BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812





CHAPTER I


Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness,
but the desire to find those causes is implanted in man's soul. And
without considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions
any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he
snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems to him
intelligible and says: "This is the cause!" In historical events
(where the actions of men are the subject of observation) the first
and most primitive approximation to present itself was the will of the
gods and, after that, the will of those who stood in the most
prominent position--the heroes of history. But we need only penetrate
to the essence of any historic event--which lies in the activity of
the general mass of men who take part in it--to be convinced that the
will of the historic hero does not control the actions of the mass but
is itself continually controlled. It may seem to be a matter of
indifference whether we understand the meaning of historical events
this way or that; yet there is the same difference between a man who
says that the people of the West moved on the East because Napoleon
wished it and a man who says that this happened because it had to
happen, as there is between those who declared that the earth was
stationary and that the planets moved round it and those who admitted
that they did not know what upheld the earth, but knew there were laws
directing its movement and that of the other planets. There is, and
can be, no cause of an historical event except the one cause of all
causes. But there are laws directing events, and some of these laws
are known to us while we are conscious of others we cannot comprehend.
The discovery of these laws is only possible when we have quite
abandoned the attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man,
just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was
possible only when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the
earth.

The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and the
occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the
most important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the
Russian army from the Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino
camp--the so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River. They
ascribe the glory of that achievement of genius to different men and
dispute as to whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians,
including the French, acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders
when they speak of that flank march. But it is hard to understand
why military writers, and following them others, consider this flank
march to be the profound conception of some one man who saved Russia
and destroyed Napoleon. In the first place it is hard to understand
where the profundity and genius of this movement lay, for not much
mental effort was needed to see that the best position for an army
when it is not being attacked is where there are most provisions;
and even a dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the best
position for an army after its retreat from Moscow in 1812 was on
the Kaluga road. So it is impossible to understand by what reasoning
the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver was a
profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just why
they think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia and
destroy the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded,
accompanied, or followed by other circumstances, might have proved
ruinous to the Russians and salutary for the French. If the position
of the Russian army really began to improve from the time of that
march, it does not at all follow that the march was the cause of it.

That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to
the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its
destruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If
Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained
inactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya Pakhra had given battle as
Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French
attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhra? What
would have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon had
attacked the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when
he attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had the
French moved on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank
march that brought salvation might have proved disastrous.

The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying
history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be
attributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in
reality, like the retreat from Fili, it did not suggest itself to
anyone in its entirety, but resulted--moment by moment, step by
step, event by event--from an endless number of most diverse
circumstances and was only seen in its entirety when it had been
accomplished and belonged to the past.

At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the minds of the
Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely,
a direct retreat by the Nizhni road. In proof of this there is the
fact that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, and
above all there is the well-known conversation after the council,
between the commander in chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge of the
commissariat department. Lanskoy informed the commander in chief
that the army supplies were for the most part stored along the Oka
in the Tula and Ryazan provinces, and that if they retreated on Nizhni
the army would be separated from its supplies by the broad river
Oka, which cannot be crossed early in winter. This was the first
indication of the necessity of deviating from what had previously
seemed the most natural course--a direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod.
The army turned more to the south, along the Ryazan road and nearer to
its supplies. Subsequently the inactivity of the French (who even
lost sight of the Russian army), concern for the safety of the arsenal
at Tula, and especially the advantages of drawing nearer to its
supplies caused the army to turn still further south to the Tula road.
Having crossed over, by a forced march, to the Tula road beyond the
Pakhra, the Russian commanders intended to remain at Podolsk and had
no thought of the Tarutino position; but innumerable circumstances and
the reappearance of French troops who had for a time lost touch with
the Russians, and projects of giving battle, and above all the
abundance of provisions in Kaluga province, obliged our army to turn
still more to the south and to cross from the Tula to the Kaluga
road and go to Tarutino, which was between the roads along which those
supplies lay. Just as it is impossible to say when it was decided to
abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say precisely when, or by whom,
it was decided to move to Tarutino. Only when the army had got
there, as the result of innumerable and varying forces, did people
begin to assure themselves that they had desired this movement and
long ago foreseen its result.





CHAPTER II


The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the
advance of the French had ceased, the Russian army, which had been
continually retreating straight back from the invaders, deviated
from that direct course and, not finding itself pursued, was naturally
drawn toward the district where supplies were abundant.

If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of genius leading
the Russian army, we picture that army without any leaders, it could
not have done anything but make a return movement toward Moscow,
describing an arc in the direction where most provisions were to be
found and where the country was richest.

That movement from the Nizhni to the Ryazan, Tula, and Kaluga
roads was so natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that
direction, and demands were sent from Petersburg for Kutuzov to take
his army that way. At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a
reprimand from the Emperor for having moved his army along the
Ryazan road, and the Emperor's letter indicated to him the very
position he had already occupied near Kaluga.

Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by the
whole campaign and by the battle of Borodino, the Russian army--when
the strength of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push was
received--assumed the position natural to it.

Kutuzov's merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as
it is called, but in the fact that he alone understood the
significance of what had happened. He alone then understood the
meaning of the French army's inactivity, he alone continued to
assert that the battle of Borodino had been a victory, he alone--who
as commander in chief might have been expected to be eager to
attack--employed his whole strength to restrain the Russian army
from useless engagements.

The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the fleeing hunter had
left him; but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and
merely lying low, the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was
heard to moan.

The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed
its calamitous condition was the sending of Lauriston to Kutuzov's
camp with overtures for peace.

Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head
was right, wrote to Kutuzov the first words that occurred to him,
though they were meaningless.


MONSIEUR LE PRINCE KOUTOUZOV: I am sending one of my
adjutants-general to discuss several interesting questions with you. I
beg your Highness to credit what he says to you, especially when he
expresses the sentiment of esteem and special regard I have long
entertained for your person. This letter having no other object, I
pray God, monsieur le Prince Koutouzov, to keep you in His holy and
gracious protection!

NAPOLEON

MOSCOW, OCTOBER 30, 1812


Kutuzov replied: "I should be cursed by posterity were I looked on
as the initiator of a settlement of any sort. Such is the present
spirit of my nation." But he continued to exert all his powers to
restrain his troops from attacking.

During the month that the French troops were pillaging in Moscow and
the Russian troops were quietly encamped at Tarutino, a change had
taken place in the relative strength of the two armies--both in spirit
and in number--as a result of which the superiority had passed to
the Russian side. Though the condition and numbers of the French
army were unknown to the Russians, as soon as that change occurred the
need of attacking at once showed itself by countless signs. These
signs were: Lauriston's mission; the abundance of provisions at
Tarutino; the reports coming in from all sides of the inactivity and
disorder of the French; the flow of recruits to our regiments; the
fine weather; the long rest the Russian soldiers had enjoyed, and
the impatience to do what they had been assembled for, which usually
shows itself in an army that has been resting; curiosity as to what
the French army, so long lost sight of, was doing; the boldness with
which our outposts now scouted close up to the French stationed at
Tarutino; the news of easy successes gained by peasants and
guerrilla troops over the French, the envy aroused by this; the desire
for revenge that lay in the heart of every Russian as long as the
French were in Moscow, and (above all) a dim consciousness in every
soldier's mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed
and that the advantage was now on our side. There was a substantial
change in the relative strength, and an advance had become inevitable.
And at once, as a clock begins to strike and chime as soon as the
minute hand has completed a full circle, this change was shown by an
increased activity, whirring, and chiming in the higher spheres.





CHAPTER III


The Russian army was commanded by Kutuzov and his staff, and also by
the Emperor from Petersburg. Before the news of the abandonment of
Moscow had been received in Petersburg, a detailed plan of the whole
campaign had been drawn up and sent to Kutuzov for his guidance.
Though this plan had been drawn up on the supposition that Moscow
was still in our hands, it was approved by the staff and accepted as a
basis for action. Kutuzov only replied that movements arranged from
a distance were always difficult to execute. So fresh instructions
were sent for the solution of difficulties that might be
encountered, as well as fresh people who were to watch Kutuzov's
actions and report upon them.

Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was now
reorganized. The posts left vacant by Bagration, who had been
killed, and by Barclay, who had gone away in dudgeon, had to be
filled. Very serious consideration was given to the question whether
it would be better to put A in B's place and B in D's, or on the
contrary to put D in A's place, and so on--as if anything more than
A's or B's satisfaction depended on this.

As a result of the hostility between Kutuzov and Bennigsen, his
Chief of Staff, the presence of confidential representatives of the
Emperor, and these transfers, a more than usually complicated play
of parties was going on among the staff of the army. A was undermining
B, D was undermining C, and so on in all possible combinations and
permutations. In all these plottings the subject of intrigue was
generally the conduct of the war, which all these men believed they
were directing; but this affair of the war went on independently of
them, as it had to go: that is, never in the way people devised, but
flowing always from the essential attitude of the masses. Only in
the highest spheres did all these schemes, crossings, and
interminglings appear to be a true reflection of what had to happen.


Prince Michael Ilarionovich! (wrote the Emperor on the second of
October in a letter that reached Kutuzov after the battle at Tarutino)
Since September 2 Moscow has been in the hands of the enemy. Your last
reports were written on the twentieth, and during all this time not
only has no action been taken against the enemy or for the relief of
the ancient capital, but according to your last report you have even
retreated farther. Serpukhov is already occupied by an enemy
detachment and Tula with its famous arsenal so indispensable to the
army, is in danger. From General Wintzingerode's reports, I see that
an enemy corps of ten thousand men is moving on the Petersburg road.
Another corps of several thousand men is moving on Dmitrov. A third
has advanced along the Vladimir road, and a fourth, rather
considerable detachment is stationed between Ruza and Mozhaysk.
Napoleon himself was in Moscow as late as the twenty-fifth. In view of
all this information, when the enemy has scattered his forces in large
detachments, and with Napoleon and his Guards in Moscow, is it
possible that the enemy's forces confronting you are so considerable
as not to allow of your taking the offensive? On the contrary, he is
probably pursuing you with detachments, or at most with an army
corps much weaker than the army entrusted to you. It would seem
that, availing yourself of these circumstances, you might
advantageously attack a weaker one and annihilate him, or at least
oblige him to retreat, retaining in our hands an important part of the
provinces now occupied by the enemy, and thereby averting danger
from Tula and other towns in the interior. You will be responsible
if the enemy is able to direct a force of any size against
Petersburg to threaten this capital in which it has not been
possible to retain many troops; for with the army entrusted to you,
and acting with resolution and energy, you have ample means to avert
this fresh calamity. Remember that you have still to answer to our
offended country for the loss of Moscow. You have experienced my
readiness to reward you. That readiness will not weaken in me, but I
and Russia have a right to expect from you all the zeal, firmness, and
success which your intellect, military talent, and the courage of
the troops you command justify us in expecting.


But by the time this letter, which proved that the real relation
of the forces had already made itself felt in Petersburg, was
dispatched, Kutuzov had found himself unable any longer to restrain
the army he commanded from attacking and a battle had taken place.

On the second of October a Cossack, Shapovalov, who was out
scouting, killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded
hare he made his way far into the forest and came upon the left
flank of Murat's army, encamped there without any precautions. The
Cossack laughingly told his comrades how he had almost fallen into the
hands of the French. A cornet, hearing the story, informed his
commander.

The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack officers wished
to take advantage of this chance to capture some horses, but one of
the superior officers, who was acquainted with the higher authorities,
reported the incident to a general on the staff. The state of
things on the staff had of late been exceedingly strained. Ermolov had
been to see Bennigsen a few days previously and had entreated him to
use his influence with the commander in chief to induce him to take
the offensive.

"If I did not know you I should think you did not want what you
are asking for. I need only advise anything and his Highness is sure
to do the opposite," replied Bennigsen.

The Cossack's report, confirmed by horse patrols who were sent
out, was the final proof that events had matured. The tightly coiled
spring was released, the clock began to whirr and the chimes to
play. Despite all his supposed power, his intellect, his experience,
and his knowledge of men, Kutuzov--having taken into consideration the
Cossack's report, a note from Bennigsen who sent personal reports to
the Emperor, the wishes he supposed the Emperor to hold, and the
fact that all the generals expressed the same wish--could no longer
check the inevitable movement, and gave the order to do what he
regarded as useless and harmful--gave his approval, that is, to the
accomplished fact.





CHAPTER IV


Bennigsen's note and the Cossack's information that the left flank
of the French was unguarded were merely final indications that it
was necessary to order an attack, and it was fixed for the fifth of
October.

On the morning of the fourth of October Kutuzov signed the
dispositions. Toll read them to Ermolov, asking him to attend to the
further arrangements.

"All right--all right. I haven't time just now," replied Ermolov,
and left the hut.

The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in the
Austerlitz dispositions, it was written--though not in German this
time:

"The First Column will march here and here," "the Second Column will
march there and there," and so on; and on paper, all these columns
arrived at their places at the appointed time and destroyed the enemy.
Everything had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions,
and as is always the case, not a single column reached its place at
the appointed time.

When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions had been
prepared, an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to
Ermolov to deal with. A young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutuzov's
orderly, pleased at the importance of the mission entrusted to him,
went to Ermolov's quarters.

"Gone away," said Ermolov's orderly.

The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom
Ermolov was often to be found.

"No, and the general's out too."

The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else.

"No, he's gone out."

"If only they don't make me responsible for this delay! What a
nuisance it is!" thought the officer, and he rode round the whole
camp. One man said he had seen Ermolov ride past with some other
generals, others said he must have returned home. The officer searched
till six o'clock in the evening without even stopping to eat.
Ermolov was nowhere to be found and no one knew where he was. The
officer snatched a little food at a comrade's, and rode again to the
vanguard to find Miloradovich. Miloradovich too was away, but here
he was told that he had gone to a ball at General Kikin's and that
Ermolov was probably there too.

"But where is it?"

"Why, there, over at Echkino," said a Cossack officer, pointing to a
country house in the far distance.

"What, outside our line?"

"They've put two regiments as outposts, and they're having such a
spree there, it's awful! Two bands and three sets of singers!"

The officer rode out beyond our lines to Echkino. While still at a
distance he heard as he rode the merry sounds of a soldier's dance
song proceeding from the house.

"In the meadows... in the meadows!" he heard, accompanied by
whistling and the sound of a torban, drowned every now and then by
shouts. These sounds made his spirits rise, but at the same time he
was afraid that he would be blamed for not having executed sooner
the important order entrusted to him. It was already past eight
o'clock. He dismounted and went up into the porch of a large country
house which had remained intact between the Russian and French forces.
In the refreshment room and the hall, footmen were bustling about with
wine and viands. Groups of singers stood outside the windows. The
officer was admitted and immediately saw all the chief generals of the
army together, and among them Ermolov's big imposing figure. They
all had their coats unbuttoned and were standing in a semicircle
with flushed and animated faces, laughing loudly. In the middle of the
room a short handsome general with a red face was dancing the trepak
with much spirit and agility.

"Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Ivanych! Ha, ha, ha!"

The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at such a
moment he was doubly to blame, and he would have preferred to wait;
but one of the generals espied him and, hearing what he had come
about, informed Ermolov.

Ermolov came forward with a frown on his face and, hearing what
the officer had to say, took the papers from him without a word.


"You think he went off just by chance?" said a comrade, who was on
the staff that evening, to the officer of the Horse Guards,
referring to Ermolov. "It was a trick. It was done on purpose to get
Konovnitsyn into trouble. You'll see what a mess there'll be
tomorrow."





CHAPTER V


Next day the decrepit Kutuzov, having given orders to be called
early, said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant
consciousness of having to direct a battle he did not approve of,
got into his caleche and drove from Letashovka (a village three and
a half miles from Tarutino) to the place where the attacking columns
were to meet. He sat in the caleche, dozing and waking up by turns,
and listening for any sound of firing on the right as an indication
that the action had begun. But all was still quiet. A damp dull autumn
morning was just dawning. On approaching Tarutino Kutuzov noticed
cavalrymen leading their horses to water across the road along which
he was driving. Kutuzov looked at them searchingly, stopped his
carriage, and inquired what regiment they belonged to. They belonged
to a column that should have been far in front and in ambush long
before then. "It may be a mistake," thought the old commander in
chief. But a little further on he saw infantry regiments with their
arms piled and the soldiers, only partly dressed, eating their rye
porridge and carrying fuel. He sent for an officer. The officer
reported that no order to advance had been received.

"How! Not rec..." Kutuzov began, but checked himself immediately and
sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his caleche, he waited
with drooping head and breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down.
When Eykhen, the officer of the general staff whom he had summoned,
appeared, Kutuzov went purple in the face, not because that officer
was to blame for the mistake, but because he was an object of
sufficient importance for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and
panting the old man fell into that state of fury in which he sometimes
used to roll on the ground, and he fell upon Eykhen, threatening him
with his hands, shouting and loading him with gross abuse. Another
man, Captain Brozin, who happened to turn up and who was not at all to
blame, suffered the same fate.

"What sort of another blackguard are you? I'll have you shot!
Scoundrels!" yelled Kutuzov in a hoarse voice, waving his arms and
reeling.

He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, a Serene
Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever
had in Russia, to be placed in this position--made the laughingstock
of the whole army! "I needn't have been in such a hurry to pray
about today, or have kept awake thinking everything over all night,"
thought he to himself. "When I was a chit of an officer no one would
have dared to mock me so... and now!" He was in a state of physical
suffering as if from corporal punishment, and could not avoid
expressing it by cries of anger and distress. But his strength soon
began to fail him, and looking about him, conscious of having said
much that was amiss, he again got into his caleche and drove back in
silence.

His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he
listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermolov did not come to
see him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen,
Konovnitsyn, and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should
be executed next day. And once more Kutuzov had to consent.





CHAPTER VI


Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the
evening and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with
dark purple clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy,
and the troops advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of
the artillery could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk
out loud, to smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried
to prevent their horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking
heightened its charm and they marched gaily. Some columns,
supposing they had reached their destination, halted, piled arms, and
settled down on the cold ground, but the majority marched all night
and arrived at places where they evidently should not have been.

Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the least important
detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time.
This detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path
leading from the village of Stromilova to Dmitrovsk.

Toward dawn, Count Orlov-Denisov, who had dozed off, was awakened by
a deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a
Polish sergeant of Poniatowski's corps, who explained in Polish that
he had come over because he had been slighted in the service: that
he ought long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver
than any of them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them
out. He said that Murat was spending the night less than a mile from
where they were, and that if they would let him have a convoy of a
hundred men he would capture him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov
consulted his fellow officers.

The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go
and everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and
arguing, Major-General Grekov with two Cossack regiments decided to go
with the Polish sergeant.

"Now, remember," said Count Orlov-Denisov to the sergeant at
parting, "if you have been lying I'll have you hanged like a dog;
but if it's true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!"

Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and
rode away with Grekov whose men had quickly assembled. They
disappeared into the forest, and Count Orlov-Denisov, having seen
Grekov off, returned, shivering from the freshness of the early dawn
and excited by what he had undertaken on his own responsibility, and
began looking at the enemy camp, now just visible in the deceptive
light of dawn and the dying campfires. Our columns ought to have begun
to appear on an open declivity to his right. He looked in that
direction, but though the columns would have been visible quite far
off, they were not to be seen. It seemed to the count that things were
beginning to stir in the French camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant
confirmed this.

"Oh, it is really too late," said Count Orlov, looking at the camp.

As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before
our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the
sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian
attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which he
would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a
commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!

"I am sure that rascal was lying," said the count.

"They can still be called back," said one of his suite, who like
Count Orlov felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the
enemy's camp.

"Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?"

"Will you have them fetched back?"

"Fetch them back, fetch them back!" said Count Orlov with sudden
determination, looking at his watch. "It will be too late. It is quite
light."

And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grekov. When
Grekov returned, Count Orlov-Denisov, excited both by the abandoned
attempt and by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not
appear, as well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance.
All his men felt the same excitement.

"Mount!" he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and
crossed themselves.... "Forward, with God's aid!"

"Hurrah-ah-ah!" reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack
companies, trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if
poured out of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.

One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw
the Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just
waking up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and
horses.

Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind
and around them, they would have captured Murat and everything there.
That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to make the
Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners. None of
them listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and thirty-eight
guns were taken on the spot, besides standards and (what seemed most
important to the Cossacks) horses, saddles, horsecloths, and the like.
All this had to be dealt with, the prisoners and guns secured, the
booty divided--not without some shouting and even a little fighting
among themselves--and it was on this that the Cossacks all busied
themselves.

The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover
themselves: they formed into detachments and began firing.
Orlov-Denisov, still waiting for the other columns to arrive, advanced
no further.

Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that "the First
Column will march" and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,
commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due
order and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their
appointed places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully,
began to halt; murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and
finally a backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about,
shouted, grew angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and
were late, gave vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and
went forward, simply to get somewhere. "We shall get somewhere or
other!" And they did indeed get somewhere, though not to their right
places; a few eventually even got to their right place, but too late
to be of any use and only in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this
battle played the part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped
assiduously from place to place, finding everything upside down
everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovut's corps in a wood when it
was already broad daylight, though the corps should long before have
joined Orlov-Denisov. Excited and vexed by the failure and supposing
that someone must be responsible for it, Toll galloped up to the
commander of the corps and began upbraiding him severely, saying
that he ought to be shot. General Bagovut, a fighting old soldier of
placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay, confusion,
and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody's surprise and quite
contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things to Toll.

"I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men
as well as anybody," he said, and advanced with a single division.

Coming out onto a field under the enemy's fire, this brave general
went straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering
in his agitation whether going into action now, with a single
division, would be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets
were just what he needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets
killed him, and other bullets killed many of his men. And his division
remained under fire for some time quite uselessly.





CHAPTER VII


Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the French from the
front, but Kutuzov accompanied that column. He well knew that
nothing but confusion would come of this battle undertaken against his
will, and as far as was in his power held the troops back. He did
not advance.

He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering
suggestions that they should attack.

"The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don't see that we
are unable to execute complicated maneuvers," said he to
Miloradovich who asked permission to advance.

"We couldn't take Murat prisoner this morning or get to the place in
time, and nothing can be done now!" he replied to someone else.

When Kutuzov was informed that at the French rear--where according
to the reports of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody--there
were now two battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermolov
who was behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous
day.

"You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds,
but as soon as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy,
forewarned, takes measures accordingly."

Ermolov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these
words. He understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that
Kutuzov would content himself with that hint.

"He's having a little fun at my expense," said Ermolov softly,
nudging with his knee Raevski who was at his side.

Soon after this, Ermolov moved up to Kutuzov and respectfully
remarked:

"It is not too late yet, your Highness--the enemy has not gone
away--if you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so
much as see a little smoke."

Kutuzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat's
troops were in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every
hundred paces he halted for three quarters of an hour.

The whole battle consisted in what Orlov-Denisov's Cossacks had
done: the rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.

In consequence of this battle Kutuzov received a diamond decoration,
and Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also
received pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various
grades, and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.

"That's how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!" said the
Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino battle, letting it be
understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that
we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today.
But people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking
about or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle--Tarutino,
Borodino, or Austerlitz--takes place as those who planned it
anticipated. That is an essential condition.

A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than
during a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence
the course taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in
advance and never coincides with the direction of any one force.

If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a
given body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one
of those forces, but will always be a mean--what in mechanics is
represented by the diagonal of a parallelogram of forces.

If in the descriptions given by historians, especially French
ones, we find their wars and battles carried out in accordance with
previously formed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that those
descriptions are false.

The battle of Tarutino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had in
view--to lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the
dispositions; nor that which Count Orlov-Denisov may have had in
view--to take Murat prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying
the whole corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor
the aim of the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish
himself; nor that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than he got,
and so on. But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and
what all the Russians of that day desired--to drive the French out of
Russia and destroy their army--it is quite clear that the battle of
Tarutino, just because of its incongruities, was exactly what was
wanted at that stage of the campaign. It would be difficult and even
impossible to imagine any result more opportune than the actual
outcome of this battle. With a minimum of effort and insignificant
losses, despite the greatest confusion, the most important results of
the whole campaign were attained: the transition from retreat to
advance, an exposure of the weakness of the French, and the
administration of that shock which Napoleon's army had only awaited to
begin its flight.





CHAPTER VIII


Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa;
there can be no doubt about the victory for the battlefield remains in
the hands of the French. The Russians retreat and abandon their
ancient capital. Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and
incalculable wealth, is in Napoleon's hands. The Russian army, only
half the strength of the French, does not make a single attempt to
attack for a whole month. Napoleon's position is most brilliant. He
can either fall on the Russian army with double its strength and
destroy it; negotiate an advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal
make a menacing move on Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse,
return to Smolensk or Vilna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special
genius would seem to be required to retain the brilliant position
the French held at that time. For that, only very simple and easy
steps were necessary: not to allow the troops to loot, to prepare
winter clothing--of which there was sufficient in Moscow for the whole
army--and methodically to collect the provisions, of which
(according to the French historians) there were enough in Moscow to
supply the whole army for six months. Yet Napoleon, that greatest of
all geniuses, who the historians declare had control of the army, took
none of these steps.

He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used
his power to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses
open to him. Of all that Napoleon might have done: wintering in
Moscow, advancing on Petersburg or on Nizhni-Novgorod, or retiring
by a more northerly or more southerly route (say by the road Kutuzov
afterwards took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can be imagined
than what he actually did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting
the troops plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a
garrison behind him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutuzov without
joining battle, turned to the right and reached Malo-Yaroslavets,
again without attempting to break through and take the road Kutuzov
took, but retiring instead to Mozhaysk along the devastated Smolensk
road. Nothing more stupid than that could have been devised, or more
disastrous for the army, as the sequel showed. Had Napoleon's aim been
to destroy his army, the most skillful strategist could hardly have
devised any series of actions that would so completely have
accomplished that purpose, independently of anything the Russian
army might do.

Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he
destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was very
stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to
Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a
genius.

In both cases his personal activity, having no more force than the
personal activity of any soldier, merely coincided with the laws
that guided the event.

The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon's faculties as
having weakened in Moscow, and do so only because the results did
not justify his actions. He employed all his ability and strength to
do the best he could for himself and his army, as he had done
previously and as he did subsequently in 1813. His activity at that
time was no less astounding than it was in Egypt, in Italy, in
Austria, and in Prussia. We do not know for certain in how far his
genius was genuine in Egypt--where forty centuries looked down upon
his grandeur--for his great exploits there are all told us by
Frenchmen. We cannot accurately estimate his genius in Austria or
Prussia, for we have to draw our information from French or German
sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole corps without
fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans to
recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on
in Germany. But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his genius in
order to hide our shame. We have paid for the right to look at the
matter plainly and simply, and we will not abandon that right.

His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as
elsewhere. Order after order and plan after plan were issued
by him from the time he entered Moscow till the time he left it. The
absence of citizens and of a deputation, and even the burning of
Moscow, did not disconcert him. He did not lose sight either of the
welfare of his army or of the doings of the enemy, or of the welfare
of the people of Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or
of diplomatic considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated
peace.





CHAPTER IX


With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately on his entry
into Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the
movements of the Russian army, sent army corps out along the different
roads, and charged Murat to find Kutuzov. Then he gave careful
directions about the fortification of the Kremlin, and drew up a
brilliant plan for a future campaign over the whole map of Russia.

With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain
Yakovlev, who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how
to get out of Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and
his magnanimity, and having written a letter to the Emperor
Alexander in which he considered it his duty to inform his Friend
and Brother that Rostopchin had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he
dispatched Yakovlev to Petersburg.

Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to
Tutolmin, he dispatched that old man also to Petersburg to negotiate.

With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires he gave
orders to find and execute the incendiaries. And the scoundrel
Rostopchin was punished by an order to burn down his houses.

With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was granted a
constitution. A municipality was established and the following
announcement issued:


INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!

Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King
desires to arrest their course. Terrible examples have taught you
how he punishes disobedience and crime. Strict measures have been
taken to put an end to disorder and to re-establish public security. A
paternal administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form
your municipality or city government. It will take care of you, of
your needs, and of your welfare. Its members will be distinguished
by a red ribbon worn across the shoulder, and the mayor of the city
will wear a white belt as well. But when not on duty they will only
wear a red ribbon round the left arm.

