War and Peace
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parture went to his room. ‘Do you know, mon cher,’ said Bilibin following him, ‘I have been thinking about you. Why are you going?’ And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles vanished from his face. Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply. ‘Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back to the army now that it is in danger. I under- stand that. Mon cher, it is heroism!’ ‘Not at all,’ said Prince Andrew. ‘But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look War and Peace 294 at the other side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the contrary, is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no longer fit for anything else.... You have not been ordered to return and have not been dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and go with us wherever our ill luck takes us. They say we are going to Olmutz, and Olmutz is a very decent town. You and I will travel comfortably in my caleche.’ ‘Do stop joking, Bilibin,’ cried Bolkonski. ‘I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are you going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two things,’ and the skin over his left temple puckered, ‘either you will not reach your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will share defeat and dis- grace with Kutuzov’s whole army.’ And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the di- lemma was insoluble. ‘I cannot argue about it,’ replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he thought: ‘I am going to save the army.’ ‘My dear fellow, you are a hero!’ said Bilibin. 295 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com Chapter XIII That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War, Bolkonski set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would find it and fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems. In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the heavy baggage was already being dispatched to Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf Prince Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was moving with great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was so obstruct- ed with carts that it was impossible to get by in a carriage. Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack commander, and hungry and weary, making his way past the baggage wagons, rode in search of the commander in chief and of his own luggage. Very sinister reports of the position of the army reached him as he went along, and the appearance of the troops in their disorderly flight con- firmed these rumors. ‘Cette armee russe que l’or de l’Angleterre a transportee des extremites de l’univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver le meme sort(le sort de l’armee d’Ulm).’* He remembered these words in Bonaparte’s address to his army at the begin- ning of the campaign, and they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of his hero, a feeling of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. ‘And should there be nothing left but to die?’ War and Peace 296 he thought. ‘Well, if need be, I shall do it no worse than oth- ers.’ *”That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of the earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same fate(the fate of the army at Ulm).’ He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of detachments, carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wag- ons and vehicles of all kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy road, three and sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and before, as far as ear could reach, there were the rattle of wheels, the creaking of carts and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the crack of whips, shouts, the urging of horses, and the swearing of soldiers, order- lies, and officers. All along the sides of the road fallen horses were to be seen, some flayed, some not, and broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers sat waiting for some- thing, and again soldiers straggling from their companies, crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or re- turned from them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At each ascent or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the din of shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped, traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their faces that they despaired of the possibility of check- ing this disorder. ‘Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army,’ thought 297 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com Bolkonski, recalling Bilibin’s words. Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up to a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse vehicle, evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available materials and looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet, and a caleche. A soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in shawls sat behind the apron under the leather hood of the vehicle. Prince Andrew rode up and was just putting his question to a soldier when his attention was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the woman in the vehicle. An officer in charge of transport was beating the soldier who was driving the woman’s vehicle for trying to get ahead of others, and the strokes of his whip fell on the apron of the equipage. The woman screamed pierc- ingly. Seeing Prince Andrew she leaned out from behind the apron and, waving her thin arms from under the woolen shawl, cried: ‘Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven’s sake... Protect me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh Chasseurs.... They won’t let us pass, we are left behind and have lost our people..’ ‘I’ll flatten you into a pancake!’ shouted the angry officer to the soldier. ‘Turn back with your slut!’ ‘Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?’ screamed the doctor’s wife. ‘Kindly let this cart pass. Don’t you see it’s a woman?’ said Prince Andrew riding up to the officer. The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the soldier. ‘I’ll teach you to push on!... Back!’ War and Peace 298 ‘Let them pass, I tell you!’ repeated Prince Andrew, com- pressing his lips. ‘And who are you?’ cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy rage, ‘who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander here, not you! Go back or I’ll flatten you into a pancake,’ repeated he. This expression evidently pleased him. ‘That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp,’ came a voice from behind. Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless, tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his championship of the doctor’s wife in her queer trap might expose him to what he dreaded more than anything in the worldto ridicule; but his instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence Prince An- drew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised his riding whip. ‘Kind...ly letthempass!’ The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away. ‘It’s all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there’s this disorder,’ he muttered. ‘Do as you like.’ Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the doctor’s wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with a sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he galloped on to the village where he was told that the commander in chief was. On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house, intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to sort out the stinging and tormenting 299 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com thoughts that confused his mind. ‘This is a mob of scoun- drels and not an army,’ he was thinking as he went up to the window of the first house, when a familiar voice called him by name. He turned round. Nesvitski’s handsome face looked out of the little window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he chewed something, and flourishing his arm, called him to enter. ‘Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don’t you hear? Eh? Come quick...’ he shouted. Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and an- other adjutant having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm. This was particularly no- ticeable on Nesvitski’s usually laughing countenance. ‘Where is the commander in chief?’ asked Bolkonski. ‘Here, in that house,’ answered the adjutant. ‘Well, is it true that it’s peace and capitulation?’ asked Nesvitski. ‘I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I could do to get here.’ ‘And we, my dear boy! It’s terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack, we’re getting it still worse,’ said Nesvitski. ‘But sit down and have something to eat.’ ‘You won’t be able to find either your baggage or any- thing else now, Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is,’ said the other adjutant. ‘Where are headquarters?’ ‘We are to spend the night in Znaim.’ War and Peace 300 ‘Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses,’ said Nesvitski. ‘They’ve made up splendid packs for mefit to cross the Bohemian mountains with. It’s a bad lookout, old fellow! But what’s the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that,’ he added, noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock. ‘It’s nothing,’ replied Prince Andrew. He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor’s wife and the convoy officer. ‘What is the commander in chief doing here?’ he asked. ‘I can’t make out at all,’ said Nesvitski. ‘Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable, abominable, quite abominable!’ said Prince Andrew, and he went off to the house where the commander in chief was. Passing by Kutuzov’s carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince Andrew entered the passage. Ku- tuzov himself, he was told, was in the house with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the Austrian general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little Kozlovski was squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk, with cuffs turned up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom upwards. Kozlovski’s face looked wornhe too had evidently not slept all night. He glanced at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to him. ‘Second line... have you written it?’ he continued dictat- ing to the clerk. ‘The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..’ ‘One can’t write so fast, your honor,’ said the clerk, glanc- ing angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlovski. 301 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov’s voice, ex- cited and dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlovski looked at him, the disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the clerk and Kozlovski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to the commander in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks holding the horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that some- thing important and disastrous was about to happen. He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions. ‘Immediately, Prince,’ said Kozlovski. ‘Dispositions for Bagration.’ ‘What about capitulation?’ ‘Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle.’ Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard. Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened, and Kutuzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the doorway. Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov but the expression of the commander in chief’s one sound eye showed him to be so preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivi- ous of his presence. He looked straight at his adjutant’s face without recognizing him. ‘Well, have you finished?’ said he to Kozlovski. ‘One moment, your excellency.’ Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm, impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in chief. ‘I have the honor to present myself,’ repeated Prince An- War and Peace 302 drew rather loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope. Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!’ Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration. ‘Well, good-by, Prince,’ said he to Bagration. ‘My bless- ing, and may Christ be with you in your great endeavor!’ His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his left hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with his right, on which he wore a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a gesture evidently habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagration kissed him on the neck in- stead. ‘Christ be with you!’ Kutuzov repeated and went toward his carriage. ‘Get in with me,’ said he to Bolkonski. ‘Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to remain with Prince Bagration’s detachment.’ ‘Get in,’ said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski still delayed, he added: ‘I need good officers myself, need them myself!’ They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence. ‘There is still much, much before us,’ he said, as if with an old man’s penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkonski’s mind. ‘If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God,’ he added as if speaking to himself. Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov’s face only a foot distant from him and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar near his temple, where an Is- mail bullet had pierced his skull, and the empty eye socket. ‘Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those men’s death,’ 303 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com thought Bolkonski. ‘That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment,’ he said. Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five min- utes later, gently swaying on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince Andrew. There was not a trace of agita- tion on his face. With delicate irony he questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his interview with the Emper- or, about the remarks he had heard at court concerning the Krems affair, and about some ladies they both knew. War and Peace 304 Chapter XIV On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy, news that the army he commanded was in an almost hopeless po- sition. The spy reported that the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing in immense force upon Kutuzov’s line of communication with the troops that were arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov decided to remain at Krems, Napoleon’s army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut him off completely and surround his ex- hausted army of forty thousand, and he would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If Kutuzov decided to aban- don the road connecting him with the troops arriving from Russia, he would have to march with no road into unknown Yüklə 9,73 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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