on the contrary, run away from the drum. Among the soldiers in the
shops and passages could be seen men in the grey coats, and with the shaven heads of convicts. Two officers, one with a scarf over his uniform, on a thin, dark grey horse, the other on foot, wearing a military overcoat, stood at the corner of Ilyinka, talking. A third officer galloped up to them.

“The general has sent orders that they positively must all be driven out. Why, this is outrageous! Half the men have run off.”

“Why, are you off too?… Where are you fellows off to?” … he shouted to three infantry soldiers, who ran by him into the bazaar without guns, holding up the skirts of their overcoats. “Stop, rascals!”

“Yes, you see, how are you going to get hold of them?” answered another officer. “There’s no getting them together; we must push on so that the last may not be gone, that’s the only thing to do!”

“How’s one to push on? There they have been standing, with a block on the bridge, and they are not moving. Shouldn’t a guard be set to prevent the rest running off?”

“Why, come along! Drive them out,” shouted the senior officer.

The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a drummer, and went with him into the arcade. Several soldiers in a group together made a rush away. A shopkeeper, with red bruises on his cheeks about his nose, with an expression on his sleek face of quiet persistence in the pursuit of gain, came hurriedly and briskly up to the officer gesticulating.

“Your honour,” said he, “graciously protect us. We are not close-fisted—any trifle now … we shall be delighted! Pray, your honour, walk in, I’ll bring out cloth in a moment—a couple of pieces even for a gentleman—we shall be delighted! For we feel how it is, but this is simple robbery! Pray, your honour! a guard or something should be set, to let us at least shut up …”

Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer.

“Eh! it’s no use clacking,” said one of them, a thin man, with a stern face; “when one’s head’s off, one doesn’t weep over one’s hair. Let all take what they please!” And with a vigorous sweep of his arm he turned away from the officer.

“It’s all very well for you to talk, Ivan Sidoritch,” the first shopkeeper began angrily. “If you please, your honour.”

“What’s the use of talking!” shouted the thin man; “in my three shops here I have one hundred thousand worth of goods. How’s one to guard them when the army is gone? Ah, fellows, God’s will is not in men’s hands!”

“If you please, your honour,” said the first shopkeeper, bowing.

The officer stood in uncertainty, and his face betrayed indecision. “Why, what business is it of mine!” he cried suddenly, and he strode on rapidly along the arcade. In one open shop he heard blows and high words, and just as the officer was going into it, a man in a grey coat, with a shaven head, was thrust violently out of the door.

This man doubled himself up and bounded past the shopkeepers and the officer. The officer pounced on the soldiers who were in the shop. But meanwhile fearful screams, coming from an immense crowd, were heard near the Moskvoryetsky bridge, and the officer ran out into the square.

“What is it? What is it?” he asked, but his comrade had already galloped off in the direction of the screams. The officer mounted his horse and followed him. As he drew near the bridge, he saw two cannons that had been taken off their carriages, the infantry marching over the bridge, a few broken-down carts, and some soldiers with frightened, and some with laughing faces. Near the cannons stood a waggon with a pair of horses harnessed to it. Behind the wheels huddled four greyhounds in collars. A mountain of goods was piled up in the waggon, and on the very top, beside a child’s chair turned legs uppermost, sat a woman, who was uttering shrill and despairing shrieks. The officer was told by his comrades that the screams of the crowd and the woman’s shrieks were due to the fact that General Yermolov had come riding down on the crowd, and learning that the soldiers were straying away in the shops, and crowds of the townspeople were blocking the bridge, had commanded them to take the cannons out of their carriages, and to make as though they would fire them at the bridge. The crowd had made a rush; upsetting waggons, trampling one another, and screaming desperately, the bridge had been cleared, and the troops had moved on.