The city police is established on its former footing, and better
order already prevails in consequence of its activity. The
government has appointed two commissaries general, or chiefs of
police, and twenty commissaries or captains of wards have been
appointed to the different wards of the city. You will recognize
them by the white ribbon they will wear on the left arm. Several
churches of different denominations are open, and divine service is
performed in them unhindered. Your fellow citizens are returning every
day to their homes and orders have been given that they should find
in them the help and protection due to their misfortunes. These are
the measures the government has adopted to re-establish order and
relieve your condition. But to achieve this aim it is necessary that
you should add your efforts and should, if possible, forget the
misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain the hope of a less
cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and ignominious death
awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or on what remains
of your property, and finally that you should not doubt that these
will be safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest and most
just of monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation you may
be, re-establish public confidence, the source of the welfare of a
state, live like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to
another, unite to defeat the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the
military and civil authorities, and your tears will soon cease to
flow!


With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed that all
the troops in turn should enter Moscow a la maraude* to obtain
provisions for themselves, so that the army might have its future
provided for.


*As looters.


With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to be
brought back and services to be again performed in the churches.

With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army, the
following was placarded everywhere:


PROCLAMATION!

You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and workmen whom
misfortune has driven from the city, and you scattered tillers of
the soil, still kept out in the fields by groundless fear, listen!
Tranquillity is returning to this capital and order is being
restored in it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from
their hiding places on finding that they are respected. Any violence
to them or to their property is promptly punished. His Majesty the
Emperor and King protects them, and considers no one among you his
enemy except those who disobey his orders. He desires to end your
misfortunes and restore you to your homes and families. Respond,
therefore, to his benevolent intentions and come to us without fear.
Inhabitants, return with confidence to your abodes! You will soon find
means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen and industrious artisans,
return to your work, your houses, your shops, where the protection
of guards awaits you! You shall receive proper pay for your work.
And lastly you too, peasants, come from the forests where you are
hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear, in full
assurance that you will find protection! Markets are established in
the city where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the
products of the soil. The government has taken the following steps
to ensure freedom of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants,
husbandmen, and those living in the neighborhood of Moscow may without
any danger bring their supplies of all kinds to two appointed markets,
of which one is on the Mokhovaya Street and the other at the Provision
Market. (2) Such supplies will be bought from them at such prices as
seller and buyer may agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a
fair price he will be free to take his goods back to his village and
no one may hinder him under any pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday
of each week are appointed as the chief market days and to that end
a sufficient number of troops will be stationed along the highroads on
Tuesdays and Saturdays at such distances from the town as to protect
the carts. (4) Similar measures will be taken that peasants with their
carts and horses may meet with no hindrance on their return journey.
(5) Steps will immediately be taken to re-establish ordinary trading.

Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and
artisans, to whatever nation you belong, you are called on to carry
out the paternal intentions of His Majesty the Emperor and King and to
co-operate with him for the public welfare! Lay your respect and
confidence at his feet and do not delay to unite with us!


With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of the
people, reviews were constantly held and rewards distributed. The
Emperor rode through the streets to comfort the inhabitants, and,
despite his preoccupation with state affairs, himself visited the
theaters that were established by his order.

In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads,
Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma
Mere to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining
tender filial affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He
visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by
him to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutolmin. Then,
as Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in
forged Russian money which he had prepared: "Raising the use of
these means by an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let
relief be distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food
was too precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part
enemies, Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to
purchase food from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them."

With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being
issued to inflict severe punishment for the nonperformance of military
duties and to suppress robbery.





CHAPTER X


But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and plans--which
were not at all worse than others issued in similar circumstances--did
not affect the essence of the matter but, like the hands of a clock
detached from the mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless
way without engaging the cogwheels.

With reference to the military side--the plan of campaign--that work
of genius of which Thiers remarks that, "His genius never devised
anything more profound, more skillful, or more admirable," and enters
into a polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius must be
referred not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of October--that plan
never was or could be executed, for it was quite out of touch with the
facts of the case. The fortifying of the Kremlin, for which la Mosquee
(as Napoleon termed the church of Basil the Beatified) was to have
been razed to the ground, proved quite useless. The mining of the
Kremlin only helped toward fulfilling Napoleon's wish that it should
be blown up when he left Moscow--as a child wants the floor on which
he has hurt himself to be beaten. The pursuit of the Russian army,
about which Napoleon was so concerned, produced an unheard-of result.
The French generals lost touch with the Russian army of sixty thousand
men, and according to Thiers it was only eventually found, like a lost
pin, by the skill--and apparently the genius--of Murat.

With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon's arguments as to his
magnanimity and justice, both to Tutolmin and to Yakovlev (whose chief
concern was to obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless;
Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply to their
embassage.

With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the supposed
incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down.

With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a
municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain
people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of
preserving order looted Moscow or saved their own property from
being looted.

With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had so
easily been settled by Napoleon's visit to a mosque, no results were
achieved. Two or three priests who were found in Moscow did try to
carry out Napoleon's wish, but one of them was slapped in the face
by a French soldier while conducting service, and a French official
reported of another that: "The priest whom I found and invited to
say Mass cleaned and locked up the church. That night the doors were
again broken open, the padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and
other disorders perpetrated."

With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious
workmen and to peasants evoked no response. There were no
industrious workmen, and the peasants caught the commissaries who
ventured too far out of town with the proclamation and killed them.

As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people and the
troops, these did not meet with success either. The theaters set up in
the Kremlin and in Posnyakov's house were closed again at once because
the actors and actresses were robbed.

Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as
well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The
French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the
paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to
the unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.

But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness of the orders
given by the authorities at that time was Napoleon's attempt to stop
the looting and re-establish discipline.

This is what the army authorities were reporting:

"Looting continues in the city despite the decrees against it. Order
is not yet restored and not a single merchant is carrying on trade
in a lawful manner. The sutlers alone venture to trade, and they
sell stolen goods."

"The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged by soldiers of
the 3rd Corps who, not satisfied with taking from the unfortunate
inhabitants hiding in the cellars the little they have left, even have
the ferocity to wound them with their sabers, as I have repeatedly
witnessed."

"Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and
pillaging--October 9."

"Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of thieves in our
district who ought to be arrested by a strong force--October 11."

"The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the strict
orders to stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards are continually
seen returning to the Kremlin. Among the Old Guard disorder and
pillage were renewed more violently than ever yesterday evening,
last night, and today. The Emperor sees with regret that the picked
soldiers appointed to guard his person, who should set an example of
discipline, carry disobedience to such a point that they break into
the cellars and stores containing army supplies. Others have disgraced
themselves to the extent of disobeying sentinels and officers, and
have abused and beaten them."

"The Grand Marshal of the palace," wrote the governor, "complains
bitterly that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to
commit nuisances in all the courtyards and even under the very windows
of the Emperor."

That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot
the provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated
and perished with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it
did not go away.

It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused
by the capture of transport trains on the Smolensk road, and by the
battle of Tarutino. The news of that battle of Tarutino,
unexpectedly received by Napoleon at a review, evoked in him a
desire to punish the Russians (Thiers says), and he issued the order
for departure which the whole army was demanding.

Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they
had stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away his own personal tresor, but
on seeing the baggage trains that impeded the army, he was (Thiers
says) horror-struck. And yet with his experience of war he did not
order all the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with
those of a certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He gazed at the
caleches and carriages in which soldiers were riding and remarked that
it was a very good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry
provisions, the sick, and the wounded.

The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal which
feels it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To study the
skillful tactics and aims of Napoleon and his army from the time it
entered Moscow till it was destroyed is like studying the dying leaps
and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very often a wounded
animal, hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the hunter's gun, runs
forward and back again, and hastens its own end. Napoleon, under
pressure from his whole army, did the same thing. The rustle of the
battle of Tarutino frightened the beast, and it rushed forward onto
the hunter's gun, reached him, turned back, and finally--like any wild
beast--ran back along the most disadvantageous and dangerous path,
where the old scent was familiar.

During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have
been the leader of all these movements--as the figurehead of a ship
may seem to a savage to guide the vessel--acted like a child who,
holding a couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving
it.





CHAPTER XI


Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of
the shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little
blue-gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped
about him. This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside
Karataev at night; it sometimes made excursions into the town but
always returned again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it
still belonged to nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor;
the soldier who told stories called it Femgalka; Karataev and others
called it Gray, or sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name,
or even of a breed or any definite color did not seem to trouble the
blue-gray dog in the least. Its furry tail stood up firm and round
as a plume, its bandy legs served it so well that it would often
gracefully lift a hind leg and run very easily and quickly on three
legs, as if disdaining to use all four. Everything pleased it. Now
it would roll on its back, yelping with delight, now bask in the sun
with a thoughtful air of importance, and now frolic about playing with
a chip of wood or a straw.

Pierre's attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the only
remnant of his former clothing), a pair of soldier's trousers which by
Karataev's advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and
a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this
time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of
solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache
covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested
with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes
was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The
former slackness which had shown itself even in his eyes was now
replaced by an energetic readiness for action and resistance. His feet
were bare.

Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles and
horsemen were passing that morning, then into the distance across
the river, then at the dog who was pretending to be in earnest about
biting him, and then at his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in
various positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he
looked at his bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction
flitted across his face. The sight of them reminded him of all he
had experienced and learned during these weeks and this recollection
was pleasant to him.

For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts
in the mornings--what is called an "old wives' summer."

In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly
pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in
the air.

On everything--far and near--lay the magic crystal glitter seen only
at that time of autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance,
with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare
trees, the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green
church spire, and the corners of the white house in the distance,
all stood out in the transparent air in most delicate outline and with
unnatural clearness. Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a
half-burned mansion occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still
showing dark green beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled
house--which in dull weather was repulsively ugly--seemed quietly
beautiful now, in the clear, motionless brilliance.

A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a
skullcap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from
behind a corner of the shed and approached Pierre with a friendly
wink.

"What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!" (Their name for Pierre.) "Eh?
Just like spring!"

And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his
pipe, though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it.

"To be on the march in such weather..." he began.

Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the
corporal told him that nearly all the troops were starting and there
ought to be an order about the prisoners that day. Sokolov, one of the
soldiers in the shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the
corporal that something should be done about him. The corporal replied
that Pierre need not worry about that as they had an ambulance and a
permanent hospital and arrangements would be made for the sick, and
that in general everything that could happen had been foreseen by
the authorities.

"Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the
captain, you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to
the captain when he makes his round, he will do anything for you."

(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with
Pierre and showed him all sorts of favors.)

"'You see, St. Thomas,' he said to me the other day. 'Monsieur Kiril
is a man of education, who speaks French. He is a Russian seigneur who
has had misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what's what.... If he
wants anything and asks me, he won't get a refusal. When one has
studied, you see, one likes education and well-bred people.' It is for
your sake I mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not
been for you that affair would have ended ill."

And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The
affair he had alluded to had happened a few days before--a fight
between the prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had
succeeded in pacifying his comrades.) Some of the prisoners who had
heard Pierre talking to the corporal immediately asked what the
Frenchman had said. While Pierre was repeating what he had been told
about the army leaving Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier
came up to the door of the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his
fingers to his forehead by way of greeting, he asked Pierre whether
the soldier Platoche to whom he had given a shirt to sew was in that
shed.

A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to
them, which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into
boots and shirts for them.

"Ready, ready, dear fellow!" said Karataev, coming out with a neatly
folded shirt.

Karataev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at
work, was wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot.
His hair was bound round, workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree
bast, and his round face seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.

"A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday and here
it is, ready," said Platon, smiling and unfolding the shirt he had
sewn.

The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his
hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had
a long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin
bare body, but no shirt. He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking
on would laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly.
None of the prisoners said a word.

"See, it fits well!" Platon kept repeating, pulling the shirt
straight.

The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without
raising his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams.

"You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper
tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse,"
said Platon with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his
work.

"It's good, quite good, thank you," said the Frenchman, in French,
"but there must be some linen left over.

"It will fit better still when it sets to your body," said Karataev,
still admiring his handiwork. "You'll be nice and comfortable...."

"Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?" said the
Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note
and gave it to Karataev. "But give me the pieces that are over."

Pierre saw that Platon did not want to understand what the Frenchman
was saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karataev thanked the
Frenchman for the money and went on admiring his own work. The
Frenchman insisted on having the pieces returned that were left over
and asked Pierre to translate what he said.

"What does he want the bits for?" said Karataev. "They'd make fine
leg bands for us. Well, never mind."

And Karataev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression,
took a small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the
Frenchman without looking at him. "Oh dear!" muttered Karataev and
went away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment,
then looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre's look had told
him something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky voice:

"Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!" And handing back the
odd bits he turned and went out.

"There, look at that," said Karataev, swaying his head. "People said
they were not Christians, but they too have souls. It's what the old
folk used to say: 'A sweating hand's an open hand, a dry hand's
close.' He's naked, but yet he's given it back."

Karataev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the
pieces.

"But they'll make grand leg bands, dear friend," he said, and went
back into the shed.





CHAPTER XII


Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and
though the French had offered to move him from the men's to the
officers' shed, he had stayed in the shed where he was first put.

In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the
extreme limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his
physical strength and health, of which he had till then been
unconscious, and thanks especially to the fact that the privations
came so gradually that it was impossible to say when they began, he
endured his position not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this
time he obtained the tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly
striven in vain to reach. He had long sought in different ways that
tranquillity of mind, that inner harmony which had so impressed him in
the soldiers at the battle of Borodino. He had sought it in
philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in
wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for
Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning--and all these quests and
experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it he had
found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death,
through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev.

Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as
it were forever washed away from his imagination and memory the
agitating thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important.
It did not now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or
politics, or Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things
were no business of his, and that he was not called on to judge
concerning them and therefore could not do so. "Russia and summer
weather are not bound together," he thought, repeating words of
Karataev's which he found strangely consoling. His intention of
killing Napoleon and his calculations of the cabalistic number of
the beast of the Apocalypse now seemed to him meaningless and even
ridiculous. His anger with his wife and anxiety that his name should
not be smirched now seemed not merely trivial but even amusing. What
concern was it of his that somewhere or other that woman was leading
the life she preferred? What did it matter to anybody, and
especially to him, whether or not they found out that their prisoner's
name was Count Bezukhov?

He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and
quite agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew's thoughts
somewhat differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that
happiness could only be negative, but had said it with a shade of
bitterness and irony as though he was really saying that all desire
for positive happiness is implanted in us merely to torment us and
never be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental
reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs
and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is,
of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man's
highest happiness. Here and now for the first time he fully
appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat, drinking
when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth
when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to talk
and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one's needs--good food,
cleanliness, and freedom--now that he was deprived of all this, seemed
to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of
occupation, that is, of his way of life--now that that was so
restricted--seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a
superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying
one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation--such
freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had
given him in his own life--is just what makes the choice of occupation
insolubly difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of
having an occupation.

All Pierre's daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free.
Yet subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke
with enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable,
strong, joyful sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind
and inner freedom which he experienced only during those weeks.

When on the first day he got up early, went out of the shed at dawn,
and saw the cupolas and crosses of the New Convent of the Virgin still
dark at first, the hoarfrost on the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills,
and the wooded banks above the winding river vanishing in the purple
distance, when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the
noise of the crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when
afterwards light gleamed from the east and the sun's rim appeared
solemnly from behind a cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the
hoarfrost, the distance and the river, all began to sparkle in the
glad light--Pierre felt a new joy and strength in life such as he
had never before known. And this not only stayed with him during the
whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in strength as the
hardships of his position increased.

That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything was still
further strengthened in him by the high opinion his fellow prisoners
formed of him soon after his arrival at the shed. With his knowledge
of languages, the respect shown him by the French, his simplicity, his
readiness to give anything asked of him (he received the allowance
of three rubles a week made to officers); with his strength, which
he showed to the soldiers by pressing nails into the walls of the hut;
his gentleness to his companions, and his capacity for sitting still
and thinking without doing anything (which seemed to them
incomprehensible), he appeared to them a rather mysterious and
superior being. The very qualities that had been a hindrance, if not
actually harmful, to him in the world he had lived in--his strength,
his disdain for the comforts of life, his absent-mindedness and
simplicity--here among these people gave him almost the status of a
hero. And Pierre felt that their opinion placed responsibilities
upon him.





CHAPTER XIII


The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and
seventh of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts
loaded, and troops and baggage trains started.

At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing
shakos and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in
front of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses
sounded all along the lines.

In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only
awaited the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolov, pale and thin
with dark shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot
and not dressed. His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his
face, gazed inquiringly at his comrades who were paying no attention
to him, and he moaned regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so
much his sufferings that caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as
his fear and grief at being left alone.

Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes
Karataev had made for him from some leather a French soldier had
torn off a tea chest and brought to have his boots mended with, went
up to the sick man and squatted down beside him.

"You know, Sokolov, they are not all going away! They have a
hospital here. You may be better off than we others," said Pierre.

"O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!" moaned the man
in a louder voice.

"I'll go and ask them again directly," said Pierre, rising and going
to the door of the shed.

Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him
a pipe the day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal
and soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had
metal straps, and these changed their familiar faces.

The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The
prisoners had to be counted before being let out.

"Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?..." Pierre began.

But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal
he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that
moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of
drums was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at
Pierre's words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door.
The shed became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two
sides drowned the sick man's groans.

"There it is!... It again!..." said Pierre to himself, and an
involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal's changed
face, in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise
of the drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which
compelled people against their will to kill their fellow men--that
force the effect of which he had witnessed during the executions. To
fear or to try to escape that force, to address entreaties or
exhortations to those who served as its tools, was useless. Pierre
knew this now. One had to wait and endure. He did not again go to
the sick man, nor turn to look at him, but stood frowning by the
door of the hut.

When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one
another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed
his way forward and approached that very captain who as the corporal
had assured him was ready to do anything for him. The captain was also
in marching kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which
Pierre had recognized in the corporal's words and in the roll of the
drums.

"Pass on, pass on!" the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and
looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.

Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.

"What now?" the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing
Pierre.

Pierre told him about the sick man.

"He'll manage to walk, devil take him!" said the captain. "Pass
on, pass on!" he continued without looking at Pierre.

"But he is dying," Pierre again began.

"Be so good..." shouted the captain, frowning angrily.

"Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam..." rattled the drums, and Pierre
understood that this mysterious force completely controlled these
men and that it was now useless to say any more.

The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to
march in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among
them, and about three hundred men.

The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all
strangers to Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at
him and at his shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him
walked a fat major with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing
a Kazan dressing gown tied round with a towel, and who evidently
enjoyed the respect of his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in
which he clasped his tobacco pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing
gown and held the stem of his pipe firmly with the other. Panting
and puffing, the major grumbled and growled at everybody because he
thought he was being pushed and that they were all hurrying when
they had nowhere to hurry to and were all surprised at something
when there was nothing to be surprised at. Another, a thin little
officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing where they were now
being taken and how far they would get that day. An official in felt
boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from side to side
and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his observations
as to what had been burned down and what this or that part of the city
was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent was a
Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was
mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.

"What are you disputing about?" said the major angrily. "What does
it matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it's
burned down, and there's an end of it.... What are you pushing for?
Isn't the road wide enough?" said he, turning to a man behind him
who was not pushing him at all.

"Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?" the prisoners on one side and
another were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. "All
beyond the river, and Zubova, and in the Kremlin.... Just look!
There's not half of it left. Yes, I told you--the whole quarter beyond
the river, and so it is."

"Well, you know it's burned, so what's the use of talking?" said the
major.

As they passed near a church in the Khamovniki (one of the few
unburned quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly
started to one side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.

"Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And
smeared with something!"

Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked
these exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the
palings surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw
better than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set
upright against the palings with its face smeared with soot.

"Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!..." the
convoy guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh
virulence, drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who
were gazing at the dead man.





CHAPTER XIV


Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter the prisoners
marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons
belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they
came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with
private vehicles.

At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get
across. From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving
baggage trains before and behind them. To the right, where the
Kaluga road turns near Neskuchny, endless rows of troops and carts
stretched away into the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais'
corps which had started before any of the others. Behind, along the
riverside and across the Stone Bridge, were Ney's troops and
transport.

Davout's troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing
the Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kaluga
road. But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of
Beauharnais' train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the
Kaluga road when the vanguard of Ney's army was already emerging
from the Great Ordynka Street.

When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few
steps forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles
and men crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few
hundred paces that separated the bridge from the Kaluga road, taking
more than an hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the
streets of the Transmoskva ward and the Kaluga road converge, and
the prisoners jammed close together had to stand for some hours at
that crossway. From all sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard
the rattle of wheels, the tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger
and abuse. Pierre stood pressed against the wall of a charred house,
listening to that noise which mingled in his imagination with the roll
of the drums.

To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the
wall of the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.

"What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They've loaded goods
even on the cannon! Look there, those are furs!" they exclaimed. "Just
see what the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one
has behind in the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some
icons, by heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has
loaded himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they've even grabbed
those chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks....
Heavens! They're fighting."

"That's right, hit him on the snout--on his snout! Like this, we
shan't get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be
Napoleon's own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown!
It's like a portable house.... That fellow's dropped his sack and
doesn't see it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not
bad-looking either! Yes, I dare say, that's the way they'll let you
pass... Just look, there's no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven,
so they are! In carriages--see how comfortably they've settled
themselves!"

Again, as at the church in Khamovniki, a wave of general curiosity
bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to
his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted
their curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts,
closely squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in
glaring colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices.

From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the
mysterious force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful:
neither the corpse smeared with soot for fun nor these women
hurrying away nor the burned ruins of Moscow. All that he now
witnessed scarcely made an impression on him--as if his soul, making
ready for a hard struggle, refused to receive impressions that might
weaken it.

The women's vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts,
soldiers, wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers,
ammunition carts, more soldiers, and now and then women.

Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.

All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some
invisible power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came
flowing from the different streets with one and the same desire to get
on quickly; they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to
fight, white teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of
abuse flew from side to side, and all the faces bore the same
swaggeringly resolute and coldly cruel expression that had struck
Pierre that morning on the corporal's face when the drums were
beating.

It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the
escort collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way
in among the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all
sides, emerged onto the Kaluga road.

They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the
sun began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men
began to prepare for their night's rest. They all appeared angry and
dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could
be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran
into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole.
Several soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat
the carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others
fought among themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly
wounded on the head by a sword.

It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid
fields in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and
the same feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and
eagerness to push on that had seized them at the start. Once at a
standstill they all seemed to understand that they did not yet know
where they were going, and that much that was painful and difficult
awaited them on this journey.

During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than
they had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the
first time received horseflesh for their meat ration.

From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what
seemed like personal spite against each of the prisoners, in
unexpected contrast to their former friendly relations.

This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of
prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one
Russian soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had
escaped. Pierre saw a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for
straying too far from the road, and heard his friend the captain
reprimand and threaten to court-martial a noncommissioned officer on
account of the escape of the Russian. To the noncommissioned officer's
excuse that the prisoner was ill and could not walk, the officer
replied that the order was to shoot those who lagged behind. Pierre
felt that that fatal force which had crushed him during the
executions, but which he had not felt during his imprisonment, now
again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but he felt that in
proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush him, there grew
and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent of it.

He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with
his comrades.

Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen
in Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of
the order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in
reaction against the worsening of their position they were all
particularly animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences,
of amusing scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and
avoided all talk of their present situation.

The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in
the sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon
from the rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely
in the gray haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night
had not yet come. Pierre got up and left his new companions,
crossing between the campfires to the other side of the road where
he had been told the common soldier prisoners were stationed. He
wanted to talk to them. On the road he was stopped by a French
sentinel who ordered him back.

Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an
unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him
and dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of
the cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought.
Suddenly he burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured
laughter, so loud that men from various sides turned with surprise
to see what this strange and evidently solitary laughter could mean.

"Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: "The
soldier did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me
captive. What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!..." and
he laughed till tears started to his eyes.

A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing
at all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther
away from the inquisitive man, and looked around him.

The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the
crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the
red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the
light sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp,
unseen before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still,
beyond those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless
distance lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the
twinkling stars in its faraway depths. "And all that is me, all that
is within me, and it is all I!" thought Pierre. "And they caught all
that and put it into a shed boarded up with planks!" He smiled, and
went and lay down to sleep beside his companions.





CHAPTER XV


In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutuzov with a
letter from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow,
though Napoleon was already not far from Kutuzov on the old Kaluga
road. Kutuzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one
formerly brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no
question of peace.

Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov's guerrilla
detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that troops of
Broussier's division had been seen at Forminsk and that being
separated from the rest of the French army they might easily be
destroyed. The soldiers and officers again demanded action. Generals
on the staff, excited by the memory of the easy victory at Tarutino,
urged Kutuzov to carry out Dorokhov's suggestion. Kutuzov did not
consider any offensive necessary. The result was a compromise which
was inevitable: a small detachment was sent to Forminsk to attack
Broussier.

By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most
difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhturov--that same
modest little Dokhturov whom no one had described to us as drawing
up plans of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering
crosses on batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was
spoken of as undecided and undiscerning--but whom we find commanding
wherever the position was most difficult all through the
Russo-French wars from Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he
remained last at the Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what
was possible when all were flying and perishing and not a single
general was left in the rear guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolensk
with twenty thousand men to defend the town against Napoleon's whole
army. In Smolensk, at the Malakhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in
a paroxysm of fever before he was awakened by the bombardment of the
town--and Smolensk held out all day long. At the battle of Borodino,
when Bagration was killed and nine tenths of the men of our left flank
had fallen and the full force of the French artillery fire was
directed against it, the man sent there was this same irresolute and
undiscerning Dokhturov--Kutuzov hastening to rectify a mistake he
had made by sending someone else there first. And the quiet little
Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodino became the greatest glory of
the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to us in verse and
prose, but of Dokhturov scarcely a word has been said.

It was Dokhturov again whom they sent to Forminsk and from there
to Malo-Yaroslavets, the place where the last battle with the French
was fought and where the obvious disintegration of the French army
began; and we are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of
the campaign, but of Dokhturov nothing or very little is said and that
dubiously. And this silence about Dokhturov is the clearest
testimony to his merit.

It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a
machine to imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance
and is interfering with its action and tossing about in it is its most
important part. The man who does not understand the construction of
the machine cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which
revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine,
and not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working.

On the tenth of October when Dokhturov had gone halfway to
Forminsk and stopped at the village of Aristovo, preparing
faithfully to execute the orders he had received, the whole French
army having, in its convulsive movement, reached Murat's position
apparently in order to give battle--suddenly without any reason turned
off to the left onto the new Kaluga road and began to enter
Forminsk, where only Broussier had been till then. At that time
Dokhturov had under his command, besides Dorokhov's detachment, the
two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and Seslavin.

On the evening of October 11 Seslavin came to the Aristovo
headquarters with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner
said that the troops that had entered Forminsk that day were the
vanguard of the whole army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army
had left Moscow four days previously. That same evening a house serf
who had come from Borovsk said he had seen an immense army entering
the town. Some Cossacks of Dokhturov's detachment reported having
sighted the French Guards marching along the road to Borovsk. From all
these reports it was evident that where they had expected to meet a
single division there was now the whole French army marching from
Moscow in an unexpected direction--along the Kaluga road. Dokhturov
was unwilling to undertake any action, as it was not clear to him
now what he ought to do. He had been ordered to attack Forminsk. But
only Broussier had been there at that time and now the whole French
army was there. Ermolov wished to act on his own judgment, but
Dokhturov insisted that he must have Kutuzov's instructions. So it was
decided to send a dispatch to the staff.

For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovitinov, was chosen, who
was to explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering a
written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovitinov, having received the
dispatch and verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff
accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.





CHAPTER XVI


It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four
days. Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour
and a half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovitinov reached Litashevka
after one o'clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle
fence hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he
entered a dark passage.

"The general on duty, quick! It's very important!" said he to
someone who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.

"He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third
night he has not slept," said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper.
"You should wake the captain first."

"But this is very important, from General Dokhturov," said
Bolkhovitinov, entering the open door which he had found by feeling in
the dark.

The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.

"Your honor, your honor! A courier."

"What? What's that? From whom?" came a sleepy voice.

"From Dokhturov and from Alexey Petrovich. Napoleon is at Forminsk,"
said Bolkhovitinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but
guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnitsyn.

The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.

"I don't like waking him," he said, fumbling for something. "He is
very ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor."

"Here is the dispatch," said Bolkhovitinov. "My orders are to give
it at once to the general on duty."

"Wait a moment, I'll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you
always hide it?" said the voice of the man who was stretching himself,
to the orderly. (This was Shcherbinin, Konovnitsyn's adjutant.)
"I've found it, I've found it!" he added.

The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbinin was fumbling for
something on the candlestick.

"Oh, the nasty beasts!" said he with disgust.

By the light of the sparks Bolkhovitinov saw Shcherbinin's
youthful face as he held the candle, and the face of another man who
was still asleep. This was Konovnitsyn.

When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned
up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit the tallow candle, from
the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were
running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovitinov was
bespattered all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it
with his sleeve.

"Who gave the report?" inquired Shcherbinin, taking the envelope.

"The news is reliable," said Bolkhovitinov. "Prisoners, Cossacks,
and the scouts all say the same thing."

"There's nothing to be done, we'll have to wake him," said
Shcherbinin, rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay
covered by a greatcoat. "Peter Petrovich!" said he. (Konovnitsyn did
not stir.) "To the General Staff!" he said with a smile, knowing
that those words would be sure to arouse him.

And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On
Konovnitsyn's handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever,
there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote
from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and his face
assumed its habitual calm and firm appearance.

"Well, what is it? From whom?" he asked immediately but without
hurry, blinking at the light.

While listening to the officer's report Konovnitsyn broke the seal
and read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his
legs in their woolen stockings to the earthen floor and began
putting on his boots. Then he took off his nightcap, combed his hair
over his temples, and donned his cap.

"Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness."

Konovnitsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of
great importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or
ask himself whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest
him. He regarded the whole business of the war not with his
intelligence or his reason but by something else. There was within him
a deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one
must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must only
attend to one's own work. And he did his work, giving his whole
strength to the task.

Peter Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dokhturov, seems to have been
included merely for propriety's sake in the list of the so-called
heroes of 1812--the Barclays, Raevskis, Ermolovs, Platovs, and
Miloradoviches. Like Dokhturov he had the reputation of being a man of
very limited capacity and information, and like Dokhturov he never
made plans of battle but was always found where the situation was most
difficult. Since his appointment as general on duty he had always
slept with his door open, giving orders that every messenger should be
allowed to wake him up. In battle he was always under fire, so that
Kutuzov reproved him for it and feared to send him to the front, and
like Dokhturov he was one of those unnoticed cogwheels that, without
clatter or noise, constitute the most essential part of the machine.

Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnitsyn
frowned--partly from an increased pain in his head and partly at the
unpleasant thought that occurred to him, of how all that nest of
influential men on the staff would be stirred up by this news,
especially Bennigsen, who ever since Tarutino had been at daggers
drawn with Kutuzov; and how they would make suggestions, quarrel,
issue orders, and rescind them. And this premonition was disagreeable
to him though he knew it could not be helped.

And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news,
immediately began to expound his plans to a general sharing his
quarters, until Konovnitsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded
him that they must go to see his Highness.





CHAPTER XVII


Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often
fell asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at night, lying on his
bed without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking.

So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred
head on his plump hand, with his one eye open, meditating and
peering into the darkness.

Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor and had more
influence than anyone else on the staff, had begun to avoid him,
Kutuzov was more at ease as to the possibility of himself and his
troops being obliged to take part in useless aggressive movements. The
lesson of the Tarutino battle and of the day before it, which
Kutuzov remembered with pain, must, he thought, have some effect on
others too.

"They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive.
Patience and time are my warriors, my champions," thought Kutuzov.
He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will
fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled,
the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an
experienced sportsman he knew that the beast was wounded, and
wounded as only the whole strength of Russia could have wounded it,
but whether it was mortally wounded or not was still an undecided
question. Now by the fact of Lauriston and Barthelemi having been
sent, and by the reports of the guerrillas, Kutuzov was almost sure
that the wound was mortal. But he needed further proofs and it was
necessary to wait.

"They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall
see! Continual maneuvers, continual advances!" thought he. "What
for? Only to distinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are
like children from whom one can't get any sensible account of what has
happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But
that's not what is needed now.

"And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to
them that when they have thought of two or three contingencies" (he
remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) "they have
foreseen everything. But the contingencies are endless."

The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodino
was mortal or not had hung over Kutuzov's head for a whole month. On
the one hand the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutuzov felt
assured with all his being that the terrible blow into which he and
all the Russians had put their whole strength must have been mortal.
But in any case proofs were needed; he had waited a whole month for
them and grew more impatient the longer he waited. Lying on his bed
during those sleepless nights he did just what he reproached those
younger generals for doing. He imagined all sorts of possible
contingencies, just like the younger men, but with this difference,
that he saw thousands of contingencies instead of two or three and
based nothing on them. The longer he thought the more contingencies
presented themselves. He imagined all sorts of movements of the
Napoleonic army as a whole or in sections--against Petersburg, or
against him, or to outflank him. He thought too of the possibility
(which he feared most of all) that Napoleon might fight him with his
own weapon and remain in Moscow awaiting him. Kutuzov even imagined
that Napoleon's army might turn back through Medyn and Yukhnov, but
the one thing he could not foresee was what happened--the insane,
convulsive stampede of Napoleon's army during its first eleven days
after leaving Moscow: a stampede which made possible what Kutuzov
had not yet even dared to think of--the complete extermination of
the French. Dorokhov's report about Broussier's division, the
guerrillas' reports of distress in Napoleon's army, rumors of
preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that
the French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But these were
only suppositions, which seemed important to the younger men but not
to Kutuzov. With his sixty years' experience he knew what value to
attach to rumors, knew how apt people who desire anything are to group
all news so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he knew
how readily in such cases they omit all that makes for the contrary.
And the more he desired it the less he allowed himself to believe
it. This question absorbed all his mental powers. All else was to
him only life's customary routine. To such customary routine
belonged his conversations with the staff, the letters he wrote from
Tarutino to Madame de Stael, the reading of novels, the distribution
of awards, his correspondence with Petersburg, and so on. But the
destruction of the French, which he alone foresaw, was his heart's one
desire.

On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on his arm
and thinking of that.

There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll,
Konovnitsyn, and Bolkhovitinov.

"Eh, who's there? Come in, come in! What news?" the field marshal
called out to them.

While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the
substance of the news.

"Who brought it?" asked Kutuzov with a look which, when the candle
was lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.

"There can be no doubt about it, your Highness."

"Call him in, call him here."

Kutuzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big
paunch resting against the other which was doubled under him. He
screwed up his seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more
carefully, as if wishing to read in his face what preoccupied his
own mind.

"Tell me, tell me, friend," said he to Bolkhovitinov in his low,
aged voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his
chest, "come nearer--nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That
Napoleon has left Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?"

Bolkhovitinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he
had been told to report.

"Speak quicker, quicker! Don't torture me!" Kutuzov interrupted him.

Bolkhovitinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting
instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutuzov
checked him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered
and wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side
of the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there.

"O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer..." said he in a
tremulous voice with folded hands. "Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O
Lord!" and he wept.





CHAPTER XVIII


From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all
Kutuzov's activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by
authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers,
or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhturov went to
Malo-Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov lingered with the main army and gave
orders for the evacuation of Kaluga--a retreat beyond which town
seemed to him quite possible.

Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for
his retreat fled in the opposite direction.

Napoleon's historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at
Tarutino and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as to what would
have happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich
southern provinces.

But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from
advancing into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did
not bar his way), the historians forget that nothing could have
saved his army, for then already it bore within itself the germs of
inevitable ruin. How could that army--which had found abundant
supplies in Moscow and had trampled them underfoot instead of
keeping them, and on arriving at Smolensk had looted provisions
instead of storing them--how could that army recuperate in Kaluga
province, which was inhabited by Russians such as those who lived in
Moscow, and where fire had the same property of consuming what was set
ablaze?

That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodino
and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were,
the chemical elements of dissolution.

The members of what had once been an army--Napoleon himself and
all his soldiers fled--without knowing whither, each concerned only to
make his escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the
hopelessness of which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.

So it came about that at the council at Malo-Yaroslavets, when the
generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all
mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier
Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing
needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not even
Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all
recognized.

But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away,
there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must
flee. An external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this
shock came in due time. It was what the French called "le hourra de
l'Empereur."

The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon rode out
early in the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of
marshals and an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and
the scene of the previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks
on the prowl for booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly
captured him. If the Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what
saved him was the very thing that was destroying the French army,
the booty on which the Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarutino they went
after plunder, leaving the men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed
after the plunder and Napoleon managed to escape.

When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor
himself in the midst of his army, it was clear that there was
nothing for it but to fly as fast as possible along the nearest,
familiar road. Napoleon with his forty-year-old stomach understood
that hint, not feeling his former agility and boldness, and under
the influence of the fright the Cossacks had given him he at once
agreed with Mouton and issued orders--as the historians tell us--to
retreat by the Smolensk road.

That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated,
does not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces
which influenced the whole army and directed it along the Mozhaysk
(that is, the Smolensk) road acted simultaneously on him also.





CHAPTER XIX


A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to
go a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him
at the end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a
promised land to have the strength to move.

The promised land for the French during their advance had been
Moscow, during their retreat it was their native land. But that native
land was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is
absolutely necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to
himself: "Today I shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I
shall rest and spend the night," and during the first day's journey
that resting place eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his
hopes and desires. And the impulses felt by a single person are always
magnified in a crowd.

For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road, the final
goal--their native land--was too remote, and their immediate goal
was Smolensk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously
intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that
much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that they
were told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon
himself, knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this
alone could give them strength to move on and endure their present
privations. So both those who knew and those who did not know deceived
themselves, and pushed on to Smolensk as to a promised land.

Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising
energy and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on.
Besides the common impulse which bound the whole crowd of French
into one mass and supplied them with a certain energy, there was
another cause binding them together--their great numbers. As with
the physical law of gravity, their enormous mass drew the individual
human atoms to itself. In their hundreds of thousands they moved
like a whole nation.

Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a
prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one
hand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew
each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps
could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed
themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to
surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not
always occur. Their very numbers and their crowded and swift
movement deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not only
difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to
which the French were directing all their energies. Beyond a certain
limit no mechanical disruption of the body could hasten the process of
decomposition.

A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a
certain limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt
the snow. On the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the
remaining snow becomes.

Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood this. When the
flight of the French army along the Smolensk road became well defined,
what Konovnitsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of
October began to occur. The superior officers all wanted to
distinguish themselves, to cut off, to seize, to capture, and to
overthrow the French, and all clamored for action.

Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited
in the case of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack.

He could not tell them what we say now: "Why fight, why block the
road, losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate
wretches? What is the use of that, when a third of their army has
melted away on the road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?" But
drawing from his aged wisdom what they could understand, he told
them of the golden bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him,
flinging themselves on, rending and exulting over the dying beast.

Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov, and others in proximity to the French
near Vyazma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up
two French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov
they sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.

And try as Kutuzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked,
trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to
the attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lost
thousands of men.

But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army,
closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily
melting away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolensk.





BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812





CHAPTER I


The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of Moscow that
followed it and the flight of the French without further conflicts, is
one of the most instructive phenomena in history.

All historians agree that the external activity of states and
nations in their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars,
and that as a direct result of greater or less success in war the
political strength of states and nations increases or decreases.

Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or emperor,
having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his enemy's
army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten thousand men, and
subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several millions, all the
facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm the truth of the
statement that the greater or lesser success of one army against
another is the cause, or at least an essential indication, of an
increase or decrease in the strength of the nation--even though it is
unintelligible why the defeat of an army--a hundredth part of a
nation--should oblige that whole nation to submit. An army gains a
victory, and at once the rights of the conquering nation have
increased to the detriment of the defeated. An army has suffered
defeat, and at once a people loses its rights in proportion to the
severity of the reverse, and if its army suffers a complete defeat the
nation is quite subjugated.

So according to history it has been found from the most ancient
times, and so it is to our own day. All Napoleon's wars serve to
confirm this rule. In proportion to the defeat of the Austrian army
Austria loses its rights, and the rights and the strength of France
increase. The victories of the French at Jena and Auerstadt destroy
the independent existence of Prussia.

But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow
is taken and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia
that ceases to exist, but the French army of six hundred thousand, and
then Napoleonic France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules of
history: to say that the field of battle at Borodino remained in the
hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were other battles
that destroyed Napoleon's army, is impossible.

After the French victory at Borodino there was no general engagement
nor any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist.
What does this mean? If it were an example taken from the history of
China, we might say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which is
the historians' usual expedient when anything does not fit their
standards); if the matter concerned some brief conflict in which
only a small number of troops took part, we might treat it as an
exception; but this event occurred before our fathers' eyes, and for
them it was a question of the life or death of their fatherland, and
it happened in the greatest of all known wars.

The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodino to
the expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does
not produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of
conquest; it proved that the force which decides the fate of peoples
lies not in the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in
something else.

The French historians, describing the condition of the French army
before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in order in the Grand Army,
except the cavalry, the artillery, and the transport--there was no
forage for the horses or the cattle. That was a misfortune no one
could remedy, for the peasants of the district burned their hay rather
than let the French have it.

The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the
peasants Karp and Vlas (who after the French had evacuated Moscow
drove in their carts to pillage the town, and in general personally
failed to manifest any heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable
multitude of such peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for
the high price offered them, but burned it instead.

Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with
rapiers according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The
fencing has gone on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants,
feeling himself wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke
but concerns his life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first
cudgel that comes to hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine
that the combatant who so sensibly employed the best and simplest
means to attain his end was at the same time influenced by
traditions of chivalry and, desiring to conceal the facts of the case,
insisted that he had gained his victory with the rapier according to
all the rules of art. One can imagine what confusion and obscurity
would result from such an account of the duel.

The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of
fencing was the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier
and snatched up the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to
explain the matter according to the rules of fencing are the
historians who have described the event.

After the burning of Smolensk a war began which did not follow any
previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the
retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodino and the renewed
retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the
seizure of transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures
from the rules.

Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing
attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent's rapier saw a cudgel
raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutuzov and
to the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to
all the rules--as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite
of the complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the
rules, in spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it
seemed rather disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to
assume a pose en quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and
to make an adroit thrust en prime, and so on--the cudgel of the
people's war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic strength,
and without consulting anyone's tastes or rules and regardless of
anything else, it rose and fell with stupid simplicity, but
consistently, and belabored the French till the whole invasion had
perished.

And it is well for a people who do not--as the French did in 1813--salute
according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt of their
rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their magnanimous conqueror,
but at the moment of trial, without asking what rules others have adopted
in similar cases, simply and easily pick up the first cudgel that comes to
hand and strike with it till the feeling of resentment and revenge in
their soul yields to a feeling of contempt and compassion.





CHAPTER II


One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the
so-called laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men
pressed together in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars that
take on a national character. In such actions, instead of two crowds
opposing each other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away when
attacked by stronger forces, but again attack when opportunity offers.
This was done by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain tribes in
the Caucasus, and by the Russians in 1812.

People have called this kind of war "guerrilla warfare" and assume
that by so calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a
war does not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a
well-known rule of tactics which is accepted as infallible. That
rule says that an attacker should concentrate his forces in order to
be stronger than his opponent at the moment of conflict.

Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly
infringes that rule.

This contradiction arises from the fact that military science
assumes the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers.
Military science says that the more troops the greater the strength.
Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison.*


*Large battalions are always victorious.


For military science to say this is like defining momentum in
mechanics by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are
equal or unequal to each other simply because the masses involved
are equal or unequal.

Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.

In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its
mass and some unknown x.

Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the
fact that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and
that small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the
existence of this unknown factor and tries to discover it--now in a
geometric formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most
usually, in the genius of the commanders. But the assignment of
these various meanings to the factor does not yield results which
accord with the historic facts.

Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to
gratify the "heroes") of the efficacy of the directions issued in
wartime by commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.

That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the
greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the
men composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are
not, fighting under the command of a genius, in two--or three-line
formation, with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a
minute. Men who want to fight will always put themselves in the most
advantageous conditions for fighting.

The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass
gives the resulting force. To define and express the significance of
this unknown factor--the spirit of an army--is a problem for science.

This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to
substitute for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that
force becomes apparent--such as the commands of the general, the
equipment employed, and so on--mistaking these for the real
significance of the factor, and if we recognize this unknown
quantity in its entirety as being the greater or lesser desire to
fight and to face danger. Only then, expressing known historic facts
by equations and comparing the relative significance of this factor,
can we hope to define the unknown.

Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions,
or divisions, conquer--that is, kill or take captive--all the
others, while themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and
on the other fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to
the fifteen, and therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This
equation does not give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us
a ratio between two unknowns. And by bringing variously selected
historic units (battles, campaigns, periods of war) into such
equations, a series of numbers could be obtained in which certain laws
should exist and might be discovered.

The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when
attacking, and in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms
the truth that the strength of an army depends on its spirit. To
lead men forward under fire more discipline (obtainable only by
movement in masses) is needed than is needed to resist attacks. But
this rule which leaves out of account the spirit of the army
continually proves incorrect and is in particularly striking
contrast to the facts when some strong rise or fall in the spirit of
the troops occurs, as in all national wars.

The French, retreating in 1812--though according to tactics they should
have separated into detachments to defend themselves--congregated into a
mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen that only the mass
held the army together. The Russians, on the contrary, ought according
to tactics to have attacked in mass, but in fact they split up into
small units, because their spirit had so risen that separate
individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the French without needing
any compulsion to induce them to expose themselves to hardships and
dangers.





CHAPTER III


The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into
Smolensk.

Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by the
government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders, and foragers had
been destroyed by the Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off
as instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death. Denis
Davydov, with his Russian instinct, was the first to recognize the
value of this terrible cudgel which regardless of the rules of
military science destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit
for taking the first step toward regularizing this method of warfare.

On August 24 Davydov's first partisan detachment was formed and then
others were recognized. The further the campaign progressed the more
numerous these detachments became.

The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They gathered the
fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from that withered tree--the
French army--and sometimes shook that tree itself. By October, when
the French were fleeing toward Smolensk, there were hundreds of such
companies, of various sizes and characters. There were some that
adopted all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs, and
the comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack cavalry.
There were also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and groups of
peasants and landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan commanded
one party which captured several hundred prisoners in the course of a
month; and there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village elder, who slew
hundreds of the French.

The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of
October. Its first period had passed: when the partisans themselves,
amazed at their own boldness, feared every minute to be surrounded and
captured by the French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling,
hardly daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the
end of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it had
become clear to all what could be ventured against the French and what
could not. Now only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and
moving according to rules at a distance from the French, still
regarded many things as impossible. The small bands that had started
their activities long before and had already observed the French
closely considered things possible which the commanders of the big
detachments did not dare to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants who
crept in among the French now considered everything possible.

On October 22, Denisov (who was one of the irregulars) was with his
group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early morning
he and his party had been on the move. All day long he had been
watching from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French
convoy of cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the
rest of the army, which--as was learned from spies and prisoners--was
moving under a strong escort to Smolensk. Besides Denisov and Dolokhov
(who also led a small party and moved in Denisov's vicinity), the
commanders of some large divisions with staffs also knew of this
convoy and, as Denisov expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for
it. Two of the commanders of large parties--one a Pole and the other a
German--sent invitations to Denisov almost simultaneously, requesting
him to join up with their divisions to attack the convoy.

"No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself," said Denisov on
reading these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite
his heartfelt desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general,
he had to forgo that pleasure because he was already under the command
of the Polish general. To the Polish general he replied to the same
effect, informing him that he was already under the command of the
German.

Having arranged matters thus, Denisov and Dolokhov intended, without
reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that
convoy with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from
the village of Mikulino to that of Shamshevo. To the left of the road
between Mikulino and Shamshevo there were large forests, extending in
some places up to the road itself though in others a mile or more back
from it. Through these forests Denisov and his party rode all day,
sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to the very
edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That morning,
Cossacks of Denisov's party had seized and carried off into the forest
two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck in the mud not
far from Mikulino where the forest ran close to the road. Since then,
and until evening, the party had watched the movements of the French
without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach Shamshevo
quietly without alarming them and then, after joining Dolokhov who was
to come that evening to a consultation at a watchman's hut in the
forest less than a mile from Shamshevo, to surprise the French at
dawn, falling like an avalanche on their heads from two sides, and
rout and capture them all at one blow.

In their rear, more than a mile from Mikulino where the forest
came right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any
fresh columns of French should show themselves.

Beyond Shamshevo, Dolokhov was to observe the road in the same
way, to find out at what distance there were other French troops. They
reckoned that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Denisov had two
hundred, and Dolokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of
numbers did not deter Denisov. All that he now wanted to know was what
troops these were and to learn that he had to capture a "tongue"--that
is, a man from the enemy column. That morning's attack on the wagons
had been made so hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all
been killed; only a little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he
was a straggler he could tell them nothing definite about the troops
in that column.

Denisov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear
of putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tikhon
Shcherbaty, a peasant of his party, to Shamshevo to try and seize at
least one of the French quartermasters who had been sent on in
advance.





CHAPTER IV


It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both
the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and
then suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.

Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain
ran down was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides.
Like his horse, which turned its head and laid its ears back, he
shrank from the driving rain and gazed anxiously before him. His
thin face with its short, thick black beard looked angry.

Beside Denisov rode an esaul,* Denisov's fellow worker, also in felt
cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.


*A captain of Cossacks.


Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow,
pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm
self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to
say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first
glance at the esaul and Denisov one saw that the latter was wet and
uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the
esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always
and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was
one with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold
strength.

A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and
wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.

A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount with an
enormous tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a
blue French overcoat.

Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform
and blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on
to the hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed
about him with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that
morning.

Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars
in threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in
French greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The
horses, being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether
chestnut or bay. Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes,
looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles,
reins, were all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the
fallen leaves that strewed the road. The men sat huddled up trying not
to stir, so as to warm the water that had trickled to their bodies and
not admit the fresh cold water that was leaking in under their
seats, their knees, and at the back of their necks. In the midst of
the outspread line of Cossacks two wagons, drawn by French horses
and by saddled Cossack horses that had been hitched on in front,
rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and splashed through the
water that lay in the ruts.

Denisov's horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and
bumped his rider's knee against a tree.

"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed Denisov angrily, and showing his teeth he
struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and
his comrades with mud.

Denisov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from
hunger (none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more
because he still had no news from Dolokhov and the man sent to capture
a "tongue" had not returned.

"There'll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as
today. It's too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it
off till another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will
snatch the prey from under our noses," thought Denisov, continually
peering forward, hoping to see a messenger from Dolokhov.

On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to
the right, Denisov stopped.

"There's someone coming," said he.

The esaul looked in the direction Denisov indicated.

"There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not
presupposable that it is the lieutenant colonel himself," said the
esaul, who was fond of using words the Cossacks did not know.

The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer
visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary
gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and
drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him,
standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young
lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to Denisov
and handed him a sodden envelope.

"From the general," said the officer. "Please excuse its not being
quite dry."

Denisov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.

"There, they kept telling us: 'It's dangerous, it's dangerous,'"
said the officer, addressing the esaul while Denisov was reading the
dispatch. "But Komarov and I"--he pointed to the Cossack--"were
prepared. We have each of us two pistols.... But what's this?" he
asked, noticing the French drummer boy. "A prisoner? You've already
been in action? May I speak to him?"

"Wostov! Petya!" exclaimed Denisov, having run through the dispatch.
"Why didn't you say who you were?" and turning with a smile he held
out his hand to the lad.

The officer was Petya Rostov.

All the way Petya had been preparing himself to behave with
Denisov as befitted a grownup man and an officer--without hinting at
their previous acquaintance. But as soon as Denisov smiled at him
Petya brightened up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner
he had been rehearsing, and began telling him how he had already
been in a battle near Vyazma and how a certain hussar had
distinguished himself there.

"Well, I am glad to see you," Denisov interrupted him, and his
face again assumed its anxious expression.

"Michael Feoklitych," said he to the esaul, "this is again fwom that
German, you know. He"--he indicated Petya--"is serving under him."

And Denisov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a
repetition of the German general's demand that he should join forces
with him for an attack on the transport.

"If we don't take it tomowwow, he'll snatch it fwom under our
noses," he added.

While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petya--abashed by
Denisov's cold tone and supposing that it was due to the condition
of his trousers--furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat
so that no one should notice it, while maintaining as martial an air
as possible.

"Will there be any orders, your honor?" he asked Denisov, holding
his hand at the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general
for which he had prepared himself, "or shall I remain with your
honor?"

"Orders?" Denisov repeated thoughtfully. "But can you stay till
tomowwow?"

"Oh, please... May I stay with you?" cried Petya.

"But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?"
asked Denisov.

Petya blushed.

"He gave me no instructions. I think I could?" he returned,
inquiringly.

"Well, all wight," said Denisov.

And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting
place arranged near the watchman's hut in the forest, and told the
officer on the Kirghiz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant)
to go and find out where Dolokhov was and whether he would come that
evening. Denisov himself intended going with the esaul and Petya to
the edge of the forest where it reached out to Shamshevo, to have a
look at the part of the French bivouac they were to attack next day.

"Well, old fellow," said he to the peasant guide, "lead us to
Shamshevo."

Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and
the hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to
the edge of the forest.





CHAPTER V


The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from
the trees. Denisov, the esaul, and Petya rode silently, following
the peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned
toes and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet
leaves, silently led them to the edge of the forest.

He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to
where the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree
that had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously
to them with his hand.

Denisov and Petya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant
was standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest,
on a downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a
steep ravine, was a small village and a landowner's house with a
broken roof. In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well,
by the pond, over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill
from the bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred
yards away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist.
Their un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining
uphill with the carts, and their calls to one another, could be
clearly heard.

"Bwing the prisoner here," said Denisov in a low voice, not taking
his eyes off the French.

A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to
Denisov. Pointing to the French troops, Denisov asked him what these
and those of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his
pockets and lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denisov in affright, but
in spite of an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused
answers, merely assenting to everything Denisov asked him. Denisov
turned away from him frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his
own conjectures to him.

Petya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy,
now at Denisov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village
and along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.

"Whether Dolokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?" said
Denisov with a merry sparkle in his eyes.

"It is a very suitable spot," said the esaul.

"We'll send the infantwy down by the swamps," Denisov continued.
"They'll cweep up to the garden; you'll wide up fwom there with the
Cossacks"--he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village--"and
I with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot..."

"The hollow is impassable--there's a swamp there," said the esaul.
"The horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left...."

While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded
from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared,
then another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French
voices shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment
Denisov and the esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought
they were the cause of the firing and shouting. But the firing and
shouting did not relate to them. Down below, a man wearing something
red was running through the marsh. The French were evidently firing
and shouting at him.

"Why, that's our Tikhon," said the esaul.

"So it is! It is!"

"The wascal!" said Denisov.

"He'll get away!" said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.

The man whom they called Tikhon, having run to the stream, plunged
in so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared
for an instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet,
and ran on. The French who had been pursuing him stopped.

"Smart, that!" said the esaul.

"What a beast!" said Denisov with his former look of vexation. "What
has he been doing all this time?"

"Who is he?" asked Petya.

"He's our plastun. I sent him to capture a 'tongue.'"

"Oh, yes," said Petya, nodding at the first words Denisov uttered as
if he understood it all, though he really did not understand
anything of it.

Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of the most indispensable men in their
band. He was a peasant from Pokrovsk, near the river Gzhat. When
Denisov had come to Pokrovsk at the beginning of his operations and
had as usual summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew
about the French, the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied,
as all village elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything
of them. But when Denisov explained that his purpose was to kill the
French, and asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied
that some "more-orderers" had really been at their village, but that
Tikhon Shcherbaty was the only man who dealt with such matters.
Denisov had Tikhon called and, having praised him for his activity,
said a few words in the elder's presence about loyalty to the Tsar and
the country and the hatred of the French that all sons of the
fatherland should cherish.

"We don't do the French any harm," said Tikhon, evidently frightened
by Denisov's words. "We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you
know! We killed a score or so of 'more-orderers,' but we did no harm
else..."

Next day when Denisov had left Pokrovsk, having quite forgotten
about this peasant, it was reported to him that Tikhon had attached
himself to their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it.
Denisov gave orders to let him do so.

Tikhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching
water, flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking
and aptitude for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for
booty and always brought back French clothing and weapons, and when
told to would bring in French captives also. Denisov then relieved him
from drudgery and began taking him with him when he went out on
expeditions and had him enrolled among the Cossacks.

Tikhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging
behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried
rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf
uses its teeth, with equal case picking fleas out of its fur or
crunching thick bones. Tikhon with equal accuracy would split logs
with blows at arm's length, or holding the head of the ax would cut
thin little pegs or carve spoons. In Denisov's party he held a
peculiar and exceptional position. When anything particularly
difficult or nasty had to be done--to push a cart out of the mud
with one's shoulders, pull a horse out of a swamp by its tail, skin
it, slink in among the French, or walk more than thirty miles in a
day--everybody pointed laughingly at Tikhon.

"It won't hurt that devil--he's as strong as a horse!" they said
of him.

Once a Frenchman Tikhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at him
and shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which Tikhon
treated only with internal and external applications of vodka) was the
subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment--jokes in which
Tikhon readily joined.

"Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?" the Cossacks would
banter him. And Tikhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended
to be angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only
effect of this incident on Tikhon was that after being wounded he
seldom brought in prisoners.

He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found
more opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more
Frenchmen, and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the
Cossacks and hussars and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been
sent by Denisov overnight to Shamshevo to capture a "tongue." But
whether because he had not been content to take only one Frenchman
or because he had slept through the night, he had crept by day into
some bushes right among the French and, as Denisov had witnessed
from above, had been detected by them.





CHAPTER VI


After talking for some time with the esaul about next day's
attack, which now, seeing how near they were to the French, he
seemed to have definitely decided on, Denisov turned his horse and
rode back.

"Now, my lad, we'll go and get dwy," he said to Petya.

As they approached the watchhouse Denisov stopped, peering into the
forest. Among the trees a man with long legs and long, swinging arms,
wearing a short jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazan hat, was approaching
with long, light steps. He had a musketoon over his shoulder and an ax
stuck in his girdle. When he espied Denisov he hastily threw something
into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its floppy brim, and
approached his commander. It was Tikhon. His wrinkled and pockmarked
face and narrow little eyes beamed with self-satisfied merriment. He
lifted his head high and gazed at Denisov as if repressing a laugh.

"Well, where did you disappear to?" inquired Denisov.

"Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen," answered Tikhon
boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice.

"Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass! Well,
why haven't you taken one?"

"Oh, I took one all right," said Tikhon.

"Where is he?"

"You see, I took him first thing at dawn," Tikhon continued,
spreading out his flat feet with outturned toes in their bast shoes.
"I took him into the forest. Then I see he's no good and think I'll go
and fetch a likelier one."

"You see?... What a wogue--it's just as I thought," said Denisov
to the esaul. "Why didn't you bwing that one?"

"What was the good of bringing him?" Tikhon interrupted hastily
and angrily--"that one wouldn't have done for you. As if I don't
know what sort you want!"

"What a bwute you are!... Well?"

"I went for another one," Tikhon continued, "and I crept like this
through the wood and lay down." (He suddenly lay down on his stomach
with a supple movement to show how he had done it.) "One turned up and
I grabbed him, like this." (He jumped up quickly and lightly.)
"'Come along to the colonel,' I said. He starts yelling, and
suddenly there were four of them. They rushed at me with their
little swords. So I went for them with my ax, this way: 'What are
you up to?' says I. 'Christ be with you!'" shouted Tikhon, waving
his arms with an angry scowl and throwing out his chest.

"Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels through the
puddles!" said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes.

Petya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained
from laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from Tikhon's face to the
esaul's and Denisov's, unable to make out what it all meant.

"Don't play the fool!" said Denisov, coughing angrily. "Why didn't
you bwing the first one?"

Tikhon scratched his back with one hand and his head with the other,
then suddenly his whole face expanded into a beaming, foolish grin,
disclosing a gap where he had lost a tooth (that was why he was called
Shcherbaty--the gap-toothed). Denisov smiled, and Petya burst into a
peal of merry laughter in which Tikhon himself joined.

"Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing," said Tikhon. "The
clothes on him--poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your
honor! Why, he says: 'I'm a general's son myself, I won't go!' he
says."

"You are a bwute!" said Denisov. "I wanted to question..."

"But I questioned him," said Tikhon. "He said he didn't know much.
'There are a lot of us,' he says, 'but all poor stuff--only soldiers
in name,' he says. 'Shout loud at them,' he says, 'and you'll take
them all,'" Tikhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into
Denisov's eyes.

"I'll give you a hundwed sharp lashes--that'll teach you to play the
fool!" said Denisov severely.

"But why are you angry?" remonstrated Tikhon, "just as if I'd
never seen your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I'll
fetch you any of them you want--three if you like."

"Well, let's go," said Denisov, and rode all the way to the
watchhouse in silence and frowning angrily.

Tikhon followed behind and Petya heard the Cossacks laughing with
him and at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the
bushes.

When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tikhon's words and
smile had passed and Petya realized for a moment that this Tikhon
had killed a man, he felt uneasy. He looked round at the captive
drummer boy and felt a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted
only a moment. He felt it necessary to hold his head higher, to
brace himself, and to question the esaul with an air of importance
about tomorrow's undertaking, that he might not be unworthy of the
company in which he found himself.

The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denisov on the way with
the news that Dolokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.

Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him, said: "Well,
tell me about yourself."





CHAPTER VII


Petya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow,
joined his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general
commanding a large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his
commission, and especially since he had joined the active army and
taken part in the battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a constant state
of blissful excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual ecstatic
hurry not to miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was
highly delighted with what he saw and experienced in the army, but
at the same time it always seemed to him that the really heroic
exploits were being performed just where he did not happen to be.
And he was always in a hurry to get where he was not.

When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish
to send somebody to Denisov's detachment, Petya begged so piteously to
be sent that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he
recalled Petya's mad action at the battle of Vyazma, where instead
of riding by the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had
galloped to the advanced line under the fire of the French and had
there twice fired his pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade
his taking part in any action whatever of Denisov's. That was why
Petya had blushed and grown confused when Denisov asked him whether he
could stay. Before they had ridden to the outskirts of the forest
Petya had considered he must carry out his instructions strictly and
return at once. But when he saw the French and saw Tikhon and
learned that there would certainly be an attack that night, he
decided, with the rapidity with which young people change their views,
that the general, whom he had greatly respected till then, was a
rubbishy German, that Denisov was a hero, the esaul a hero, and Tikhon
a hero too, and that it would be shameful for him to leave them at a
moment of difficulty.

It was already growing dusk when Denisov, Petya, and the esaul
rode up to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be
seen, and Cossacks and hussars who had rigged up rough shelters in the
glade and were kindling glowing fires in a hollow of the forest
where the French could not see the smoke. In the passage of the
small watchhouse a Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping some
mutton. In the room three officers of Denisov's band were converting a
door into a tabletop. Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to
be dried, and at once began helping the officers to fix up the
dinner table.

In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread on it. On the
table were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt.

Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory mutton
with his hands, down which the grease trickled, Petya was in an
ecstatic childish state of love for all men, and consequently of
confidence that others loved him in the same way.

"So then what do you think, Vasili Dmitrich?" said he to Denisov.
"It's all right my staying a day with you?" And not waiting for a
reply he answered his own question: "You see I was told to find
out--well, I am finding out.... Only do let me into the very... into
the chief... I don't want a reward... But I want..."

Petya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head
and flourishing his arms.

"Into the vewy chief..." Denisov repeated with a smile.

"Only, please let me command something, so that I may really
command..." Petya went on. "What would it be to you?... Oh, you want a
knife?" he said, turning to an officer who wished to cut himself a
piece of mutton.

And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer admired it.

"Please keep it. I have several like it," said Petya, blushing.
"Heavens! I was quite forgetting!" he suddenly cried. "I have some
raisins, fine ones; you know, seedless ones. We have a new sutler
and he has such capital things. I bought ten pounds. I am used to
something sweet. Would you like some?..." and Petya ran out into the
passage to his Cossack and brought back some bags which contained
about five pounds of raisins. "Have some, gentlemen, have some!"

"You want a coffeepot, don't you?" he asked the esaul. "I bought a
capital one from our sutler! He has splendid things. And he's very
honest, that's the chief thing. I'll be sure to send it to you. Or
perhaps your flints are giving out, or are worn out--that happens
sometimes, you know. I have brought some with me, here they are"--and
he showed a bag--"a hundred flints. I bought them very cheap. Please
take as many as you want, or all if you like...."

Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much, Petya stopped and
blushed.

He tried to remember whether he had not done anything else that
was foolish. And running over the events of the day he remembered
the French drummer boy. "It's capital for us here, but what of him?
Where have they put him? Have they fed him? Haven't they hurt his
feelings?" he thought. But having caught himself saying too much about
the flints, he was now afraid to speak out.

"I might ask," he thought, "but they'll say: 'He's a boy himself and
so he pities the boy.' I'll show them tomorrow whether I'm a boy. Will
it seem odd if I ask?" Petya thought. "Well, never mind!" and
immediately, blushing and looking anxiously at the officers to see
if they appeared ironical, he said:

"May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and give him
something to eat?... Perhaps..."

"Yes, he's a poor little fellow," said Denisov, who evidently saw
nothing shameful in this reminder. "Call him in. His name is Vincent
Bosse. Have him fetched."

"I'll call him," said Petya.

"Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow," Denisov repeated.

Petya was standing at the door when Denisov said this. He slipped in
between the officers, came close to Denisov, and said:

"Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how splendid!"

And having kissed Denisov he ran out of the hut.

"Bosse! Vincent!" Petya cried, stopping outside the door.

"Who do you want, sir?" asked a voice in the darkness.

Petya replied that he wanted the French lad who had been captured
that day.

"Ah, Vesenny?" said a Cossack.

Vincent, the boy's name, had already been changed by the Cossacks
into Vesenny (vernal) and into Vesenya by the peasants and soldiers.
In both these adaptations the reference to spring (vesna) matched
the impression made by the young lad.

"He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesenya!
Vesenya!--Vesenny!" laughing voices were heard calling to one
another in the darkness.

"He's a smart lad," said an hussar standing near Petya. "We gave him
something to eat a while ago. He was awfully hungry!"

The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was heard in the
darkness, and the drummer boy came to the door.

"Ah, c'est vous!" said Petya. "Voulez-vous manger? N'ayez pas
peur, on ne vous fera pas de mal,"* he added shyly and affectionately,
touching the boy's hand. "Entrez, entrez."*[2]


*"Ah, it's you! Do you want something to eat? Don't be afraid,
they won't hurt you."

*[2] "Come in, come in."


"Merci, monsieur,"* said the drummer boy in a trembling almost
childish voice, and he began scraping his dirty feet on the threshold.


*"Thank you, sir."


There were many things Petya wanted to say to the drummer boy, but
did not dare to. He stood irresolutely beside him in the passage. Then
in the darkness he took the boy's hand and pressed it.

"Come in, come in!" he repeated in a gentle whisper. "Oh, what can I
do for him?" he thought, and opening the door he let the boy pass in
first.

When the boy had entered the hut, Petya sat down at a distance
from him, considering it beneath his dignity to pay attention to
him. But he fingered the money in his pocket and wondered whether it
would seem ridiculous to give some to the drummer boy.





CHAPTER VIII


The arrival of Dolokhov diverted Petya's attention from the
drummer boy, to whom Denisov had had some mutton and vodka given,
and whom he had had dressed in a Russian coat so that he might be kept
with their band and not sent away with the other prisoners. Petya
had heard in the army many stories of Dolokhov's extraordinary bravery
and of his cruelty to the French, so from the moment he entered the
hut Petya did not take his eyes from him, but braced himself up more
and more and held his head high, that he might not be unworthy even of
such company.

Dolokhov's appearance amazed Petya by its simplicity.

Denisov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon of Nicholas
the Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his way of speaking and
everything he did indicated his unusual position. But Dolokhov, who in
Moscow had worn a Persian costume, had now the appearance of a most
correct officer of the Guards. He was clean-shaven and wore a
Guardsman's padded coat with an Order of St. George at his
buttonhole and a plain forage cap set straight on his head. He took
off his wet felt cloak in a corner of the room, and without greeting
anyone went up to Denisov and began questioning him about the matter
in hand. Denisov told him of the designs the large detachments had
on the transport, of the message Petya had brought, and his own
replies to both generals. Then he told him all he knew of the French
detachment.

"That's so. But we must know what troops they are and their
numbers," said Dolokhov. "It will be necessary to go there. We can't
start the affair without knowing for certain how many there are. I
like to work accurately. Here now--wouldn't one of these gentlemen
like to ride over to the French camp with me? I have brought a spare
uniform."

"I, I... I'll go with you!" cried Petya.

"There's no need for you to go at all," said Denisov, addressing
Dolokhov, "and as for him, I won't let him go on any account."

"I like that!" exclaimed Petya. "Why shouldn't I go?"

"Because it's useless."

"Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I shall go, and
that's all. You'll take me, won't you?" he said, turning to Dolokhov.

"Why not?" Dolokhov answered absently, scrutinizing the face of
the French drummer boy. "Have you had that youngster with you long?"
he asked Denisov.

"He was taken today but he knows nothing. I'm keeping him with me."

"Yes, and where do you put the others?" inquired Dolokhov.

"Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them," shouted
Denisov, suddenly flushing. "And I say boldly that I have not a single
man's life on my conscience. Would it be difficult for you to send
thirty or thwee hundwed men to town under escort, instead of
staining--I speak bluntly--staining the honor of a soldier?"

"That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this young count
of sixteen," said Dolokhov with cold irony, "but it's time for you
to drop it."

"Why, I've not said anything! I only say that I'll certainly go with
you," said Petya shyly.

"But for you and me, old fellow, it's time to drop these amenities,"
continued Dolokhov, as if he found particular pleasure in speaking
of this subject which irritated Denisov. "Now, why have you kept
this lad?" he went on, swaying his head. "Because you are sorry for
him! Don't we know those 'receipts' of yours? You send a hundred men
away, and thirty get there. The rest either starve or get killed. So
isn't it all the same not to send them?"

The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly.

"That's not the point. I'm not going to discuss the matter. I do not
wish to take it on my conscience. You say they'll die. All wight. Only
not by my fault!"

Dolokhov began laughing.

"Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over? But if
they did catch me they'd string me up to an aspen tree, and with all
your chivalry just the same." He paused. "However, we must get to
work. Tell the Cossack to fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms
in it. Well, are you coming with me?" he asked Petya.

"I? Yes, yes, certainly!" cried Petya, blushing almost to tears
and glancing at Denisov.

While Dolokhov had been disputing with Denisov what should be done
with prisoners, Petya had once more felt awkward and restless; but
again he had no time to grasp fully what they were talking about.
"If grown-up, distinguished men think so, it must be necessary and
right," thought he. "But above all Denisov must not dare to imagine
that I'll obey him and that he can order me about. I will certainly go
to the French camp with Dolokhov. If he can, so can I!"

And to all Denisov's persuasions, Petya replied that he too was
accustomed to do everything accurately and not just anyhow, and that
he never considered personal danger.

"For you'll admit that if we don't know for sure how many of them
there are... hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are
only two of us. Besides, I want to go very much and certainly will go,
so don't hinder me," said he. "It will only make things worse..."





CHAPTER IX


Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and Dolokhov
rode to the clearing from which Denisov had reconnoitered the French
camp, and emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended
into the hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks
accompanying him to await him there and rode on at a quick trot
along the road to the bridge. Petya, his heart in his mouth with
excitement, rode by his side.

"If we're caught, I won't be taken alive! I have a pistol,"
whispered he.

"Don't talk Russian," said Dolokhov in a hurried whisper, and at
that very moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: "Qui
vive?"* and the click of a musket.


*"Who goes there?"


The blood rushed to Petya's face and he grasped his pistol.

"Lanciers du 6-me,"* replied Dolokhov, neither hastening nor
slackening his horse's pace.


*"Lancers of the 6th Regiment."


The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.

"Mot d'ordre."*


*"Password."


Dolokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.

"Dites donc, le colonel Gerard est ici?"* he asked.


*"Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?"


"Mot d'ordre," repeated the sentinel, barring the way and not
replying.

"Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas
le mot d'ordre..." cried Dolokhov suddenly flaring up and riding
straight at the sentinel. "Je vous demande si le colonel est ici."*


*"When an officer is making his round, sentinels don't ask him for
the password.... I am asking you if the colonel is here."


And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who had stepped
aside, Dolokhov rode up the incline at a walk.

Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dolokhov
stopped him and inquired where the commander and officers were. The
man, a soldier with a sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up
to Dolokhov's horse, touched it with his hand, and explained simply
and in a friendly way that the commander and the officers were
higher up the hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm, as he
called the landowner's house.

Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French talk
could be heard around the campfires, Dolokhov turned into the
courtyard of the landowner's house. Having ridden in, he dismounted
and approached a big blazing campfire, around which sat several men
talking noisily. Something was boiling in a small cauldron at the edge
of the fire and a soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat, lit up by
the fire, was kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod.

"Oh, he's a hard nut to crack," said one of the officers who was
sitting in the shadow at the other side of the fire.

"He'll make them get a move on, those fellows!" said another,
laughing.

Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the sound of
Dolokhov's and Petya's steps as they advanced to the fire leading
their horses.

"Bonjour, messieurs!"* said Dolokhov loudly and clearly.


*"Good day, gentlemen."


There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond the fire,
and one tall, long-necked officer, walking round the fire, came up
to Dolokhov.

"Is that you, Clement?" he asked. "Where the devil...?" But, noticing
his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dolokhov as
a stranger, asking what he could do for him.

Dolokhov said that he and his companion were trying to overtake
their regiment, and addressing the company in general asked whether
they knew anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything,
and Petya thought the officers were beginning to look at him and
Dolokhov with hostility and suspicion. For some seconds all were
silent.

"If you were counting on the evening soup, you have come too
late," said a voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh.

Dolokhov replied that they were not hungry and must push on
farther that night.

He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring the pot
and squatted down on his heels by the fire beside the officer with the
long neck. That officer did not take his eyes from Dolokhov and
again asked to what regiment he belonged. Dolokhov, as if he had not
heard the question, did not reply, but lighting a short French pipe
which he took from his pocket began asking the officer in how far
the road before them was safe from Cossacks.

"Those brigands are everywhere," replied an officer from behind
the fire.

Dolokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger only to stragglers
such as his companion and himself, "but probably they would not dare
to attack large detachments?" he added inquiringly. No one replied.

"Well, now he'll come away," Petya thought every moment as he
stood by the campfire listening to the talk.

But Dolokhov restarted the conversation which had dropped and
began putting direct questions as to how many men there were in the
battalion, how many battalions, and how many prisoners. Asking about
the Russian prisoners with that detachment, Dolokhov said:

"A horrid business dragging these corpses about with one! It would
be better to shoot such rabble," and burst into loud laughter, so
strange that Petya thought the French would immediately detect their
disguise, and involuntarily took a step back from the campfire.

No one replied a word to Dolokhov's laughter, and a French officer
whom they could not see (he lay wrapped in a greatcoat) rose and
whispered something to a companion. Dolokhov got up and called to
the soldier who was holding their horses.

"Will they bring our horses or not?" thought Petya, instinctively
drawing nearer to Dolokhov.

The horses were brought.

"Good evening, gentlemen," said Dolokhov.

Petya wished to say "Good night" but could not utter a word. The
officers were whispering together. Dolokhov was a long time mounting
his horse which would not stand still, then he rode out of the yard at
a footpace. Petya rode beside him, longing to look round to see
whether or not the French were running after them, but not daring to.

Coming out onto the road Dolokhov did not ride back across the
open country, but through the village. At one spot he stopped and
listened. "Do you hear?" he asked. Petya recognized the sound of
Russian voices and saw the dark figures of Russian prisoners round
their campfires. When they had descended to the bridge Petya and
Dolokhov rode past the sentinel, who without saying a word paced
morosely up and down it, then they descended into the hollow where the
Cossacks awaited them.

"Well now, good-by. Tell Denisov, 'at the first shot at
daybreak,'" said Dolokhov and was about to ride away, but Petya seized
hold of him.

"Really!" he cried, "you are such a hero! Oh, how fine, how
splendid! How I love you!"

"All right, all right!" said Dolokhov. But Petya did not let go of
him and Dolokhov saw through the gloom that Petya was bending toward
him and wanted to kiss him. Dolokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his
horse, and vanished into the darkness.





CHAPTER X


Having returned to the watchman's hut, Petya found Denisov in the
passage. He was awaiting Petya's return in a state of agitation,
anxiety, and self-reproach for having let him go.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "Yes, thank God!" he repeated,
listening to Petya's rapturous account. "But, devil take you, I
haven't slept because of you! Well, thank God. Now lie down. We can
still get a nap before morning."

"But... no," said Petya, "I don't want to sleep yet. Besides I
know myself, if I fall asleep it's finished. And then I am used to not
sleeping before a battle."

He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of his
expedition and vividly picturing to himself what would happen next
day.

Then, noticing that Denisov was asleep, he rose and went out of
doors.

It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but drops were
still falling from the trees. Near the watchman's hut the black shapes
of the Cossacks' shanties and of horses tethered together could be
seen. Behind the hut the dark shapes of the two wagons with their
horses beside them were discernible, and in the hollow the dying
campfire gleamed red. Not all the Cossacks and hussars were asleep;
here and there, amid the sounds of falling drops and the munching of
the horses near by, could be heard low voices which seemed to be
whispering.

Petya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up to the wagons.
Someone was snoring under them, and around them stood saddled horses
munching their oats. In the dark Petya recognized his own horse, which
he called "Karabakh" though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to
it.

"Well, Karabakh! We'll do some service tomorrow," said he,
sniffing its nostrils and kissing it.

"Why aren't you asleep, sir?" said a Cossack who was sitting under a
wagon.

"No, ah... Likhachev--isn't that your name? Do you know I have
only just come back! We've been into the French camp."

And Petya gave the Cossack a detailed account not only of his ride
but also of his object, and why he considered it better to risk his
life than to act "just anyhow."

"Well, you should get some sleep now," said the Cossack.

"No, I am used to this," said Petya. "I say, aren't the flints in
your pistols worn out? I brought some with me. Don't you want any? You
can have some."

The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get a closer look
at Petya.

"Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately," said
Petya. "Some fellows do things just anyhow, without preparation, and
then they're sorry for it afterwards. I don't like that."

"Just so," said the Cossack.

"Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will you sharpen
my saber for me? It's got bl..." (Petya feared to tell a lie, and
the saber never had been sharpened.) "Can you do it?"

"Of course I can."

Likhachev got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the
warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat
on its edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon.

"I say! Are the lads asleep?" asked Petya.

"Some are, and some aren't--like us."

"Well, and that boy?"

"Vesenny? Oh, he's thrown himself down there in the passage. Fast
asleep after his fright. He was that glad!"

After that Petya remained silent for a long time, listening to the
sounds. He heard footsteps in the darkness and a black figure
appeared.

"What are you sharpening?" asked a man coming up to the wagon.

"Why, this gentleman's saber."

"That's right," said the man, whom Petya took to be an hussar.
"Was the cup left here?"

"There, by the wheel!"

The hussar took the cup.

"It must be daylight soon," said he, yawning, and went away.

Petya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denisov's
guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon
captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under
it Likhachev was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark
blotch to the right was the watchman's hut, and the red blotch below
to the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had
come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew
nor waited to know anything of all this. He was in a fairy kingdom
where nothing resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really be
the watchman's hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very
depths of the earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be
the eye of an enormous monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a
wagon, but it might very well be that he was not sitting on a wagon
but on a terribly high tower from which, if he fell, he would have
to fall for a whole day or a whole month, or go on falling and never
reach the bottom. Perhaps it was just the Cossack, Likhachev, who
was sitting under the wagon, but it might be the kindest, bravest,
most wonderful, most splendid man in the world, whom no one knew of.
It might really have been that the hussar came for water and went back
into the hollow, but perhaps he had simply vanished--disappeared
altogether and dissolved into nothingness.

Nothing Petya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was
in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.

He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the
earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were
swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars. Sometimes it looked as if
the clouds were passing, and a clear black sky appeared. Sometimes
it seemed as if the black spaces were clouds. Sometimes the sky seemed
to be rising high, high overhead, and then it seemed to sink so low
that one could touch it with one's hand.

Petya's eyes began to close and he swayed a little.

The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The horses neighed
and jostled one another. Someone snored.

"Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg..." hissed the saber against the whetstone,
and suddenly Petya heard an harmonious orchestra playing some unknown,
sweetly solemn hymn. Petya was as musical as Natasha and more so than
Nicholas, but had never learned music or thought about it, and so the
melody that unexpectedly came to his mind seemed to him particularly
fresh and attractive. The music became more and more audible. The
melody grew and passed from one instrument to another. And what was
played was a fugue--though Petya had not the least conception of what
a fugue is. Each instrument--now resembling a violin and now a horn,
but better and clearer than violin or horn--played its own part, and
before it had finished the melody merged with another instrument that
began almost the same air, and then with a third and a fourth; and
they all blended into one and again became separate and again blended,
now into solemn church music, now into something dazzlingly brilliant
and triumphant.

"Oh--why, that was in a dream!" Petya said to himself, as he lurched
forward. "It's in my ears. But perhaps it's music of my own. Well,
go on, my music! Now!..."

He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a distance,
sounds fluttered, grew into harmonies, separated, blended, and again
all mingled into the same sweet and solemn hymn. "Oh, this is
delightful! As much as I like and as I like!" said Petya to himself.
He tried to conduct that enormous orchestra.

"Now softly, softly die away!" and the sounds obeyed him. "Now
fuller, more joyful. Still more and more joyful!" And from an
unknown depth rose increasingly triumphant sounds. "Now voices join
in!" ordered Petya. And at first from afar he heard men's voices and
then women's. The voices grew in harmonious triumphant strength, and
Petya listened to their surpassing beauty in awe and joy.

With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song, the drip from
the trees, and the hissing of the saber, "Ozheg-zheg-zheg..." and
again the horses jostled one another and neighed, not disturbing the
choir but joining in it.

Petya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself all
the time, wondered at his enjoyment and regretted that there was no
one to share it. He was awakened by Likhachev's kindly voice.

"It's ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half with it!"

Petya woke up.

"It's getting light, it's really getting light!" he exclaimed.

The horses that had previously been invisible could now be seen to
their very tails, and a watery light showed itself through the bare
branches. Petya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket
and gave it to Likhachev; then he flourished the saber, tested it, and
sheathed it. The Cossacks were untying their horses and tightening
their saddle girths.

"And here's the commander," said Likhachev.

Denisov came out of the watchman's hut and, having called Petya,
gave orders to get ready.





CHAPTER XI


The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness,
tightened their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denisov stood
by the watchman's hut giving final orders. The infantry of the
detachment passed along the road and quickly disappeared amid the
trees in the mist of early dawn, hundreds of feet splashing through
the mud. The esaul gave some orders to his men. Petya held his horse
by the bridle, impatiently awaiting the order to mount. His face,
having been bathed in cold water, was all aglow, and his eyes were
particularly brilliant. Cold shivers ran down his spine and his
whole body pulsed rhythmically.

"Well, is ev'wything weady?" asked Denisov. "Bwing the horses."

The horses were brought. Denisov was angry with the Cossack
because the saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted.
Petya put his foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to
nip his leg, but Petya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious of
his own weight and, turning to look at the hussars starting in the
darkness behind him, rode up to Denisov.

"Vasili Dmitrich, entrust me with some commission! Please... for
God's sake...!" said he.

Denisov seemed to have forgotten Petya's very existence. He turned
to glance at him.

"I ask one thing of you," he said sternly, "to obey me and not shove
yourself forward anywhere."

He did not say another word to Petya but rode in silence all the
way. When they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably
growing light over the field. Denisov talked in whispers with the
esaul and the Cossacks rode past Petya and Denisov. When they had
all ridden by, Denisov touched his horse and rode down the hill.
Slipping onto their haunches and sliding, the horses descended with
their riders into the ravine. Petya rode beside Denisov, the pulsation
of his body constantly increasing. It was getting lighter and lighter,
but the mist still hid distant objects. Having reached the valley,
Denisov looked back and nodded to a Cossack beside him.

"The signal!" said he.

The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant the
tramp of horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from
various sides, and then more shots.

At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Petya lashed his
horse and loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denisov who
shouted at him. It seemed to Petya that at the moment the shot was
fired it suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge.
Cossacks were galloping along the road in front of him. On the
bridge he collided with a Cossack who had fallen behind, but he
galloped on. In front of him soldiers, probably Frenchmen, were
running from right to left across the road. One of them fell in the
mud under his horse's feet.

Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From the
midst of that crowd terrible screams arose. Petya galloped up, and the
first thing he saw was the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman,
clutching the handle of a lance that had been aimed at him.

"Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!" shouted Petya, and giving rein to his
excited horse he galloped forward along the village street.

He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged
Russian prisoners, who had come running from both sides of the road,
were shouting something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking
Frenchman, in a blue overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red
face, had been defending himself against the hussars. When Petya
galloped up the Frenchman had already fallen. "Too late again!"
flashed through Petya's mind and he galloped on to the place from
which the rapid firing could be heard. The shots came from the yard of
the landowner's house he had visited the night before with Dolokhov.
The French were making a stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden
thickly overgrown with bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who
crowded at the gateway. Through the smoke, as he approached the
gate, Petya saw Dolokhov, whose face was of a pale-greenish tint,
shouting to his men. "Go round! Wait for the infantry!" he exclaimed
as Petya rode up to him.

"Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!" shouted Petya, and without pausing a moment
galloped to the place whence came the sounds of firing and where the
smoke was thickest.

A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others
plashed against something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov galloped after
Petya into the gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke
some of the French threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes
to meet the Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward the
pond. Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but instead of
holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly and
strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his saddle. His
horse, having galloped up to a campfire that was smoldering in the
morning light, stopped suddenly, and Petya fell heavily on to the
wet ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and legs jerked rapidly
though his head was quite motionless. A bullet had pierced his skull.

After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out of the
house with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced that
they surrendered, Dolokhov dismounted and went up to Petya, who lay
motionless with outstretched arms.

"Done for!" he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet
Denisov who was riding toward him.

"Killed?" cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance the
unmistakably lifeless attitude--very familiar to him--in which Petya's
body was lying.

"Done for!" repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance of these words
afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the prisoners, who
were surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried up. "We won't take
them!" he called out to Denisov.

Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya, dismounted, and with
trembling hands turned toward himself the bloodstained,
mud-bespattered face which had already gone white.

"I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones... take them all!"
he recalled Petya's words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise
at the sound, like the yelp of a dog, with which Denisov turned
away, walked to the wattle fence, and seized hold of it.

Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and Dolokhov was
Pierre Bezukhov.





CHAPTER XII


During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been
issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners
among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party
was no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it
had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled
the first stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other
half had gone on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had
marched in front of the prisoners was left; they had all
disappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them
during the first days was now replaced by Marshal Junot's enormous
baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a
cavalry baggage train.

From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in
three columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder
that Pierre had noticed at their first halting place after leaving
Moscow had now reached the utmost limit.

The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead
horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments
continually changed about, now joining the moving column, now again
lagging behind it.

Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the
soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run
headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and
abused each other for their causeless panic.

These three groups traveling together--the cavalry stores, the
convoy of prisoners, and Junot's baggage train--still constituted a
separate and united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly
melting away.

Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred
and twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been
captured or left behind. Some of Junot's wagons also had been captured
or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers
from Davout's corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned
that a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than to
the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had
been shot by the marshal's own order because a silver spoon
belonging to the marshal had been found in his possession.

The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three
hundred and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a
hundred now remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort
than even the cavalry saddles or Junot's baggage. They understood that
the saddles and Junot's spoon might be of some use, but that cold
and hungry soldiers should have to stand and guard equally cold and
hungry Russians who froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case
the order was to shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but
revolting. And the escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition
they themselves were in, of giving way to the pity they felt for the
prisoners and so rendering their own plight still worse, treated
them with particular moroseness and severity.

At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the
prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores,
several of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away,
but were recaptured by the French and shot.

The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer
prisoners should be kept separate from the rest, had long since been
abandoned. All who could walk went together, and after the third stage
Pierre had rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that
had chosen Karataev for its master.

On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again fell ill with
the fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he
grew gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know
why, but since Karataev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an
effort to go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning
with which Karataev generally lay down at the halting places, and when
he smelled the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than
before, Pierre moved farther away and did not think about him.

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his
intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is
created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the
satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises
not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last
three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory
truth--that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that
as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely
free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack
freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and
that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed
of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now,
sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while
the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoes
he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet
that were covered with sores--his footgear having long since fallen to
pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife--of his own
free will as it had seemed to him--he had been no more free than now
when they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself
subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he
scarcely felt, the worst was the state of his bare, raw, and
scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing,
the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder they used instead of salt was
even pleasant; there was no great cold, it was always warm walking
in the daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the lice that
devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was at first hard to
bear was his feet.

After the second day's march Pierre, having examined his feet by the
campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when
everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up,
walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more
terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now,
but thought of other things.

Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the
saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to
another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows
superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain
limit.

He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who
lagged behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did
not think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently would
soon have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about
himself. The harder his position became and the more terrible the
future, the more independent of that position in which he found
himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, and
imaginings that came to him.





CHAPTER XIII


At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was going uphill
along the muddy, slippery road, looking at his feet and at the
roughness of the way. Occasionally he glanced at the familiar crowd
around him and then again at his feet. The former and the latter
were alike familiar and his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran
merrily along the side of the road, sometimes in proof of its
agility and self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and hopping along
on three, and then again going on all four and rushing to bark at
the crows that sat on the carrion. The dog was merrier and sleeker
than it had been in Moscow. All around lay the flesh of different
animals--from men to horses--in various stages of decomposition; and
as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the dog could eat all
it wanted.

It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment
it might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began
raining harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed
the water, which ran along the ruts in streams.

Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps
in threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally
addressing the rain, he repeated: "Now then, now then, go on! Pelt
harder!"

It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and
deep within him his soul was occupied with something important and
comforting. This something was a most subtle spiritual deduction
from a conversation with Karataev the day before.

At their yesterday's halting place, feeling chilly by a dying
campfire, Pierre had got up and gone to the next one, which was
burning better. There Platon Karataev was sitting covered up--head and
all--with his greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling the soldiers
in his effective and pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre
knew. It was already past midnight, the hour when Karataev was usually
free of his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the
fire and heard Platon's voice enfeebled by illness, and saw his
pathetic face brightly lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful prick at
his heart. His feeling of pity for this man frightened him and he
wished to go away, but there was no other fire, and Pierre sat down,
trying not to look at Platon.

"Well, how are you?" he asked.

"How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won't grant us death,"
replied Platon, and at once resumed the story he had begun.

"And so, brother," he continued, with a smile on his pale
emaciated face and a particularly happy light in his eyes, "you
see, brother..."

Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev had told
it to him alone some half-dozen times and always with a specially
joyful emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre now listened to that
tale as to something new, and the quiet rapture Karataev evidently
felt as he told it communicated itself also to Pierre. The story was
of an old merchant who lived a good and God-fearing life with his
family, and who went once to the Nizhni fair with a companion--a
rich merchant.

Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next morning
his companion was found robbed and with his throat cut. A bloodstained
knife was found under the old merchant's pillow. He was tried,
knouted, and his nostrils having been torn off, "all in due form" as
Karataev put it, he was sent to hard labor in Siberia.

"And so, brother" (it was at this point that Pierre came up), "ten
years or more passed by. The old man was living as a convict,
submitting as he should and doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God
for death. Well, one night the convicts were gathered just as we
are, with the old man among them. And they began telling what each was
suffering for, and how they had sinned against God. One told how he
had taken a life, another had taken two, a third had set a house on
fire, while another had simply been a vagrant and had done nothing. So
they asked the old man: 'What are you being punished for, Daddy?'--'I,
my dear brothers,' said he, 'am being punished for my own and other
men's sins. But I have not killed anyone or taken anything that was
not mine, but have only helped my poorer brothers. I was a merchant,
my dear brothers, and had much property. 'And he went on to tell
them all about it in due order. 'I don't grieve for myself,' he
says, 'God, it seems, has chastened me. Only I am sorry for my old
wife and the children,' and the old man began to weep. Now it happened
that in the group was the very man who had killed the other
merchant. 'Where did it happen, Daddy?' he said. 'When, and in what
month?' He asked all about it and his heart began to ache. So he comes
up to the old man like this, and falls down at his feet! 'You are
perishing because of me, Daddy,' he says. 'It's quite true, lads, that
this man,' he says, 'is being tortured innocently and for nothing! I,'
he says, 'did that deed, and I put the knife under your head while you
were asleep. Forgive me, Daddy,' he says, 'for Christ's sake!'"

Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire, and
he drew the logs together.

"And the old man said, 'God will forgive you, we are all sinners
in His sight. I suffer for my own sins,' and he wept bitter tears.
Well, and what do you think, dear friends?" Karataev continued, his
face brightening more and more with a rapturous smile as if what he
now had to tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of his
story: "What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer confessed to
the authorities. 'I have taken six lives,' he says (he was a great
sinner), 'but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Don't let
him suffer because of me.' So he confessed and it was all written down
and the papers sent off in due form. The place was a long way off, and
while they were judging, what with one thing and another, filling in
the papers all in due form--the authorities I mean--time passed. The
affair reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar's decree came: to
set the merchant free and give him a compensation that had been
awarded. The paper arrived and they began to look for the old man.
'Where is the old man who has been suffering innocently and in vain? A
paper has come from the Tsar!' so they began looking for him," here
Karataev's lower jaw trembled, "but God had already forgiven him--he
was dead! That's how it was, dear fellows!" Karataev concluded and sat
for a long time silent, gazing before him with a smile.

And Pierre's soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story
itself but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that
lit up Karataev's face as he told it, and the mystic significance of
that joy.





CHAPTER XIV


"A vos places!"* suddenly cried a voice.


*"To your places."


A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of something
joyful and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the
prisoners. From all sides came shouts of command, and from the left
came smartly dressed cavalrymen on good horses, passing the
prisoners at a trot. The expression on all faces showed the tension
people feel at the approach of those in authority. The prisoners
thronged together and were pushed off the road. The convoy formed up.

"The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The Duke!" and hardly had
the sleek cavalry passed, before a carriage drawn by six gray horses
rattled by. Pierre caught a glimpse of a man in a three-cornered hat
with a tranquil look on his handsome, plump, white face. It was one of
the marshals. His eye fell on Pierre's large and striking figure,
and in the expression with which he frowned and looked away Pierre
thought he detected sympathy and a desire to conceal that sympathy.

The general in charge of the stores galloped after the carriage with
a red and frightened face, whipping up his skinny horse. Several
officers formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their
faces all looked excited and worried.

"What did he say? What did he say?" Pierre heard them ask.

While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had huddled together in
a crowd, and Pierre saw Karataev whom he had not yet seen that
morning. He sat in his short overcoat leaning against a birch tree. On
his face, besides the look of joyful emotion it had worn yesterday
while telling the tale of the merchant who suffered innocently,
there was now an expression of quiet solemnity.

Karataev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes now filled with
tears, evidently wishing him to come near that he might say
something to him. But Pierre was not sufficiently sure of himself.
He made as if he did not notice that look and moved hastily away.

When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked round.
Karataev was still sitting at the side of the road under the birch
tree and two Frenchmen were talking over his head. Pierre did not look
round again but went limping up the hill.

From behind, where Karataev had been sitting, came the sound of a
shot. Pierre heard it plainly, but at that moment he remembered that
he had not yet finished reckoning up how many stages still remained to
Smolensk--a calculation he had begun before the marshal went by. And
he again started reckoning. Two French soldiers ran past Pierre, one
of whom carried a lowered and smoking gun. They both looked pale,
and in the expression on their faces--one of them glanced timidly at
Pierre--there was something resembling what he had seen on the face of
the young soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and
remembered that, two days before, that man had burned his shirt
while drying it at the fire and how they had laughed at him.

Behind him, where Karataev had been sitting, the dog began to
howl. "What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?" thought Pierre.

His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside him, avoided
looking back at the place where the shot had been fired and the dog
was howling, just as Pierre did, but there was a set look on all their
faces.





CHAPTER XV


The stores, the prisoners, and the marshal's baggage train stopped
at the village of Shamshevo. The men crowded together round the
campfires. Pierre went up to the fire, ate some roast horseflesh,
lay down with his back to the fire, and immediately fell asleep. He
again slept as he had done at Mozhaysk after the battle of Borodino.

Again real events mingled with dreams and again someone, he or
another, gave expression to his thoughts, and even to the same
thoughts that had been expressed in his dream at Mozhaysk.

"Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and
that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in
consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and
more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings,
in innocent sufferings."

"Karataev!" came to Pierre's mind.

And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly
old man who had given him geography lessons in Switzerland. "Wait a
bit," said the old man, and showed Pierre a globe. This globe was
alive--a vibrating ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface
consisted of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved
and changed places, sometimes several of them merging into one,
sometimes one dividing into many. Each drop tried to spread out and
occupy as much space as possible, but others striving to do the same
compressed it, sometimes destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it.

"That is life," said the old teacher.

"How simple and clear it is," thought Pierre. "How is it I did not
know it before?"

"God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect
Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from
the surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. There now,
Karataev has spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?"
said the teacher.

"Do you understand, damn you?" shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.

He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a
Russian soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting
a piece of meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and
his sinewy, hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned
the ramrod. His brown morose face with frowning brows was clearly
visible by the glow of the charcoal.

"It's all the same to him," he muttered, turning quickly to a
soldier who stood behind him. "Brigand! Get away!"

And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre, who turned
away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner, the Russian soldier
the Frenchman had pushed away, was sitting near the fire patting
something with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the
blue-gray dog, sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail.

"Ah, he's come?" said Pierre. "And Plat-" he began, but did not
finish.

Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his
fancy--of the look Platon had given him as he sat under the tree, of
the shot heard from that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty
faces of the two Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and
smoking gun, and of Karataev's absence at this halt--and he was on the
point of realizing that Karataev had been killed, but just at that
instant, he knew not why, the recollection came to his mind of a
summer evening he had spent with a beautiful Polish lady on the
veranda of his house in Kiev. And without linking up the events of the
day or drawing a conclusion from them, Pierre closed his eyes,
seeing a vision of the country in summertime mingled with memories
of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating globe, and he sank into
water so that it closed over his head.

Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and rapid
firing. French soldiers were running past him.

"The Cossacks!" one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of
Russians surrounded Pierre.

For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him.
All around he heard his comrades sobbing with joy.

"Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!" old soldiers exclaimed, weeping,
as they embraced Cossacks and hussars.

The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered
them clothes, another boots, and a third bread. Pierre sobbed as he
sat among them and could not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier
who approached him, and kissed him, weeping.

Dolokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a crowd of
disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited by all that had
happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed
Dolokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched
them with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent.
On the opposite side stood Dolokhov's Cossack, counting the
prisoners and marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate.

"How many?" Dolokhov asked the Cossack.

"The second hundred," replied the Cossack.

"Filez, filez!"* Dolokhov kept saying, having adopted this
expression from the French, and when his eyes met those of the
prisoners they flashed with a cruel light.


*"Get along, get along!"


Denisov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some
Cossacks who were carrying the body of Petya Rostov to a hole that had
been dug in the garden.





CHAPTER XVI


After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts began, the flight
of the French assumed a still more tragic character, with men
freezing, or roasting themselves to death at the campfires, while
carriages with people dressed in furs continued to drive past,
carrying away the property that had been stolen by the Emperor, kings,
and dukes; but the process of the flight and disintegration of the
French army went on essentially as before.

From Moscow to Vyazma the French army of seventy-three thousand
men not reckoning the Guards (who did nothing during the whole war but
pillage) was reduced to thirty-six thousand, though not more than five
thousand had fallen in battle. From this beginning the succeeding
terms of the progression could be determined mathematically. The
French army melted away and perished at the same rate from Moscow to
Vyazma, from Vyazma to Smolensk, from Smolensk to the Berezina, and
from the Berezina to Vilna--independently of the greater or lesser
intensity of the cold, the pursuit, the barring of the way, or any
other particular conditions. Beyond Vyazma the French army instead
of moving in three columns huddled together into one mass, and so went
on to the end. Berthier wrote to his Emperor (we know how far
commanding officers allow themselves to diverge from the truth in
describing the condition of an army) and this is what he said:


I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the condition of the
various corps I have had occasion to observe during different stages
of the last two or three days' march. They are almost disbanded.
Scarcely a quarter of the soldiers remain with the standards of their
regiments, the others go off by themselves in different directions
hoping to find food and escape discipline. In general they regard
Smolensk as the place where they hope to recover. During the last few
days many of the men have been seen to throw away their cartridges and
their arms. In such a state of affairs, whatever your ultimate plans
may be, the interest of Your Majesty's service demands that the army
should be rallied at Smolensk and should first of all be freed from
ineffectives, such as dismounted cavalry, unnecessary baggage, and
artillery material that is no longer in proportion to the present
forces. The soldiers, who are worn out with hunger and fatigue, need
these supplies as well as a few days' rest. Many have died these last
days on the road or at the bivouacs. This state of things is
continually becoming worse and makes one fear that unless a prompt
remedy is applied the troops will no longer be under control in case
of an engagement.

November 9: twenty miles from Smolensk.


After staggering into Smolensk which seemed to them a promised land,
the French, searching for food, killed one another, sacked their own
stores, and when everything had been plundered fled farther.

They all went without knowing whither or why they were going.
Still less did that genius, Napoleon, know it, for no one issued any
orders to him. But still he and those about him retained their old
habits: wrote commands, letters, reports, and orders of the day;
called one another sire, mon cousin, prince d'Eckmuhl, roi de
Naples, and so on. But these orders and reports were only on paper,
nothing in them was acted upon for they could not be carried out,
and though they entitled one another Majesties, Highnesses, or
Cousins, they all felt that they were miserable wretches who had
done much evil for which they had now to pay. And though they
pretended to be concerned about the army, each was thinking only of
himself and of how to get away quickly and save himself.





CHAPTER XVII


The movements of the Russian and French armies during the campaign
from Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian
blindman's bluff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of them
occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his
whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into
a tight place he runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to
escape runs straight into his opponent's arms.

At first while they were still moving along the Kaluga road,
Napoleon's armies made their presence known, but later when they
reached the Smolensk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell
tight--and often thinking they were escaping ran right into the
Russians.

Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the Russian pursuit
and the consequent exhaustion of the horses, the chief means of
approximately ascertaining the enemy's position--by cavalry
scouting--was not available. Besides, as a result of the frequent
and rapid change of position by each army, even what information was
obtained could not be delivered in time. If news was received one
day that the enemy had been in a certain position the day before, by
the third day when something could have been done, that army was
already two days' march farther on and in quite another position.

One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolensk there were
several different roads available for the French, and one would have
thought that during their stay of four days they might have learned
where the enemy was, might have arranged some more advantageous plan
and undertaken something new. But after a four days' halt the mob,
with no maneuvers or plans, again began running along the beaten
track, neither to the right nor to the left but along the old--the
worst--road, through Krasnoe and Orsha.

Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French
separated in their flight and spread out over a distance of
twenty-four hours. In front of them all fled the Emperor, then the
kings, then the dukes. The Russian army, expecting Napoleon to take
the road to the right beyond the Dnieper--which was the only
reasonable thing for him to do--themselves turned to the right and
came out onto the highroad at Krasnoe. And here as in a game of
blindman's buff the French ran into our vanguard. Seeing their enemy
unexpectedly the French fell into confusion and stopped short from the
sudden fright, but then they resumed their flight, abandoning their
comrades who were farther behind. Then for three days separate
portions of the French army--first Murat's (the vice-king's), then
Davout's, and then Ney's--ran, as it were, the gauntlet of the Russian
army. They abandoned one another, abandoned all their heavy baggage,
their artillery, and half their men, and fled, getting past the
Russians by night by making semicircles to the right.

Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of
Smolensk which were in nobody's way, because despite the unfortunate
plight of the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor
against which they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of
ten thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orsha with only one thousand men
left, having abandoned all the rest and all his cannon, and having
crossed the Dnieper at night by stealth at a wooded spot.

From Orsha they fled farther along the road to Vilna, still
playing at blindman's buff with the pursuing army. At the Berezina
they again became disorganized, many were drowned and many
surrendered, but those who got across the river fled farther. Their
supreme chief donned a fur coat and, having seated himself in a
sleigh, galloped on alone, abandoning his companions. The others who
could do so drove away too, leaving those who could not to surrender
or die.





CHAPTER XVIII


This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which
they did all they could to destroy themselves. From the time they
turned onto the Kaluga road to the day their leader fled from the
army, none of the movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might
have thought that regarding this period of the campaign the
historians, who attributed the actions of the mass to the will of
one man, would have found it impossible to make the story of the
retreat fit their theory. But no! Mountains of books have been written
by the historians about this campaign, and everywhere are described
Napoleon's arrangements, the maneuvers, and his profound plans which
guided the army, as well as the military genius shown by his marshals.

The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free road into a
well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along
which Kutuzov afterwards pursued him--this unnecessary retreat along a
devastated road--is explained to us as being due to profound
considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for his
retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is
described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle
and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch stick
and said:

"J'ai assez fait l'empereur; il est temps de faire le general,"* but
nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the
scattered fragments of the army he left behind.


*"I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act the
general."


Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals,
especially of Ney--a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he
made his way by night around through the forest and across the Dnieper
and escaped to Orsha, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths
of his men.

And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic
army is presented to us by the historians as something great and
characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in
ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child is
taught to be ashamed of--even that act finds justification in the
historians' language.

When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of
historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly
contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians
produce a saving conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems,
excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing
is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a "great" man can be blamed.

"C'est grand!"* say the historians, and there no longer exists
either good or evil but only "grand" and "not grand." Grand is good,
not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of
some special animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in a
warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his
comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que
c'est grand,*[2] and his soul is tranquil.


*"It is great."

*[2] That it is great.


"Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n'y
a qu'un pas,"* said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been
repeating: "Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule
il n'y a qu'un pas.


*"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."


And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not
commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to
admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable meanness.

For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no
human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where
simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.





CHAPTER XIX


What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign
of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret,
dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is
that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three
armies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered
French, hungry and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as the
historians relate) the aim of the Russians was to stop the French,
to cut them off, and capture them all?

How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than
the French had given battle at Borodino, did not achieve its purpose
when it had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim
was to capture them? Can the French be so enormously superior to us
that when we had surrounded them with superior forces we could not
beat them? How could that happen?

History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questions
says that this occurred because Kutuzov and Tormasov and Chichagov,
and this man and that man, did not execute such and such maneuvers...

But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were
guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried
and punished? But even if we admitted that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and
others were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still
incomprehensible why, the position of the Russian army being what it
was at Krasnoe and at the Berezina (in both cases we had superior
forces), the French army with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not
captured, if that was what the Russians aimed at.

The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military
historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an attack) is
unfounded, for we know that he could not restrain the troops from
attacking at Vyazma and Tarutino.

Why was the Russian army--which with inferior forces had withstood
the enemy in full strength at Borodino--defeated at Krasnoe and the
Berezina by the disorganized crowds of the French when it was
numerically superior?

If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing
Napoleon and his marshals--and that aim was not merely frustrated
but all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled--then
this last period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the
French to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly considered
victorious by Russian historians.

The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims
of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical
rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit
that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for
Napoleon and defeats for Kutuzov.

But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a
conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of French
victories brought the French complete destruction, while the series of
Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the
liberation of their country.

The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the
historians studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns
and the generals, from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth,
have attributed to this last period of the war of 1812 an aim that
never existed, namely that of cutting off and capturing Napoleon
with his marshals and his army.

There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have
been senseless and its attainment quite impossible.

It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon's
disorganized army was flying from Russia with all possible speed, that
is to say, was doing just what every Russian desired. So what was
the use of performing various operations on the French who were
running away as fast as they possibly could?

Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men
whose whole energy was directed to flight.

Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one's own
troops in order to destroy the French army, which without external
interference was destroying itself at such a rate that, though its
path was not blocked, it could not carry across the frontier more than
it actually did in December, namely a hundredth part of the original
army.

Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive the
Emperor, kings, and dukes--whose capture would have been in the
highest degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit
diplomatists of the time (Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized.
Still more senseless would have been the wish to capture army corps of
the French, when our own army had melted away to half before
reaching Krasnoe and a whole division would have been needed to convoy
the corps of prisoners, and when our men were not always getting
full rations and the prisoners already taken were perishing of hunger.

All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon
and his army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving
out of his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he had
planted, should run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. The
only thing to be said in excuse of that gardener would be that he
was very angry. But not even that could be said for those who drew
up this project, for it was not they who had suffered from the
trampled beds.

But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would
have been senseless, it was impossible.

It was impossible first because--as experience shows that a
three-mile movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with
the plans--the probability of Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgenstein
effecting a junction on time at an appointed place was so remote as to
be tantamount to impossibility, as in fact thought Kutuzov, who when
he received the plan remarked that diversions planned over great
distances do not yield the desired results.

Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with
which Napoleon's army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than
the Russians possessed would have been required.

Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term "to cut off"
has no meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army.
To cut off an army--to bar its road--is quite impossible, for there is
always plenty of room to avoid capture and there is the night when
nothing can be seen, as the military scientists might convince
themselves by the example of Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is only
possible to capture prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it
is only possible to catch a swallow if it settles on one's hand. Men
can only be taken prisoners if they surrender according to the rules
of strategy and tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troops
quite rightly did not consider that this suited them, since death by
hunger and cold awaited them in flight or captivity alike.

Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the
world began has a war been fought under such conditions as those
that obtained in 1812, and the Russian army in its pursuit of the
French strained its strength to the utmost and could not have done
more without destroying itself.

During the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoe
it lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to
the population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of
the army without a battle.

And it is of this period of the campaign--when the army lacked boots
and sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and
was camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees
of frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and
the rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot be
maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where
discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but for
months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and
cold, when half the army perished in a single month--it is of this
period of the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovich
should have made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormasov to
another place, and Chichagov should have crossed (more than
knee-deep in snow) to somewhere else, and how so-and-so "routed" and
"cut off" the French and so on and so on.

The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should
have been done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not
to blame because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed
that they should do what was impossible.

All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between
the facts and the historical accounts only arises because the
historians dealing with the matter have written the history of the
beautiful words and sentiments of various generals, and not the
history of the events.

To them the words of Miloradovich seem very interesting, and so do
their surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but
the question of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals
and in graves does not even interest them, for it does not come within
the range of their investigation.

Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans
and consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who
took a direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed
insoluble easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.

The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in
the imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it
was senseless and unattainable.

The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion.
That aim was attained in the first place of itself, as the French
ran away, and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight.
Secondly it was attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying
the French, and thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was
following the French, ready to use its strength in case their movement
stopped.

The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the
experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a
menace than to strike the running animal on the head.





BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 --13





CHAPTER I


When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror:
substance similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it
is a beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides this
horror at the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritual
wound, which like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes
heals, but always aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.

After Prince Andrew's death Natasha and Princess Mary alike felt
this. Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing
cloud of death that overhung them, they dared not look life in the
face. They carefully guarded their open wounds from any rough and
painful contact. Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the street,
a summons to dinner, the maid's inquiry what dress to prepare, or
worse still any word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed an
insult, painfully irritated the wound, interrupting that necessary
quiet in which they both tried to listen to the stern and dreadful
choir that still resounded in their imagination, and hindered their
gazing into those mysterious limitless vistas that for an instant
had opened out before them.

Only when alone together were they free from such outrage and
pain. They spoke little even to one another, and when they did it
was of very unimportant matters.

Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the possibility of
a future seemed to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully did
they avoid anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them
that what they had lived through and experienced could not be
expressed in words, and that any reference to the details of his
life infringed the majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been
accomplished before their eyes.

Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of
everything that might lead up to the subject--this halting on all
sides at the boundary of what they might not mention--brought before
their minds with still greater purity and clearness what they were
both feeling.

But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete
joy. Princess Mary, in her position as absolute and independent
arbiter of her own fate and guardian and instructor of her nephew, was
the first to be called back to life from that realm of sorrow in which
she had dwelt for the first fortnight. She received letters from her
relations to which she had to reply; the room in which little Nicholas
had been put was damp and he began to cough; Alpatych came to
Yaroslavl with reports on the state of their affairs and with advice
and suggestions that they should return to Moscow to the house on
the Vozdvizhenka Street, which had remained uninjured and needed
only slight repairs. Life did not stand still and it was necessary
to live. Hard as it was for Princess Mary to emerge from the realm
of secluded contemplation in which she had lived till then, and
sorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave Natasha alone, yet the
cares of life demanded her attention and she involuntarily yielded
to them. She went through the accounts with Alpatych, conferred with
Dessalles about her nephew, and gave orders and made preparations
for the journey to Moscow.

Natasha remained alone and, from the time Princess Mary began making
preparations for departure, held aloof from her too.

Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natasha go with her to
Moscow, and both parents gladly accepted this offer, for they saw
their daughter losing strength every day and thought that a change
of scene and the advice of Moscow doctors would be good for her.

"I am not going anywhere," Natasha replied when this was proposed to
her. "Do please just leave me alone!" And she ran out of the room,
with difficulty refraining from tears of vexation and irritation
rather than of sorrow.

After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone in her
grief, Natasha spent most of the time in her room by herself,
sitting huddled up feet and all in the corner of the sofa, tearing and
twisting something with her slender nervous fingers and gazing
intently and fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. This
solitude exhausted and tormented her but she was in absolute need of
it. As soon as anyone entered she got up quickly, changed her position
and expression, and picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting
impatiently for the intruder to go.

She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate that on
which--with a terrible questioning too great for her strength--her
spiritual gaze was fixed.

One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale and thin, dressed
in a black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a
knot, was crouched feet and all in the corner of her sofa, nervously
crumpling and smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked at
a corner of the door.

She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone--to the other
side of life. And that other side of life, of which she had never
before thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away and
improbable, was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible
than this side of life, where everything was either emptiness and
desolation or suffering and indignity.

She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could not imagine
him otherwise than as he had been here. She now saw him again as he
had been at Mytishchi, at Troitsa, and at Yaroslavl.

She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and her own,
and sometimes devised other words they might have spoken.

There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak, leaning
his head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his
shoulders raised. His lips are firmly closed, his eyes glitter, and
a wrinkle comes and goes on his pale forehead. One of his legs
twitches just perceptibly, but rapidly. Natasha knows that he is
struggling with terrible pain. "What is that pain like? Why does he
have that pain? What does he feel? How does it hurt him?" thought
Natasha. He noticed her watching him, raised his eyes, and began to
speak seriously:

"One thing would be terrible," said he: "to bind oneself forever
to a suffering man. It would be continual torture." And he looked
searchingly at her. Natasha as usual answered before she had time to
think what she would say. She said: "This can't go on--it won't. You
will get well--quite well."

She now saw him from the commencement of that scene and relived what
she had then felt. She recalled his long sad and severe look at
those words and understood the meaning of the rebuke and despair in
that protracted gaze.

"I agreed," Natasha now said to herself, "that it would be
dreadful if he always continued to suffer. I said it then only because
it would have been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently.
He thought it would be dreadful for me. He then still wished to live
and feared death. And I said it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not
say what I meant. I thought quite differently. Had I said what I
thought, I should have said: even if he had to go on dying, to die
continually before my eyes, I should have been happy compared with
what I am now. Now there is nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No,
he did not and never will know it. And now it will never, never be
possible to put it right." And now he again seemed to be saying the
same words to her, only in her imagination Natasha this time gave
him a different answer. She stopped him and said: "Terrible for you,
but not for me! You know that for me there is nothing in life but you,
and to suffer with you is the greatest happiness for me," and he
took her hand and pressed it as he had pressed it that terrible
evening four days before his death. And in her imagination she said
other tender and loving words which she might have said then but
only spoke now: "I love thee!... thee! I love, love..." she said,
convulsively pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a desperate
effort...

She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in
her eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this.
Again everything was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again
with a strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. And
now, now it seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But at
the instant when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing
itself to her a loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on her
ears. Dunyasha, her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a
frightened look on her face and showing no concern for her mistress.

"Come to your Papa at once, please!" said she with a strange,
excited look. "A misfortune... about Peter Ilynich... a letter," she
finished with a sob.





CHAPTER II


Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha was feeling
a special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of
them--her father, mother, and Sonya--were so near to her, so familiar,
so commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult
to the world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not
merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard
Dunyasha's words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but did not
grasp them.

"What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to them? They just live
their own old, quiet, and commonplace life," thought Natasha.

As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly coming out of
her mother's room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He had
evidently run out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were
choking him. When he saw Natasha he waved his arms despairingly and
burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round
face.

"Pe... Petya... Go, go, she... is calling..." and weeping like a
child and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he almost
fell into it, covering his face with his hands.

Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through Natasha's whole
being. Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache
as if something was being torn inside her and she were dying. But
the pain was immediately followed by a feeling of release from the
oppressive constraint that had prevented her taking part in life.
The sight of her father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that
she heard through the door, made her immediately forget herself and
her own grief.

She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm, pointing to
her mother's door. Princess Mary, pale and with quivering chin, came
out from that room and taking Natasha by the arm said something to
her. Natasha neither saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid
steps, pausing at the door for an instant as if struggling with
herself, and then ran to her mother.

The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and awkward
position, stretching out and beating her head against the wall.
Sonya and the maids were holding her arms.

"Natasha! Natasha!..." cried the countess. "It's not true... it's
not true... He's lying... Natasha!" she shrieked, pushing those around
her away. "Go away, all of you; it's not true! Killed!... ha, ha,
ha!... It's not true!"

Natasha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her mother,
embraced her, and with unexpected strength raised her, turned her face
toward herself, and clung to her.

"Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy," she kept on
whispering, not pausing an instant.

She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly with her,
demanded a pillow and hot water, and unfastened and tore open her
mother's dress.

"My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!..." she whispered
incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and feeling her
own irrepressible and streaming tears tickling her nose and cheeks.

The countess pressed her daughter's hand, closed her eyes, and
became quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up with unaccustomed
swiftness, glanced vacantly around her, and seeing Natasha began to
press her daughter's head with all her strength. Then she turned
toward her daughter's face which was wincing with pain and gazed
long at it.

"Natasha, you love me?" she said in a soft trustful whisper.
"Natasha, you would not deceive me? You'll tell me the whole truth?"

Natasha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her look
there was nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.

"My darling Mummy!" she repeated, straining all the power of her
love to find some way of taking on herself the excess of grief that
crushed her mother.

And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother, refusing
to believe that she could live when her beloved boy was killed in
the bloom of life, escaped from reality into a world of delirium.

Natasha did not remember how that day passed nor that night, nor the
next day and night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother.
Her persevering and patient love seemed completely to surround the
countess every moment, not explaining or consoling, but recalling
her to life.

During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a few
minutes, and Natasha rested her head on the arm of her chair and
closed her eyes, but opened them again on hearing the bedstead
creak. The countess was sitting up in bed and speaking softly.

"How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won't you have some
tea?" Natasha went up to her. "You have improved in looks and grown
more manly," continued the countess, taking her daughter's hand.

"Mamma! What are you saying..."

"Natasha, he is no more, no more!"

And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first
time.





CHAPTER III


Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sonya and the count tried
to replace Natasha but could not. They saw that she alone was able
to restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks
Natasha remained constantly at her mother's side, sleeping on a lounge
chair in her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her
incessantly because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones
soothed her mother.

The mother's wounded spirit could not heal. Petya's
death had torn from her half her life. When the news of Petya's
death had come she had been a fresh and vigorous woman of fifty, but a
month later she left her room a listless old woman taking no
interest in life. But the same blow that almost killed the countess,
this second blow, restored Natasha to life.

A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is
like a physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep
wound may heal and its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike
can yet heal completely only as the result of a vital force from
within.

Natasha's wound healed in that way. She thought her life was
ended, but her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the
essence of life--love--was still active within her. Love awoke and
so did life.

Prince Andrew's last days had bound Princess Mary and Natasha
together; this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another.
Princess Mary put off her departure, and for three weeks looked
after Natasha as if she had been a sick child. The last weeks passed
in her mother's bedroom had strained Natasha's physical strength.

One afternoon noticing Natasha shivering with fever, Princess Mary
took her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natasha lay
down, but when Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away
she called her back.

"I don't want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little."

"You are tired--try to sleep."

"No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me."

"She is much better. She spoke so well today," said Princess Mary.

Natasha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned
Princess Mary's face.

"Is she like him?" thought Natasha. "Yes, like and yet not like. But
she is quite original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me.
What is in her heart? All that is good. But how? What is her mind
like? What does she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!"

"Mary," she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary's hand to herself,
"Mary, you mustn't think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love
you! Let us be quite, quite friends."

And Natasha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making
Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her
feelings.

From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only
between women was established between Princess Mary and Natasha.
They were continually kissing and saying tender things to one
another and spent most of their time together. When one went out the
other became restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt
more in harmony with one another than either of them felt with herself
when alone. A feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them;
an exclusive feeling of life being possible only in each other's
presence.

Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were
already in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They
spoke most of what was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her
childhood, of her mother, her father, and her daydreams; and
Natasha, who with a passive lack of understanding had formerly
turned away from that life of devotion, submission, and the poetry
of Christian self-sacrifice, now feeling herself bound to Princess
Mary by affection, learned to love her past too and to understand a
side of life previously incomprehensible to her. She did not think
of applying submission and self-abnegation to her own life, for she
was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood and loved in
another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For Princess
Mary, listening to Natasha's tales of childhood and early youth, there
also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of life: belief
in life and its enjoyment.

Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they
thought) their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him
had the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without
being conscious of it.

Natasha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all
talked about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was
suddenly overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness,
and loss of good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm
carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her
drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed
to her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.

One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath.
Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and
then, testing her strength, ran upstairs again, observing the result.

Another time when she called Dunyasha her voice trembled, so she
called again--though she could hear Dunyasha coming--called her in the
deep chest tones in which she had been wont to sing, and listened
attentively to herself.

She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the
layer of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable,
delicate young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking
root would so cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed
her down that it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound
had begun to heal from within.

At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow, and the count
insisted on Natasha's going with her to consult the doctors.





CHAPTER IV


After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had been unable to hold
back his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemy
and so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French, and of the
Russians who pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without a
battle. The flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing the
French could not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses broke
down, and the information received of the movements of the French
was never reliable.

The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuous
marching at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could not
go any faster.

To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it is only
necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that, while not
losing more than five thousand killed and wounded after Tarutino and
less than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left that
place a hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty
thousand.

The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our
army as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only difference
was that the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of
destruction as hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmen
were left behind in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind
were among their own people. The chief cause of the wastage of
Napoleon's army was the rapidity of its movement, and a convincing
proof of this is the corresponding decrease of the Russian army.

Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check the
movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian
army generals, directed his whole activity here, as he had done at
Tarutino and Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing the movement of
our army.

But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution of
the army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident,
another reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented itself
to Kutuzov. The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French.
The road the French would take was unknown, and so the closer our
troops trod on their heels the greater distance they had to cover.
Only by following at some distance could one cut across the zigzag
path of the French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals
meant fresh movements of the army and a lengthening of its marches,
whereas the only reasonable aim was to shorten those marches. To
that end Kutuzov's activity was directed during the whole campaign
from Moscow to Vilna--not casually or intermittently but so
consistently that he never once deviated from it.

Kutuzov felt and knew--not by reasoning or science but with the
whole of his Russian being--what every Russian soldier felt: that
the French were beaten, that the enemy was flying and must be driven
out; but at the same time he like the soldiers realized all the
hardship of this march, the rapidity of which was unparalleled for
such a time of the year.

But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian army,
who wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody, and for
some reason to capture a king or a duke--it seemed that now--when any
battle must be horrible and senseless--was the very time to fight and
conquer somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when one after
another they presented projects of maneuvers to be made with those
soldiers--ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half starved--who within
a month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half their
number, and who at the best if the flight continued would have to go a
greater distance than they had already traversed, before they reached
the frontier.

This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow,
and to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians
stumbled on the French army.

So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one of the three
French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen
thousand men. Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinous
encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob
of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for three
days.

Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march to so and
so," etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the
disposition. Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg fired from a hill over the
French crowds that were running past, and demanded reinforcements
which did not arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and
hid themselves in the forest by night, making their way round as
best they could, and continued their flight.

Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the
commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found
when he was wanted--that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche* as he
styled himself--who was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys
demanding their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was
ordered to do.


*Knight without fear and without reproach.


"I give you that column, lads," he said, riding up to the troops and
pointing out the French to the cavalry.

And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could
scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented to
them--that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold,
frost-bitten, and starving--and the column that had been presented
to them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long been
anxious to do.

At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several
hundred cannon, and a stick called a "marshal's staff," and disputed
as to who had distinguished himself and were pleased with their
achievement--though they much regretted not having taken Napoleon,
or at least a marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached one
another and especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.

These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of
the most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes
and imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable
deed. They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very beginning of the
campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he
thought of nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from
the Linen Factories because he was comfortable there, that at
Krasnoe he checked the advance because on learning that Napoleon was
there he had quite lost his head, and that it was probable that he had
an understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so
on, and so on.

Not only did his contemporaries, carried away by their passions, talk
in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as
grand, while Kutuzov is described by foreigners as a crafty,
dissolute, weak old courtier, and by Russians as something
indefinite--a sort of puppet useful only because he had a Russian
name.





CHAPTER V


In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blundering. The
Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written
by order of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutuzov was a
cunning court liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by
his blunders at Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the Russian
army of the glory of complete victory over the French.*


*History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and
reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at Krasnoe,
by Bogdanovich.


Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian
mind does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary
individuals who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their
personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish
such men for discerning the higher laws.

For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleon--that
most insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in exile,
showed human dignity--Napoleon is the object of adulation and
enthusiasm; he is grand. But Kutuzov--the man who from the beginning
to the end of his activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or
deed from Borodino to Vilna, presented an example exceptional in
history of self-sacrifice and a present consciousness of the future
importance of what was happening--Kutuzov seems to them something
indefinite and pitiful, and when speaking of him and of the year 1812
they always seem a little ashamed.

And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose
activity was so unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be
difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the
will of the whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find
an instance in history of the aim of an historical personage being
so completely accomplished as that to which all Kutuzov's efforts were
directed in 1812.

Kutuzov never talked of "forty centuries looking down from the
Pyramids," of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what
he intended to accomplish or had accomplished; in general he said
nothing about himself, adopted no prose, always appeared to be the
simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most
ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de
Stael, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested with
generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who
tried to prove anything to him. When Count Rostopchin at the Yauza
bridge galloped up to Kutuzov with personal reproaches for having
caused the destruction of Moscow, and said: "How was it you promised
not to abandon Moscow without a battle?" Kutuzov replied: "And I shall
not abandon Moscow without a battle," though Moscow was then already
abandoned. When Arakcheev, coming to him from the Emperor, said that
Ermolov ought to be appointed chief of the artillery, Kutuzov replied:
"Yes, I was just saying so myself," though a moment before he had said
quite the contrary. What did it matter to him--who then alone amid a
senseless crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what
was happening--what did it matter to him whether Rostopchin attributed
the calamities of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could it
matter to him who was appointed chief of the artillery.

Not merely in these cases but continually did that old man--who by
experience of life had reached the conviction that thoughts and the
words serving as their expression are not what move people--use
quite meaningless words that happened to enter his head.

But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the
whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single
aim toward which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite
of himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his
real thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be
understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodino, from which time his
disagreement with those about him began, he alone said that the battle
of Borodino was a victory, and repeated this both verbally and in
his dispatches and reports up to the time of his death. He alone
said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to
Lauriston's proposal of peace, he said: There can be no peace, for
such is the people's will. He alone during the retreat of the French
said that all our maneuvers are useless, everything is being
accomplished of itself better than we could desire; that the enemy
must be offered "a golden bridge"; that neither the Tarutino, the
Vyazma, nor the Krasnoe battles were necessary; that we must keep some
force to reach the frontier with, and that he would not sacrifice a
single Russian for ten Frenchmen.

And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to Arakcheev
to please the Emperor, he alone--incurring thereby the Emperor's
displeasure--said in Vilna that to carry the war beyond the frontier
is useless and harmful.

Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the meaning of
the events. His actions--without the smallest deviation--were all
directed to one and the same threefold end: (1) to brace all his
strength for conflict with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3)
to drive them out of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the
sufferings of our people and of our army.

This procrastinator Kutuzov, whose motto was "Patience and Time,"
this enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodino, investing
the preparations for it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutuzov
who before the battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be
lost, he alone, in contradiction to everyone else, declared till his
death that Borodino was a victory, despite the assurance of generals
that the battle was lost and despite the fact that for an army to have
to retire after winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during
the whole retreat insisted that battles, which were useless then,
should not be fought, and that a new war should not be begun nor the
frontiers of Russia crossed.

It is easy now to understand the significance of these events--if
only we abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that
existed only in the heads of a dozen individuals--for the events and
results now lie before us.

But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general
opinion, so truly discern the importance of the people's view of the
events that in all his activity he was never once untrue to it?

The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating the meaning of
the events then occuring lay in the national feeling which he
possessed in full purity and strength.

Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this feeling
caused the people in so strange a manner, contrary to the Tsar's wish,
to select him--an old man in disfavor--to be their representative in
the national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest
human pedestal from which he, the commander in chief, devoted all
his powers not to slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing
pity on them.

That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not
be cast in the false mold of a European hero--the supposed ruler of
men--that history has invented.

To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception
of greatness.





CHAPTER VI


The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle
of Krasnoe. Toward evening--after much disputing and many mistakes
made by generals who did not go to their proper places, and after
adjutants had been sent about with counterorders--when it had become
plain that the enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and
would be no battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither
his headquarters had that day been transferred.

The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe on his plump
little white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented
generals who whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the
road groups of French prisoners captured that day (there were seven
thousand of them) were crowding to warm themselves at campfires.
Near Dobroe an immense crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with
talk and wrapped and bandaged in anything they had been able to get
hold of, were standing in the road beside a long row of unharnessed
French guns. At the approach of the commander in chief the buzz of
talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on Kutuzov who, wearing a white
cap with a red band and a padded overcoat that bulged on his round
shoulders, moved slowly along the road on his white horse. One of
the generals was reporting to him where the guns and prisoners had
been captured.

Kutuzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what the general
was saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he
gazed attentively and fixedly at these prisoners, who presented a
specially wretched appearance. Most of them were disfigured by
frost-bitten noses and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and
festering eyes.

One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them,
one of whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of
raw flesh with their hands. There was something horrible and bestial
in the fleeting glance they threw at the riders and in the
malevolent expression with which, after a glance at Kutuzov, the
soldier with the sores immediately turned away and went on with what
he was doing.

Kutuzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers. He
puckered his face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head.
At another spot he noticed a Russian soldier laughingly patting a
Frenchman on the shoulder, saying something to him in a friendly
manner, and Kutuzov with the same expression on his face again
swayed his head.

"What were you saying?" he asked the general, who continuing his
report directed the commander in chief's attention to some standards
captured from the French and standing in front of the Preobrazhensk
regiment.

"Ah, the standards!" said Kutuzov, evidently detaching himself
with difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied him.

He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were looking at
him from all sides awaiting a word from him.

He stopped in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment, sighed deeply,
and closed his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers
carrying the standards to advance and surround the commander in
chief with them. Kutuzov was silent for a few seconds and then,
submitting with evident reluctance to the duty imposed by his
position, raised his head and began to speak. A throng of officers
surrounded him. He looked attentively around at the circle of
officers, recognizing several of them.

"I thank you all!" he said, addressing the soldiers and then again
the officers. In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words
were distinctly heard. "I thank you all for your hard and faithful
service. The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor
to you forever."

He paused and looked around.

"Lower its head, lower it!" he said to a soldier who had
accidentally lowered the French eagle he was holding before the
Preobrazhensk standards. "Lower, lower, that's it. Hurrah lads!" he
added, addressing the men with a rapid movement of his chin.

"Hur-r-rah!" roared thousands of voices.

While the soldiers were shouting Kutuzov leaned forward in his
saddle and bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and
apparently ironic gleam.

"You see, brothers..." said he when the shouts had ceased... and all
at once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no
longer the commander in chief speaking but an ordinary old man who
wanted to tell his comrades something very important.

There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the ranks of
the soldiers, who moved that they might hear better what he was
going to say.

"You see, brothers, I know it's hard for you, but it can't be
helped! Bear up; it won't be for long now! We'll see our visitors
off and then we'll rest. The Tsar won't forget your service. It is
hard for you, but still you are at home while they--you see what
they have come to," said he, pointing to the prisoners. "Worse off
than our poorest beggars. While they were strong we didn't spare
ourselves, but now we may even pity them. They are human beings too.
Isn't it so, lads?"

He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze
fixed upon him he read sympathy with what he had said. His face grew
brighter and brighter with an old man's mild smile, which drew the
corners of his lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased
speaking and bowed his head as if in perplexity.

"But after all who asked them here? Serves them right, the bloody
bastards!" he cried, suddenly lifting his head.

And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first
time during the whole campaign, and left the broken ranks of the
soldiers laughing joyfully and shouting "Hurrah!"

Kutuzov's words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could
have repeated the field marshal's address, begun solemnly and then
changing into an old man's simplehearted talk; but the hearty
sincerity of that speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined
with pity for the foe and consciousness of the justice of our cause,
exactly expressed by that old man's good-natured expletives, was not
merely understood but lay in the soul of every soldier and found
expression in their joyous and long-sustained shouts. Afterwards
when one of the generals addressed Kutuzov asking whether he wished
his caleche to be sent for, Kutuzov in answering unexpectedly gave a
sob, being evidently greatly moved.





CHAPTER VII


When the troops reached their night's halting place on the eighth of
November, the last day of the Krasnoe battles, it was already
growing dusk. All day it had been calm and frosty with occasional
lightly falling snow and toward evening it began to clear. Through the
falling snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the frost
grew keener.

An infantry regiment which had left Tarutino three thousand strong
but now numbered only nine hundred was one of the first to arrive that
night at its halting place--a village on the highroad. The
quartermasters who met the regiment announced that all the huts were
full of sick and dead Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff.
There was only one hut available for the regimental commander.

The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed through the
village and stacked its arms in front of the last huts.

Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its
lair and its food. One part of it dispersed and waded knee-deep
through the snow into a birch forest to the right of the village,
and immediately the sound of axes and swords, the crashing of
branches, and merry voices could be heard from there. Another
section amid the regimental wagons and horses which were standing in a
group was busy getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and feeding the
horses. A third section scattered through the village arranging
quarters for the staff officers, carrying out the French corpses
that were in the huts, and dragging away boards, dry wood, and
thatch from the roofs, for the campfires, or wattle fences to serve
for shelter.

Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down the high wattle
wall of a shed, the roof of which had already been removed.

"Now then, all together--shove!" cried the voices, and the huge
surface of the wall, sprinkled with snow and creaking with frost,
was seen swaying in the gloom of the night. The lower stakes cracked
more and more and at last the wall fell, and with it the men who had
been pushing it. Loud, coarse laughter and joyous shouts ensued.

"Now then, catch hold in twos! Hand up the lever! That's it... Where
are you shoving to?"

"Now, all together! But wait a moment, boys... With a song!"

All stood silent, and a soft, pleasant velvety voice began to
sing. At the end of the third verse as the last note died away, twenty
voices roared out at once: "Oo-oo-oo-oo! That's it. All together!
Heave away, boys!..." but despite their united efforts the wattle
hardly moved, and in the silence that followed the heavy breathing
of the men was audible.

"Here, you of the Sixth Company! Devils that you are! Lend a hand...
will you? You may want us one of these days."

Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on their way into
the village joined the haulers, and the wattle wall, which was about
thirty-five feet long and seven feet high, moved forward along the
village street, swaying, pressing upon and cutting the shoulders of
the gasping men.

"Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for? There now..."

Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely.

"What are you up to?" suddenly came the authoritative voice of a
sergeant major who came upon the men who were hauling their burden.
"There are gentry here; the general himself is in that hut, and you
foul-mouthed devils, you brutes, I'll give it to you!" shouted he,
hitting the first man who came in his way a swinging blow on the back.
"Can't you make less noise?"

The men became silent. The soldier who had been struck groaned and
wiped his face, which had been scratched till it bled by his falling
against the wattle.

"There, how that devil hits out! He's made my face all bloody," said
he in a frightened whisper when the sergeant major had passed on.

"Don't you like it?" said a laughing voice, and moderating their
tones the men moved forward.

When they were out of the village they began talking again as loud
as before, interlarding their talk with the same aimless expletives.

In the hut which the men had passed, the chief officers had gathered
and were in animated talk over their tea about the events of the day
and the maneuvers suggested for tomorrow. It was proposed to make a
flank march to the left, cut off the Vice-King (Murat) and capture
him.

By the time the soldiers had dragged the wattle fence to its place
the campfires were blazing on all sides ready for cooking, the wood
crackled, the snow was melting, and black shadows of soldiers
flitted to and fro all over the occupied space where the snow had been
trodden down.

Axes and choppers were plied all around. Everything was done without
any orders being given. Stores of wood were brought for the night,
shelters were rigged up for the officers, caldrons were being
boiled, and muskets and accouterments put in order.

The wattle wall the men had brought was set up in a semicircle by
the Eighth Company as a shelter from the north, propped up by musket
rests, and a campfire was built before it. They beat the tattoo,
called the roll, had supper, and settled down round the fires for
the night--some repairing their footgear, some smoking pipes, and some
stripping themselves naked to steam the lice out of their shirts.





CHAPTER VIII


One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched
conditions the Russian soldiers were in at that time--lacking warm
boots and sheepskin coats, without a roof over their heads, in the
snow with eighteen degrees of frost, and without even full rations
(the commissariat did not always keep up with the troops)--they
would have presented a very sad and depressing spectacle.

On the contrary, the army had never under the best material
conditions presented a more cheerful and animated aspect. This was
because all who began to grow depressed or who lost strength were
sifted out of the army day by day. All the physically or morally
weak had long since been left behind and only the flower of the
army--physically and mentally--remained.

More men collected behind the wattle fence of the Eighth Company
than anywhere else. Two sergeants major were sitting with them and
their campfire blazed brighter than others. For leave to sit by
their wattle they demanded contributions of fuel.

"Eh, Makeev! What has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you
lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a
red-haired and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking
because of the smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you,
Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!" said he to another soldier.

This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a corporal, but being
robust he ordered about those weaker than himself. The soldier they
called "Jackdaw," a thin little fellow with a sharp nose, rose
obediently and was about to go but at that instant there came into the
light of the fire the slender, handsome figure of a young soldier
carrying a load of wood.

"Bring it here--that's fine!"

They split up the wood, pressed it down on the fire, blew at it with
their mouths, and fanned it with the skirts of their greatcoats,
making the flames hiss and crackle. The men drew nearer and lit
their pipes. The handsome young soldier who had brought the wood,
setting his arms akimbo, began stamping his cold feet rapidly and
deftly on the spot where he stood.

"Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It's well that I'm a
musketeer..." he sang, pretending to hiccough after each syllable.

"Look out, your soles will fly off!" shouted the red-haired man,
noticing that the sole of the dancer's boot was hanging loose. "What a
fellow you are for dancing!"

The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of leather, and threw
it on the fire.

"Right enough, friend," said he, and, having sat down, took out of
his knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and wrapped it round his
foot. "It's the steam that spoils them," he added, stretching out
his feet toward the fire.

"They'll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when we've
finished hammering them, we're to receive double kits!"

"And that son of a bitch Petrov has lagged behind after all, it
seems," said one sergeant major.

"I've had an eye on him this long while," said the other.

"Well, he's a poor sort of soldier..."

"But in the Third Company they say nine men were missing yesterday."

"Yes, it's all very well, but when a man's feet are frozen how can
he walk?"

"Eh? Don't talk nonsense!" said a sergeant major.

"Do you want to be doing the same?" said an old soldier, turning
reproachfully to the man who had spoken of frozen feet.

"Well, you know," said the sharp-nosed man they called Jackdaw in
a squeaky and unsteady voice, raising himself at the other side of the
fire, "a plump man gets thin, but for a thin one it's death. Take
me, now! I've got no strength left," he added, with sudden
resolution turning to the sergeant major. "Tell them to send me to
hospital; I'm aching all over; anyway I shan't be able to keep up."

"That'll do, that'll do!" replied the sergeant major quietly.

The soldier said no more and the talk went on.

"What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and the fact is
that not one of them had what you might call real boots on," said a
soldier, starting a new theme. "They were no more than make-believes."

"The Cossacks have taken their boots. They were clearing the hut for
the colonel and carried them out. It was pitiful to see them, boys,"
put in the dancer. "As they turned them over one seemed still alive
and, would you believe it, he jabbered something in their lingo."

"But they're a clean folk, lads," the first man went on; "he was
white--as white as birchbark--and some of them are such fine
fellows, you might think they were nobles."

"Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there."

"But they don't understand our talk at all," said the dancer with
a puzzled smile. "I asked him whose subject he was, and he jabbered in
his own way. A queer lot!"

"But it's strange, friends," continued the man who had wondered at
their whiteness, "the peasants at Mozhaysk were saying that when
they began burying the dead--where the battle was you know--well,
those dead had been lying there for nearly a month, and says the
peasant, 'they lie as white as paper, clean, and not as much smell
as a puff of powder smoke.'"

"Was it from the cold?" asked someone.

"You're a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If
it had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. 'But,'
he says, 'go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,' he
says, 'we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as
we drag them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,' he says, 'are
white as paper and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.'"

All were silent.

"It must be from their food," said the sergeant major. "They used to
gobble the same food as the gentry."

No one contradicted him.

"That peasant near Mozhaysk where the battle was said the men were
all called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days
and still didn't finish carting the dead away. And as for the
wolves, he says..."

"That was a real battle," said an old soldier. "It's the only one
worth remembering; but since that... it's only been tormenting folk."

"And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them
and, my word, they didn't let us get near before they just threw
down their muskets and went on their knees. 'Pardon!' they say. That's
only one case. They say Platov took 'Poleon himself twice. But he
didn't know the right charm. He catches him and catches him--no
good! He turns into a bird in his hands and flies away. And there's no
way of killing him either."

"You're a first-class liar, Kiselev, when I come to look at you!"

"Liar, indeed! It's the real truth."

"If he fell into my hands, when I'd caught him I'd bury him in the
ground with an aspen stake to fix him down. What a lot of men he's
ruined!"

"Well, anyhow we're going to end it. He won't come here again,"
remarked the old soldier, yawning.

The conversation flagged, and the soldiers began settling down to
sleep.

"Look at the stars. It's wonderful how they shine! You would think
the women had spread out their linen," said one of the men, gazing
with admiration at the Milky Way.

"That's a sign of a good harvest next year."

"We shall want some more wood."

"You warm your back and your belly gets frozen. That's queer."

"O Lord!"

"What are you pushing for? Is the fire only for you? Look how he's
sprawling!"

In the silence that ensued, the snoring of those who had fallen
asleep could be heard. Others turned over and warmed themselves, now
and again exchanging a few words. From a campfire a hundred paces
off came a sound of general, merry laughter.

"Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!" said one of the
soldiers, "and what a lot of them there are!"

One of the men got up and went over to the Fifth Company.

"They're having such fun," said he, coming back. "Two Frenchies have
turned up. One's quite frozen and the other's an awful swaggerer. He's
singing songs...."

"Oh, I'll go across and have a look...."

And several of the men went over to the Fifth Company.





CHAPTER IX


The fifth company was bivouacking at the very edge of the forest.
A huge campfire was blazing brightly in the midst of the snow,
lighting up the branches of trees heavy with hoarfrost.

About midnight they heard the sound of steps in the snow of the
forest, and the crackling of dry branches.

"A bear, lads," said one of the men.

They all raised their heads to listen, and out of the forest into
the bright firelight stepped two strangely clad human figures clinging
to one another.

These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the forest. They
came up to the fire, hoarsely uttering something in a language our
soldiers did not understand. One was taller than the other; he wore an
officer's hat and seemed quite exhausted. On approaching the fire he
had been going to sit down, but fell. The other, a short sturdy
soldier with a shawl tied round his head, was stronger. He raised
his companion and said something, pointing to his mouth. The
soldiers surrounded the Frenchmen, spread a greatcoat on the ground
for the sick man, and brought some buckwheat porridge and vodka for
both of them.

The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the man with his
head wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his orderly.

When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his bowl of porridge he
suddenly became unnaturally merry and chattered incessantly to the
soldiers, who could not understand him. Ramballe refused food and
resting his head on his elbow lay silent beside the campfire,
looking at the Russian soldiers with red and vacant eyes. Occasionally
he emitted a long-drawn groan and then again became silent. Morel,
pointing to his shoulders, tried to impress on the soldiers the fact
that Ramballe was an officer and ought to be warmed. A Russian officer
who had come up to the fire sent to ask his colonel whether he would
not take a French officer into his hut to warm him, and when the
messenger returned and said that the colonel wished the officer to
be brought to him, Ramballe was told to go. He rose and tried to walk,
but staggered and would have fallen had not a soldier standing by held
him up.

"You won't do it again, eh?" said one of the soldiers, winking and
turning mockingly to Ramballe.

"Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you are--a real peasant!"
came rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier.

They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed arms of two
soldiers, and carried him to the hut. Ramballe put his arms around
their necks while they carried him and began wailing plaintively:

"Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are men! Oh,
my brave, kind friends," and he leaned his head against the shoulder
of one of the men like a child.

Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire,
surrounded by the soldiers.

Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and streaming eyes,
was wearing a woman's cloak and had a shawl tied woman fashion round
his head over his cap. He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a
French song in a hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the
nearest soldier. The soldiers simply held their sides as they
watched him.

"Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I'll soon pick it up. How
is it?" said the man--a singer and a wag--whom Morel was embracing.

"Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!" sang Morel, winking. "Ce
diable a quatre..."*


*"Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That rowdy devil."


"Vivarika! Vif-seruvaru! Sedyablyaka!" repeated the soldier,
flourishing his arm and really catching the tune.

"Bravo! Ha, ha, ha!" rose their rough, joyous laughter from all
sides.

Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.

"Well, go on, go on!"

"Qui eut le triple talent,
De boire, de battre,
Et d'etre un vert galant."*


*Who had a triple talent


For drinking, for fighting,

And for being a gallant old boy...


"It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletaev!"

"Ke..." Zaletaev, brought out with effort: "ke-e-e-e," he drawled,
laboriously pursing his lips, "le-trip-ta-la-de-bu-de-ba, e
de-tra-va-ga-la" he sang.

"Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want some more to
eat?"

"Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get filled up after
starving."

They gave him some more porridge and Morel with a laugh set to
work on his third bowl. All the young soldiers smiled gaily as they
watched him. The older men, who thought it undignified to amuse
themselves with such nonsense, continued to lie at the opposite side
of the fire, but one would occasionally raise himself on an elbow
and glance at Morel with a smile.

"They are men too," said one of them as he wrapped himself up in his
coat. "Even wormwood grows on its own root."

"O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That means a hard
frost...."

They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no one was
looking at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now
flaring up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering
something gladsome and mysterious to one another.





CHAPTER X


The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a mathematical
progression; and that crossing of the Berezina about which so much has
been written was only one intermediate stage in its destruction, and
not at all the decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been
and still is written about the Berezina, on the French side this is
only because at the broken bridge across that river the calamities
their army had been previously enduring were suddenly concentrated
at one moment into a tragic spectacle that remained in every memory,
and on the Russian side merely because in Petersburg--far from the
seat of war--a plan (again one of Pfuel's) had been devised to catch
Napoleon in a strategic trap at the Berezina River. Everyone assured
himself that all would happen according to plan, and therefore
insisted that it was just the crossing of the Berezina that
destroyed the French army. In reality the results of the crossing were
much less disastrous to the French--in guns and men lost--than Krasnoe
had been, as the figures show.

The sole importance of the crossing of the Berezina lies in the fact
that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans
for cutting off the enemy's retreat and the soundness of the only
possible line of action--the one Kutuzov and the general mass of the
army demanded--namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd
fled at a continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed
to reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and it was
impossible to block its path. This was shown not so much by the
arrangements it made for crossing as by what took place at the
bridges. When the bridges broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from
Moscow and women with children who were with the French transport,
all--carried on by vis inertiae--pressed forward into boats and into
the ice-covered water and did not, surrender.

That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives and of
pursuers was equally bad. As long as they remained with their own
people each might hope for help from his fellows and the definite
place he held among them. But those who surrendered, while remaining
in the same pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share
in the necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed
of the fact that half the prisoners--with whom the Russians did not
know what to do--perished of cold and hunger despite their captors'
desire to save them; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The
most compassionate Russian commanders, those favorable to the
French--and even the Frenchmen in the Russian service--could do
nothing for the prisoners. The French perished from the conditions
to which the Russian army was itself exposed. It was impossible to
take bread and clothes from our hungry and indispensable soldiers to
give to the French who, though not harmful, or hated, or guilty,
were simply unnecessary. Some Russians even did that, but they were
exceptions.

Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front there was
hope. Their ships had been burned, there was no salvation save in
collective flight, and on that the whole strength of the French was
concentrated.

The farther they fled the more wretched became the plight of the
remnant, especially after the Berezina, on which (in consequence of
the Petersburg plan) special hopes had been placed by the Russians,
and the keener grew the passions of the Russian commanders, who blamed
one another and Kutuzov most of all. Anticipation that the failure of
the Petersburg Berezina plan would be attributed to Kutuzov led to
dissatisfaction, contempt, and ridicule, more and more strongly
expressed. The ridicule and contempt were of course expressed in a
respectful form, making it impossible for him to ask wherein he was to
blame. They did not talk seriously to him; when reporting to him or
asking for his sanction they appeared to be fulfilling a regrettable
formality, but they winked behind his back and tried to mislead him at
every turn.

Because they could not understand him all these people assumed
that it was useless to talk to the old man; that he would never
grasp the profundity of their plans, that he would answer with his
phrases (which they thought were mere phrases) about a "golden
bridge," about the impossibility of crossing the frontier with a crowd
of tatterdemalions, and so forth. They had heard all that before.
And all he said--that it was necessary to await provisions, or that
the men had no boots--was so simple, while what they proposed was so
complicated and clever, that it was evident that he was old and stupid
and that they, though not in power, were commanders of genius.

After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral and
Petersburg hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff
reached their maximum. Kutuzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged
his shoulders. Only once, after the affair of the Berezina, did he get
angry and write to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the
Emperor) the following letter:

"On account of your spells of ill health, will your excellency
please be so good as to set off for Kaluga on receipt of this, and
there await further commands and appointments from His Imperial
Majesty."

But after Bennigsen's departure, the Grand Duke Tsarevich
Constantine Pavlovich joined the army. He had taken part in the
beginning of the campaign but had subsequently been removed from the
army by Kutuzov. Now having come to the army, he informed Kutuzov of
the Emperor's displeasure at the poor success of our forces and the
slowness of their advance. The Emperor intended to join the army
personally in a few days' time.

The old man, experienced in court as well as in military affairs--this
same Kutuzov who in August had been chosen commander in chief against
the sovereign's wishes and who had removed the Grand Duke and
heir--apparent from the army--who on his own authority and contrary to
the Emperor's will had decided on the abandonment of Moscow, now
realized at once that his day was over, that his part was played, and
that the power he was supposed to hold was no longer his. And he
understood this not merely from the attitude of the court. He saw on
the one hand that the military business in which he had played his
part was ended and felt that his mission was accomplished; and at the
same time he began to be conscious of the physical weariness of his
aged body and of the necessity of physical rest.

On the twenty-ninth of November Kutuzov entered Vilna--his "dear
Vilna" as he called it. Twice during his career Kutuzov had been
governor of Vilna. In that wealthy town, which had not been injured,
he found old friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of
which he had so long been deprived. And he suddenly turned from the
cares of army and state and, as far as the passions that seethed
around him allowed, immersed himself in the quiet life to which he had
formerly been accustomed, as if all that was taking place and all that
had still to be done in the realm of history did not concern him at
all.

Chichagov, one of the most zealous "cutters-off" and
"breakers-up," who had first wanted to effect a diversion in Greece
and then in Warsaw but never wished to go where he was sent:
Chichagov, noted for the boldness with which he spoke to the
Emperor, and who considered Kutuzov to be under an obligation to him
because when he was sent to make peace with Turkey in 1811
independently of Kutuzov, and found that peace had already been
concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that the merit of securing
that peace was really Kutuzov's; this Chichagov was the first to
meet Kutuzov at the castle where the latter was to stay. In undress
naval uniform, with a dirk, and holding his cap under his arm, he
handed Kutuzov a garrison report and the keys of the town. The
contemptuously respectful attitude of the younger men to the old man
in his dotage was expressed in the highest degree by the behavior of
Chichagov, who knew of the accusations that were being directed
against Kutuzov.

When speaking to Chichagov, Kutuzov incidentally mentioned that
the vehicles packed with china that had been captured from him at
Borisov had been recovered and would be restored to him.

"You mean to imply that I have nothing to eat out of.... On the
contrary, I can supply you with everything even if you want to give
dinner parties," warmly replied Chichagov, who tried by every word
he spoke to prove his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutuzov
to be animated by the same desire.

Kutuzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle
penetrating smile: "I meant merely to say what I said."

Contrary to the Emperor's wish Kutuzov detained the greater part
of the army at Vilna. Those about him said that he became
extraordinarily slack and physically feeble during his stay in that
town. He attended to army affairs reluctantly, left everything to
his generals, and while awaiting the Emperor's arrival led a
dissipated life.

Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December with his
suite--Count Tolstoy, Prince Volkonski, Arakcheev, and others--the
Emperor reached Vilna on the eleventh, and in his traveling sleigh
drove straight to the castle. In spite of the severe frost some
hundred generals and staff officers in full parade uniform stood in
front of the castle, as well as a guard of honor of the Semenov
regiment.

A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a troyka with
three foam-flecked horses, shouted "Coming!" and Konovnitsyn rushed
into the vestibule to inform Kutuzov, who was waiting in the hall
porter's little lodge.

A minute later the old man's large stout figure in full-dress
uniform, his chest covered with orders and a scarf drawn round his
stomach, waddled out into the porch. He put on his hat with its
peaks to the sides and, holding his gloves in his hand and walking
with an effort sideways down the steps to the level of the street,
took in his hand the report he had prepared for the Emperor.

There was running to and fro and whispering; another troyka flew
furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh
in which the figures of the Emperor and Volkonski could already be
descried.

From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating
effect on the old general. He carefully and hastily felt himself all
over, readjusted his hat, and pulling himself together drew himself up
and, at the very moment when the Emperor, having alighted from the
sleigh, lifted his eyes to him, handed him the report and began
speaking in his smooth, ingratiating voice.

The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov from head to foot,
frowned for an instant, but immediately mastering himself went up to
the old man, extended his arms and embraced him. And this embrace too,
owing to a long-standing impression related to his innermost feelings,
had its usual effect on Kutuzov and he gave a sob.

The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semenov guard, and again
pressing the old man's hand went with him into the castle.

When alone with the field marshal the Emperor expressed his
dissatisfaction at the slowness of the pursuit and at the mistakes
made at Krasnoe and the Berezina, and informed him of his intentions
for a future campaign abroad. Kutuzov made no rejoinder or remark. The
same submissive, expressionless look with which he had listened to the
Emperor's commands on the field of Austerlitz seven years before
settled on his face now.

When Kutuzov came out of the study and with lowered head was
crossing the ballroom with his heavy waddling gait, he was arrested by
someone's voice saying:

"Your Serene Highness!"

Kutuzov raised his head and looked for a long while into the eyes of
Count Tolstoy, who stood before him holding a silver salver on which
lay a small object. Kutuzov seemed not to understand what was expected
of him.

Suddenly he seemed to remember; a scarcely perceptible smile flashed
across his puffy face, and bowing low and respectfully he took the
object that lay on the salver. It was the Order of St. George of the
First Class.





CHAPTER XI


Next day the field marshal gave a dinner and ball which the
Emperor honored by his presence. Kutuzov had received the Order of St.
George of the First Class and the Emperor showed him the highest
honors, but everyone knew of the imperial dissatisfaction with him.
The proprieties were observed and the Emperor was the first to set
that example, but everybody understood that the old man was
blameworthy and good-for-nothing. When Kutuzov, conforming to a custom
of Catherine's day, ordered the standards that had been captured to be
lowered at the Emperor's feet on his entering the ballroom, the
Emperor made a wry face and muttered something in which some people
caught the words, "the old comedian."

The Emperor's displeasure with Kutuzov was specially increased at
Vilna by the fact that Kutuzov evidently could not or would not
understand the importance of the coming campaign.

When on the following morning the Emperor said to the officers
assembled about him: "You have not only saved Russia, you have saved
Europe!" they all understood that the war was not ended.

Kutuzov alone would not see this and openly expressed his opinion
that no fresh war could improve the position or add to the glory of
Russia, but could only spoil and lower the glorious position that
Russia had gained. He tried to prove to the Emperor the
impossibility of levying fresh troops, spoke of the hardships
already endured by the people, of the possibility of failure and so
forth.

This being the field marshal's frame of mind he was naturally
regarded as merely a hindrance and obstacle to the impending war.

To avoid unpleasant encounters with the old man, the natural
method was to do what had been done with him at Austerlitz and with
Barclay at the beginning of the Russian campaign--to transfer the
authority to the Emperor himself, thus cutting the ground from under
the commander in chief's feet without upsetting the old man by
informing him of the change.

With this object his staff was gradually reconstructed and its
real strength removed and transferred to the Emperor. Toll,
Konovnitsyn, and Ermolov received fresh appointments. Everyone spoke
loudly of the field marshal's great weakness and failing health.

His health had to be bad for his place to be taken away and given to
another. And in fact his health was poor.

So naturally, simply, and gradually--just as he had come from Turkey
to the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit the militia, and then to
the army when he was needed there--now when his part was played out,
Kutuzov's place was taken by a new and necessary performer.

The war of 1812, besides its national significance dear to every
Russian heart, was now to assume another, a European, significance.

The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a
movement of peoples from east to west, and for this fresh war
another leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing
from Kutuzov's and animated by different motives.

Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the peoples from
east to west and for the refixing of national frontiers as Kutuzov had
been for the salvation and glory of Russia.

Kutuzov did not understand what Europe, the balance of power, or
Napoleon meant. He could not understand it. For the representative
of the Russian people, after the enemy had been destroyed and Russia
had been liberated and raised to the summit of her glory, there was
nothing left to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the
representative of the national war but to die, and Kutuzov died.





CHAPTER XII


As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects of the
physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until
after they were over. After his liberation he reached Orel, and on the
third day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was
laid up for three months. He had what the doctors termed "bilious
fever." But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him,
and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.

Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre's mind by all that
happened to him from the time of his rescue till his illness. He
remembered only the dull gray weather now rainy and now snowy,
internal physical distress, and pains in his feet and side. He
remembered a general impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of
people and of being worried by the curiosity of officers and
generals who questioned him, he also remembered his difficulty in
procuring a conveyance and horses, and above all he remembered his
incapacity to think and feel all that time. On the day of his rescue
he had seen the body of Petya Rostov. That same day he had learned
that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of Borodino for more
than a month had recently died in the Rostovs' house at Yaroslavl, and
Denisov who told him this news also mentioned Helene's death,
supposing that Pierre had heard of it long before. All this at the
time seemed merely strange to Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its
significance. Just then he was only anxious to get away as quickly
as possible from places where people were killing one another, to some
peaceful refuge where he could recover himself, rest, and think over
all the strange new facts he had learned; but on reaching Orel he
immediately fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw
in attendance on him two of his servants, Terenty and Vaska, who had
come from Moscow; and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had
been living on his estate at Elets and hearing of his rescue and
illness had come to look after him.

It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre lost
the impressions he had become accustomed to during the last few months
and got used to the idea that no one would oblige him to go anywhere
tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he
would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a long
time in his dreams he still saw himself in the conditions of
captivity. In the same way little by little he came to understand
the news he had been told after his rescue, about the death of
Prince Andrew, the death of his wife, and the destruction of the
French.

A joyous feeling of freedom--that complete inalienable freedom
natural to man which he had first experienced at the first halt
outside Moscow--filled Pierre's soul during his convalescence. He
was surprised to find that this inner freedom, which was independent
of external conditions, now had as it were an additional setting of
external liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without
acquaintances. No one demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere.
He had all he wanted: the thought of his wife which had been a
continual torment to him was no longer there, since she was no more.

"Oh, how good! How splendid!" said he to himself when a cleanly laid
table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down
for the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the
French had gone and that his wife was no more. "Oh, how good, how
splendid!"

And by old habit he asked himself the question: "Well, and what
then? What am I going to do?" And he immediately gave himself the
answer: "Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!"

The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he
had continually sought to find--the aim of life--no longer existed for
him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared
temporarily--he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not
present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the
complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at
this time.

He could not see an aim, for he now had faith--not faith in any kind
of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living,
ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set
himself. That search for an aim had been simply a search for God,
and suddenly in his captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning
but by direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that God
is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had learned that in
Karataev God was greater, more infinite and unfathomable than in the
Architect of the Universe recognized by the Freemasons. He felt like a
man who after straining his eyes to see into the far distance finds
what he sought at his very feet. All his life he had looked over the
heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in
front of him without straining his eyes.

In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable
infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere
and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had
only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had
equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space,
where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed
to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen.
And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and
philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as
he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances
and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and
senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal,
and infinite in everything, and therefore--to see it and enjoy its
contemplation--he naturally threw away the telescope through which
he had till now gazed over men's heads, and gladly regarded the
ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around
him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and happy he became.
That dreadful question, "What for?" which had formerly destroyed all
his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question,
"What for?" a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: "Because
there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from
a man's head."





CHAPTER XIII


In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance
he was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and
seemed occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something
special of his own. The difference between his former and present self
was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was
said to him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly
seeking to distinguish something at a distance. At present he still
forgot what was said to him and still did not see what was before
his eyes, but he now looked with a scarcely perceptible and
seemingly ironic smile at what was before him and listened to what was
said, though evidently seeing and hearing something quite different.
Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so
people had been inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of
life always played round his lips, and sympathy for others, shone in
his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they were as
contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his presence.

Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when he
talked, and seldom listened; now he was seldom carried away in
conversation and knew how to listen so that people readily told him
their most intimate secrets.

The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been particularly
hostile to him since she had felt herself under obligations to him
after the old count's death, now after staying a short time in
Orel--where she had come intending to show Pierre that in spite of his
ingratitude she considered it her duty to nurse him--felt to her
surprise and vexation that she had become fond of him. Pierre did not
in any way seek her approval, he merely studied her with interest.
Formerly she had felt that he regarded her with indifference and
irony, and so had shrunk into herself as she did with others and had
shown him only the combative side of her nature; but now he seemed to
be trying to understand the most intimate places of her heart, and,
mistrustfully at first but afterwards gratefully, she let him see the
hidden, kindly sides of her character.

The most cunning man could not have crept into her confidence more
successfully, evoking memories of the best times of her youth and
showing sympathy with them. Yet Pierre's cunning consisted simply in
finding pleasure in drawing out the human qualities of the embittered,
hard, and (in her own way) proud princess.

"Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under the influence
of bad people but of people such as myself," thought she.

His servants too--Terenty and Vaska--in their own way noticed the
change that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had
become much "simpler." Terenty, when he had helped him undress and
wished him good night, often lingered with his master's boots in his
hands and clothes over his arm, to see whether he would not start a
talk. And Pierre, noticing that Terenty wanted a chat, generally
kept him there.

"Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?" he would ask.

And Terenty would begin talking of the destruction of Moscow, and of
the old count, and would stand for a long time holding the clothes and
talking, or sometimes listening to Pierre's stories, and then would go
out into the hall with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master
and affection for him.

The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every day, though
he considered it his duty as a doctor to pose as a man whose every
moment was of value to suffering humanity, would sit for hours with
Pierre telling him his favorite anecdotes and his observations on
the characters of his patients in general, and especially of the
ladies.

"It's a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like our
provincials," he would say.

There were several prisoners from the French army in Orel, and the
doctor brought one of them, a young Italian, to see Pierre.

This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess used to make
fun of the tenderness the Italian expressed for him.

The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to see Pierre, talk
with him, tell him about his past, his life at home, and his love, and
pour out to him his indignation against the French and especially
against Napoleon.

"If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege to fight
such a nation," he said to Pierre. "You, who have suffered so from the
French, do not even feel animosity toward them."

Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the Italian merely
by evoking the best side of his nature and taking a pleasure in so
doing.

During the last days of Pierre's stay in Orel his old Masonic
acquaintance Count Willarski, who had introduced him to the lodge in
1807, came to see him. Willarski was married to a Russian heiress
who had a large estate in Orel province, and he occupied a temporary
post in the commissariat department in that town.

Hearing that Bezukhov was in Orel, Willarski, though they had
never been intimate, came to him with the professions of friendship
and intimacy that people who meet in a desert generally express for
one another. Willarski felt dull in Orel and was pleased to meet a man
of his own circle and, as he supposed, of similar interests.

But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre had lagged
much behind the times, and had sunk, as he expressed it to himself,
into apathy and egotism.

"You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow," he said.

But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than it had
been formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see him every day. To
Pierre as he looked at and listened to Willarski, it seemed strange to
think that he had been like that himself but a short time before.

Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with his family
affairs, his wife's affairs, and his official duties. He regarded
all these occupations as hindrances to life, and considered that
they were all contemptible because their aim was the welfare of
himself and his family. Military, administrative, political, and
Masonic interests continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre,
without trying to change the other's views and without condemning him,
but with the quiet, joyful, and amused smile now habitual to him,
was interested in this strange though very familiar phenomenon.

There was a new feature in Pierre's relations with Willarski, with
the princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met,
which gained for him the general good will. This was his
acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by
words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking,
feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view. This
legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and
irritate Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and
the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes
complete contradiction, between men's opinions and their lives, and
between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him an amused
and gentle smile.

In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within himself a
center of gravity he had previously lacked. Formerly all pecuniary
questions, especially requests for money to which, as an extremely
wealthy man, he was very exposed, produced in him a state of
hopeless agitation and perplexity. "To give or not to give?" he had
asked himself. "I have it and he needs it. But someone else needs it
still more. Who needs it most? And perhaps they are both impostors?"
In the old days he had been unable to find a way out of all these
surmises and had given to all who asked as long as he had anything
to give. Formerly he had been in a similar state of perplexity with
regard to every question concerning his property, when one person
advised one thing and another something else.

Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt either doubt
or perplexity about these questions. There was now within him a
judge who by some rule unknown to him decided what should or should
not be done.

He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters, but now he
felt certain of what ought and what ought not to be done. The first
time he had recourse to his new judge was when a French prisoner, a
colonel, came to him and, after talking a great deal about his
exploits, concluded by making what amounted to a demand that Pierre
should give him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children.
Pierre refused without the least difficulty or effort, and was
afterwards surprised how simple and easy had been what used to
appear so insurmountably difficult. At the same time that he refused
the colonel's demand he made up his mind that he must have recourse to
artifice when leaving Orel, to induce the Italian officer to accept
some money of which he was evidently in need. A further proof to
Pierre of his own more settled outlook on practical matters was
furnished by his decision with regard to his wife's debts and to the
rebuilding of his houses in and near Moscow.

His head steward came to him at Orel and Pierre reckoned up with him
his diminished income. The burning of Moscow had cost him, according
to the head steward's calculation, about two million rubles.

To console Pierre for these losses the head steward gave him an
estimate showing that despite these losses his income would not be
diminished but would even be increased if he refused to pay his wife's
debts which he was under no obligation to meet, and did not rebuild
his Moscow house and the country house on his Moscow estate, which had
cost him eighty thousand rubles a year and brought in nothing.

"Yes, of course that's true," said Pierre with a cheerful smile.
"I don't need all that at all. By being ruined I have become much
richer."

But in January Savelich came from Moscow and gave him an account
of the state of things there, and spoke of the estimate an architect
had made of the cost of rebuilding the town and country houses,
speaking of this as of a settled matter. About the same time he
received letters from Prince Vasili and other Petersburg acquaintances
speaking of his wife's debts. And Pierre decided that the steward's
proposals which had so pleased him were wrong and that he must go to
Petersburg and settle his wife's affairs and must rebuild in Moscow.
Why this was necessary he did not know, but he knew for certain that
it was necessary. His income would be reduced by three fourths, but he
felt it must be done.

Willarski was going to Moscow and they agreed to travel together.

During the whole time of his convalescence in Orel Pierre had
experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life; but when during his
journey he found himself in the open world and saw hundreds of new
faces, that feeling was intensified. Throughout his journey he felt
like a schoolboy on holiday. Everyone--the stagecoach driver, the
post-house overseers, the peasants on the roads and in the
villages--had a new significance for him. The presence and remarks of
Willarski who continually deplored the ignorance and poverty of Russia
and its backwardness compared with Europe only heightened Pierre's
pleasure. Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an extraordinary
strength and vitality--the strength which in that vast space amid the
snows maintained the life of this original, peculiar, and unique
people. He did not contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree with
him--an apparent agreement being the simplest way to avoid discussions
that could lead to nothing--and he smiled joyfully as he listened to
him.





CHAPTER XIV


It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap has
been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of
rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they
jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally
difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of
the French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But
when we watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity, energy,
and immense number of the delving insects prove that despite the
destruction of the heap, something indestructible, which though
intangible is the real strength of the colony, still exists; and
similarly, though in Moscow in the month of October there was no
government and no churches, shrines, riches, or houses--it was still
the Moscow it had been in August. All was destroyed, except something
intangible yet powerful and indestructible.

The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after
it had been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal, and
at first for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only they all
had in common: a desire to get to the place that had been called
Moscow, to apply their activities there.

Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants, in
a fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on. By the autumn of 1813 the
number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what it had been in
1812.

The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of
Wintzingerode's detachment, peasants from the adjacent villages, and
residents who had fled from Moscow and had been hiding in its
vicinity. The Russians who entered Moscow, finding it plundered,
plundered it in their turn. They continued what the French had
begun. Trains of peasant carts came to Moscow to carry off to the
villages what had been abandoned in the ruined houses and the streets.
The Cossacks carried off what they could to their camps, and the
householders seized all they could find in other houses and moved it
to their own, pretending that it was their property.

But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a third
contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering became more and
more difficult and assumed more definite forms.

The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the organizations of
regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and craftsmanship,
with luxury, and governmental and religious institutions. These forms
were lifeless but still existed. There were bazaars, shops,
warehouses, market stalls, granaries--for the most part still stocked
with goods--and there were factories and workshops, palaces and
wealthy houses filled with luxuries, hospitals, prisons, government
offices, churches, and cathedrals. The longer the French remained the
more these forms of town life perished, until finally all was merged
into one confused, lifeless scene of plunder.

The more the plundering by the French continued, the more both the
wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was destroyed. But
plundering by the Russians, with which the reoccupation of the city
began, had an opposite effect: the longer it continued and the greater
the number of people taking part in it the more rapidly was the wealth
of the city and its regular life restored.

Besides the plunderers, very various people, some drawn by
curiosity, some by official duties, some by self-interest--house
owners, clergy, officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and
peasants--streamed into Moscow as blood flows to the heart.

Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts to carry off
plunder were stopped by the authorities and made to cart the corpses
out of the town. Other peasants, having heard of their comrades'
discomfiture, came to town bringing rye, oats, and hay, and beat
down one another's prices to below what they had been in former
days. Gangs of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived in Moscow
every day, and on all sides logs were being hewn, new houses built,
and old, charred ones repaired. Tradesmen began trading in booths.
Cookshops and taverns were opened in partially burned houses. The
clergy resumed the services in many churches that had not been burned.
Donors contributed Church property that had been stolen. Government
clerks set up their baize-covered tables and their pigeonholes of
documents in small rooms. The higher authorities and the police
organized the distribution of goods left behind by the French. The
owners of houses in which much property had been left, brought there
from other houses, complained of the injustice of taking everything to
the Faceted Palace in the Kremlin; others insisted that as the
French had gathered things from different houses into this or that
house, it would be unfair to allow its owner to keep all that was
found there. They abused the police and bribed them, made out
estimates at ten times their value for government stores that had
perished in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchin
wrote proclamations.





CHAPTER XV


At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and stayed in an annex
of his house which had not been burned. He called on Count
Rostopchin and on some acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he
intended to leave for Petersburg two days later. Everybody was
celebrating the victory, everything was bubbling with life in the
ruined but reviving city. Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone
wished to meet him, and everyone questioned him about what he had
seen. Pierre felt particularly well disposed toward them all, but
was now instinctively on his guard for fear of binding himself in
any way. To all questions put to him--whether important or quite
trifling--such as: Where would he live? Was he going to rebuild?
When was he going to Petersburg and would he mind taking a parcel
for someone?--he replied: "Yes, perhaps," or, "I think so," and so on.

He had heard that the Rostovs were at Kostroma but the thought of
Natasha seldom occurred to him. If it did it was only as a pleasant
memory of the distant past. He felt himself not only free from
social obligations but also from that feeling which, it seemed to him,
he had aroused in himself.

On the third day after his arrival he heard from the Drubetskoys
that Princess Mary was in Moscow. The death, sufferings, and last days
of Prince Andrew had often occupied Pierre's thoughts and now recurred
to him with fresh vividness. Having heard at dinner that Princess Mary
was in Moscow and living in her house--which had not been burned--in
Vozdvizhenka Street, he drove that same evening to see her.

On his way to the house Pierre kept thinking of Prince Andrew, of
their friendship, of his various meetings with him, and especially
of the last one at Borodino.

"Is it possible that he died in the bitter frame of mind he was then
in? Is it possible that the meaning of life was not disclosed to him
before he died?" thought Pierre. He recalled Karataev and his death
and involuntarily began to compare these two men, so different, and
yet so similar in that they had both lived and both died and in the
love he felt for both of them.

Pierre drove up to the house of the old prince in a most serious
mood. The house had escaped the fire; it showed signs of damage but
its general aspect was unchanged. The old footman, who met Pierre with
a stern face as if wishing to make the visitor feel that the absence
of the old prince had not disturbed the order of things in the
house, informed him that the princess had gone to her own
apartments, and that she received on Sundays.

"Announce me. Perhaps she will see me," said Pierre.

"Yes, sir," said the man. "Please step into the portrait gallery."

A few minutes later the footman returned with Dessalles, who brought
word from the princess that she would be very glad to see Pierre if he
would excuse her want of ceremony and come upstairs to her apartment.

In a rather low room lit by one candle sat the princess and with her
another person dressed in black. Pierre remembered that the princess
always had lady companions, but who they were and what they were
like he never knew or remembered. "This must be one of her
companions," he thought, glancing at the lady in the black dress.

The princess rose quickly to meet him and held out her hand.

"Yes," she said, looking at his altered face after he had kissed her
hand, "so this is how we meet again. He spoke of you even at the
very last," she went on, turning her eyes from Pierre to her companion
with a shyness that surprised him for an instant.

"I was so glad to hear of your safety. It was the first piece of
good news we had received for a long time."

Again the princess glanced round at her companion with even more
uneasiness in her manner and was about to add something, but Pierre
interrupted her.

"Just imagine--I knew nothing about him!" said he. "I thought he had
been killed. All I know I heard at second hand from others. I only
know that he fell in with the Rostovs.... What a strange coincidence!"

Pierre spoke rapidly and with animation. He glanced once at the
companion's face, saw her attentive and kindly gaze fixed on him, and,
as often happens when one is talking, felt somehow that this companion
in the black dress was a good, kind, excellent creature who would
not hinder his conversing freely with Princess Mary.

But when he mentioned the Rostovs, Princess Mary's face expressed
still greater embarrassment. She again glanced rapidly from Pierre's
face to that of the lady in the black dress and said:

"Do you really not recognize her?"

Pierre looked again at the companion's pale, delicate face with
its black eyes and peculiar mouth, and something near to him, long
forgotten and more than sweet, looked at him from those attentive
eyes.

"But no, it can't be!" he thought. "This stern, thin, pale face that
looks so much older! It cannot be she. It merely reminds me of her."
But at that moment Princess Mary said, "Natasha!" And with difficulty,
effort, and stress, like the opening of a door grown rusty on its
hinges, a smile appeared on the face with the attentive eyes, and from
that opening door came a breath of fragrance which suffused Pierre
with a happiness he had long forgotten and of which he had not even
been thinking--especially at that moment. It suffused him, seized him,
and enveloped him completely. When she smiled doubt was no longer
possible, it was Natasha and he loved her.

At that moment Pierre involuntarily betrayed to her, to Princess
Mary, and above all to himself, a secret of which he himself had
been unaware. He flushed joyfully yet with painful distress. He
tried to hide his agitation. But the more he tried to hide it the more
clearly--clearer than any words could have done--did he betray to
himself, to her, and to Princess Mary that he loved her.

"No, it's only the unexpectedness of it," thought Pierre. But as
soon as he tried to continue the conversation he had begun with
Princess Mary he again glanced at Natasha, and a still-deeper flush
suffused his face and a still-stronger agitation of mingled joy and
fear seized his soul. He became confused in his speech and stopped
in the middle of what he was saying.

Pierre had failed to notice Natasha because he did not at all expect
to see her there, but he had failed to recognize her because the
change in her since he last saw her was immense. She had grown thin
and pale, but that was not what made her unrecognizable; she was
unrecognizable at the moment he entered because on that face whose
eyes had always shone with a suppressed smile of the joy of life,
now when he first entered and glanced at her there was not the least
shadow of a smile: only her eyes were kindly attentive and sadly
interrogative.

Pierre's confusion was not reflected by any confusion on Natasha's
part, but only by the pleasure that just perceptibly lit up her
whole face.





CHAPTER XVI


"She has come to stay with me," said Princess Mary. "The count and
countess will be here in a few days. The countess is in a dreadful
state; but it was necessary for Natasha herself to see a doctor.
They insisted on her coming with me."

"Yes, is there a family free from sorrow now?" said Pierre,
addressing Natasha. "You know it happened the very day we were
rescued. I saw him. What a delightful boy he was!"

Natasha looked at him, and by way of answer to his words her eyes
widened and lit up.

"What can one say or think of as a consolation?" said Pierre.
"Nothing! Why had such a splendid boy, so full of life, to die?"

"Yes, in these days it would be hard to live without faith..."
remarked Princess Mary.

"Yes, yes, that is really true," Pierre hastily interrupted her.

"Why is it true?" Natasha asked, looking attentively into Pierre's
eyes.

"How can you ask why?" said Princess Mary. "The thought alone of
what awaits..."

Natasha without waiting for Princess Mary to finish again looked
inquiringly at Pierre.

"And because," Pierre continued, "only one who believes that there
is a God ruling us can bear a loss such as hers and... yours."

Natasha had already opened her mouth to speak but suddenly
stopped. Pierre hurriedly turned away from her and again addressed
Princess Mary, asking about his friend's last days.

Pierre's confusion had now almost vanished, but at the same time
he felt that his freedom had also completely gone. He felt that
there was now a judge of his every word and action whose judgment
mattered more to him than that of all the rest of the world. As he
spoke now he was considering what impression his words would make on
Natasha. He did not purposely say things to please her, but whatever
he was saying he regarded from her standpoint.

Princess Mary--reluctantly as is usual in such cases--began
telling of the condition in which she had found Prince Andrew. But
Pierre's face quivering with emotion, his questions and his eager
restless expression, gradually compelled her to go into details
which she feared to recall for her own sake.

"Yes, yes, and so...?" Pierre kept saying as he leaned toward her
with his whole body and eagerly listened to her story. "Yes, yes... so
he grew tranquil and softened? With all his soul he had always
sought one thing--to be perfectly good--so he could not be afraid of
death. The faults he had--if he had any--were not of his making. So he
did soften?... What a happy thing that he saw you again," he added,
suddenly turning to Natasha and looking at her with eyes full of
tears.

Natasha's face twitched. She frowned and lowered her eyes for a
moment. She hesitated for an instant whether to speak or not.

"Yes, that was happiness," she then said in her quiet voice with its
deep chest notes. "For me it certainly was happiness." She paused.
"And he... he... he said he was wishing for it at the very moment I
entered the room...."

Natasha's voice broke. She blushed, pressed her clasped hands on her
knees, and then controlling herself with an evident effort lifted
her head and began to speak rapidly.

"We knew nothing of it when we started from Moscow. I did not dare
to ask about him. Then suddenly Sonya told me he was traveling with
us. I had no idea and could not imagine what state he was in, all I
wanted was to see him and be with him," she said, trembling, and
breathing quickly.

And not letting them interrupt her she went on to tell what she
had never yet mentioned to anyone--all she had lived through during
those three weeks of their journey and life at Yaroslavl.

Pierre listened to her with lips parted and eyes fixed upon her full
of tears. As he listened he did not think of Prince Andrew, nor of
death, nor of what she was telling. He listened to her and felt only
pity for her, for what she was suffering now while she was speaking.

Princess Mary, frowning in her effort to hold back her tears, sat
beside Natasha, and heard for the first time the story of those last
days of her brother's and Natasha's love.

Evidently Natasha needed to tell that painful yet joyful tale.

She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the intimate
secrets of her soul, and it seemed as if she could never finish.
Several times she repeated the same thing twice.

Dessalles' voice was heard outside the door asking whether little
Nicholas might come in to say good night.

"Well, that's all--everything," said Natasha.

She got up quickly just as Nicholas entered, almost ran to the
door which was hidden by curtains, struck her head against it, and
rushed from the room with a moan either of pain or sorrow.

Pierre gazed at the door through which she had disappeared and did
not understand why he suddenly felt all alone in the world.

Princess Mary roused him from his abstraction by drawing his
attention to her nephew who had entered the room.

At that moment of emotional tenderness young Nicholas' face, which
resembled his father's, affected Pierre so much that when he had
kissed the boy he got up quickly, took out his handkerchief, and
went to the window. He wished to take leave of Princess Mary, but
she would not let him go.

"No, Natasha and I sometimes don't go to sleep till after two, so
please don't go. I will order supper. Go downstairs, we will come
immediately."

Before Pierre left the room Princess Mary told him: "This is the
first time she has talked of him like that."





CHAPTER XVII


Pierre was shown into the large, brightly lit dining room; a few
minutes later he heard footsteps and Princess Mary entered with
Natasha. Natasha was calm, though a severe and grave expression had
again settled on her face. They all three of them now experienced that
feeling of awkwardness which usually follows after a serious and
heartfelt talk. It is impossible to go back to the same
conversation, to talk of trifles is awkward, and yet the desire to
speak is there and silence seems like affectation. They went
silently to table. The footmen drew back the chairs and pushed them up
again. Pierre unfolded his cold table napkin and, resolving to break
the silence, looked at Natasha and at Princess Mary. They had
evidently both formed the same resolution; the eyes of both shone with
satisfaction and a confession that besides sorrow life also has joy.

"Do you take vodka, Count?" asked Princess Mary, and those words
suddenly banished the shadows of the past. "Now tell us about
yourself," said she. "One hears such improbable wonders about you."

"Yes," replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now habitual to
him. "They even tell me wonders I myself never dreamed of! Mary
Abramovna invited me to her house and kept telling me what had
happened, or ought to have happened, to me. Stepan Stepanych also
instructed me how I ought to tell of my experiences. In general I have
noticed that it is very easy to be an interesting man (I am an
interesting man now); people invite me out and tell me all about
myself."

Natasha smiled and was on the point of speaking.

"We have been told," Princess Mary interrupted her, "that you lost
two millions in Moscow. Is that true?"

"But I am three times as rich as before," returned Pierre.

Though the position was now altered by his decision to pay his
wife's debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still maintained that
he had become three times as rich as before.

"What I have certainly gained is freedom," he began seriously, but
did not continue, noticing that this theme was too egotistic.

"And are you building?"

"Yes. Savelich says I must!"

"Tell me, you did not know of the countess' death when you decided
to remain in Moscow?" asked Princess Mary and immediately blushed,
noticing that her question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed
to his words a meaning he had perhaps not intended.

"No," answered Pierre, evidently not considering awkward the meaning
Princess Mary had given to his words. "I heard of it in Orel and you
cannot imagine how it shocked me. We were not an exemplary couple," he
added quickly, glancing at Natasha and noticing on her face
curiosity as to how he would speak of his wife, "but her death shocked
me terribly. When two people quarrel they are always both in fault,
and one's own guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other
is no longer alive. And then such a death... without friends and
without consolation! I am very, very sorry for her," he concluded, and
was pleased to notice a look of glad approval on Natasha's face.

"Yes, and so you are once more an eligible bachelor," said
Princess Mary.

Pierre suddenly flushed crimson and for a long time tried not to
look at Natasha. When he ventured to glance her way again her face was
cold, stern, and he fancied even contemptuous.

"And did you really see and speak to Napoleon, as we have been
told?" said Princess Mary.

Pierre laughed.

"No, not once! Everybody seems to imagine that being taken
prisoner means being Napoleon's guest. Not only did I never see him
but I heard nothing about him--I was in much lower company!"

Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to speak about his
captivity was gradually led on to do so.

"But it's true that you remained in Moscow to kill Napoleon?"
Natasha asked with a slight smile. "I guessed it then when we met at
the Sukharev tower, do you remember?"

Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by
Princess Mary's questions and especially by Natasha's into giving a
detailed account of his adventures.

At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now customary
with him toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he
came to describe the horrors and sufferings he had witnessed he was
unconsciously carried away and began speaking with the suppressed
emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he
has lived through.

Princess Mary with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre and now at
Natasha. In the whole narrative she saw only Pierre and his
goodness. Natasha, leaning on her elbow, the expression of her face
constantly changing with the narrative, watched Pierre with an
attention that never wandered--evidently herself experiencing all that
he described. Not only her look, but her exclamations and the brief
questions she put, showed Pierre that she understood just what he
wished to convey. It was clear that she understood not only what he
said but also what he wished to, but could not, express in words.
The account Pierre gave of the incident with the child and the woman
for protecting whom he was arrested was this: "It was an awful
sight--children abandoned, some in the flames... One was snatched
out before my eyes... and there were women who had their things
snatched off and their earrings torn out..." he flushed and grew
confused. "Then a patrol arrived and all the men--all those who were
not looting, that is--were arrested, and I among them."

"I am sure you're not telling us everything; I am sure you did
something..." said Natasha and pausing added, "something fine?"

Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he wanted to pass
over the horrible details, but Natasha insisted that he should not
omit anything.

Pierre began to tell about Karataev, but paused. By this time he had
risen from the table and was pacing the room, Natasha following him
with her eyes. Then he added:

"No, you can't understand what I learned from that illiterate
man--that simple fellow."

"Yes, yes, go on!" said Natasha. "Where is he?"

"They killed him almost before my eyes."

And Pierre, his voice trembling continually, went on to tell of
the last days of their retreat, of Karataev's illness and his death.

He told of his adventures as he had never yet recalled them. He now,
as it were, saw a new meaning in all he had gone through. Now that
he was telling it all to Natasha he experienced that pleasure which
a man has when women listen to him--not clever women who when
listening either try to remember what they hear to enrich their
minds and when opportunity offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt
it to some thought of their own and promptly contribute their own
clever comments prepared in their little mental workshop--but the
pleasure given by real women gifted with a capacity to select and
absorb the very best a man shows of himself. Natasha without knowing
it was all attention: she did not lose a word, no single quiver in
Pierre's voice, no look, no twitch of a muscle in his face, nor a
single gesture. She caught the unfinished word in its flight and
took it straight into her open heart, divining the secret meaning of
all Pierre's mental travail.

Princess Mary understood his story and sympathized with him, but she
now saw something else that absorbed all her attention. She saw the
possibility of love and happiness between Natasha and Pierre, and
the first thought of this filled her heart with gladness.

It was three o'clock in the morning. The footmen came in with sad
and stern faces to change the candles, but no one noticed them.

Pierre finished his story. Natasha continued to look at him intently
with bright, attentive, and animated eyes, as if trying to
understand something more which he had perhaps left untold. Pierre
in shamefaced and happy confusion glanced occasionally at her, and
tried to think what to say next to introduce a fresh subject. Princess
Mary was silent. It occurred to none of them that it was three o'clock
and time to go to bed.

"People speak of misfortunes and sufferings," remarked Pierre,
"but if at this moment I were asked: 'Would you rather be what you
were before you were taken prisoner, or go through all this again?'
then for heaven's sake let me again have captivity and horseflesh!
We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is
lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While
there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us. I say
this to you," he added, turning to Natasha.

"Yes, yes," she said, answering something quite different. "I too
should wish nothing but to relive it all from the beginning."

Pierre looked intently at her.

"Yes, and nothing more," said Natasha.

"It's not true, not true!" cried Pierre. "I am not to blame for
being alive and wishing to live--nor you either."

Suddenly Natasha bent her head, covered her face with her hands, and
began to cry.

"What is it, Natasha?" said Princess Mary.

"Nothing, nothing." She smiled at Pierre through her tears. "Good
night! It is time for bed."

Pierre rose and took his leave.


Princess Mary and Natasha met as usual in the bedroom. They talked
of what Pierre had told them. Princess Mary did not express her
opinion of Pierre nor did Natasha speak of him.

"Well, good night, Mary!" said Natasha. "Do you know, I am often
afraid that by not speaking of him" (she meant Prince Andrew) "for
fear of not doing justice to our feelings, we forget him."

Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby acknowledged the justice
of Natasha's remark, but she did not express agreement in words.

"Is it possible to forget?" said she.

"It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It was hard
and painful, but good, very good!" said Natasha. "I am sure he
really loved him. That is why I told him... Was it all right?" she
added, suddenly blushing.

"To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!" said
Princess Mary.

"Do you know, Mary..." Natasha suddenly said with a mischievous
smile such as Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long
time, "he has somehow grown so clean, smooth, and fresh--as if he
had just come out of a Russian bath; do you understand? Out of a moral
bath. Isn't it true?"

"Yes," replied Princess Mary. "He has greatly improved."

"With a short coat and his hair cropped; just as if, well, just as
if he had come straight from the bath... Papa used to..."

"I understand why he" (Prince Andrew) "liked no one so much as him,"
said Princess Mary.

"Yes, and yet he is quite different. They say men are friends when
they are quite different. That must be true. Really he is quite unlike
him--in everything."

"Yes, but he's wonderful."

"Well, good night," said Natasha.

And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her
face as if it had been forgotten there.





CHAPTER XVIII


It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that night. He
paced up and down his room, now turning his thoughts on a difficult
problem and frowning, now suddenly shrugging his shoulders and
wincing, and now smiling happily.

He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natasha, and of their love,
at one moment jealous of her past, then reproaching himself for that
feeling. It was already six in the morning and he still paced up and
down the room.

"Well, what's to be done if it cannot be avoided? What's to be done?
Evidently it has to be so," said he to himself, and hastily undressing
he got into bed, happy and agitated but free from hesitation or
indecision.

"Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I must do
everything that she and I may be man and wife," he told himself.

A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to Petersburg on
the Friday. When he awoke on the Thursday, Savelich came to ask him
about packing for the journey.

"What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is there in
Petersburg?" he asked involuntarily, though only to himself. "Oh, yes,
long ago before this happened I did for some reason mean to go to
Petersburg," he reflected. "Why? But perhaps I shall go. What a good
fellow he is and how attentive, and how he remembers everything," he
thought, looking at Savelich's old face, "and what a pleasant smile he
has!"

"Well, Savelich, do you still not wish to accept your freedom?"
Pierre asked him.

"What's the good of freedom to me, your excellency? We lived under
the late count--the kingdom of heaven be his!--and we have lived under
you too, without ever being wronged."

"And your children?"

"The children will live just the same. With such masters one can
live."

"But what about my heirs?" said Pierre. "Supposing I suddenly
marry... it might happen," he added with an involuntary smile.

"If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be a good
thing."

"How easy he thinks it," thought Pierre. "He doesn't know how
terrible it is and how dangerous. Too soon or too late... it is
terrible!"

"So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?" asked
Savelich.

"No, I'll put it off for a bit. I'll tell you later. You must
forgive the trouble I have put you to," said Pierre, and seeing
Savelich smile, he thought: "But how strange it is that he should
not know that now there is no Petersburg for me, and that that must be
settled first of all! But probably he knows it well enough and is only
pretending. Shall I have a talk with him and see what he thinks?"
Pierre reflected. "No, another time."

At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he had
been to see Princess Mary the day before and had there met--"Whom do
you think? Natasha Rostova!"

The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary in that than
if he had seen Anna Semenovna.

"Do you know her?" asked Pierre.

"I have seen the princess," she replied. "I heard that they were
arranging a match for her with young Rostov. It would be a very good
thing for the Rostovs, they are said to be utterly ruined."

"No; I mean do you know Natasha Rostova?"

"I heard about that affair of hers at the time. It was a great
pity."

"No, she either doesn't understand or is pretending," thought
Pierre. "Better not say anything to her either."

The princess too had prepared provisions for Pierre's journey.

"How kind they all are," thought Pierre. "What is surprising is that
they should trouble about these things now when it can no longer be of
interest to them. And all for me!"

On the same day the Chief of Police came to Pierre, inviting him
to send a representative to the Faceted Palace to recover things
that were to be returned to their owners that day.

"And this man too," thought Pierre, looking into the face of the
Chief of Police. "What a fine, good-looking officer and how kind.
Fancy bothering about such trifles now! And they actually say he is
not honest and takes bribes. What nonsense! Besides, why shouldn't
he take bribes? That's the way he was brought up, and everybody does
it. But what a kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as he looks at
me."

Pierre went to Princess Mary's to dinner.

As he drove through the streets past the houses that had been burned
down, he was surprised by the beauty of those ruins. The
picturesqueness of the chimney stacks and tumble-down walls of the
burned-out quarters of the town, stretching out and concealing one
another, reminded him of the Rhine and the Colosseum. The cabmen he
met and their passengers, the carpenters cutting the timber for new
houses with axes, the women hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked
at him with cheerful beaming eyes that seemed to say: "Ah, there he
is! Let's see what will come of it!"

At the entrance to Princess Mary's house Pierre felt doubtful
whether he had really been there the night before and really seen
Natasha and talked to her. "Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall
go in and find no one there." But he had hardly entered the room
before he felt her presence with his whole being by the loss of his
sense of freedom. She was in the same black dress with soft folds
and her hair was done the same way as the day before, yet she was
quite different. Had she been like this when he entered the day before
he could not for a moment have failed to recognize her.

She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince
Andrew's fiancee. A bright questioning light shone in her eyes, and on
her face was a friendly and strangely roguish expression.

Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there,
but Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house
with her.

Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening.
Though Princess Mary and Natasha were evidently glad to see their
visitor and though all Pierre's interest was now centered in that
house, by the evening they had talked over everything and the
conversation passed from one trivial topic to another and repeatedly
broke off. He stayed so long that Princess Mary and Natasha
exchanged glances, evidently wondering when he would go. Pierre
noticed this but could not go. He felt uneasy and embarrassed, but sat
on because he simply could not get up and take his leave.

Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and
complaining of a headache began to say good night.

"So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?" she asked.

"No, I am not going," Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised tone
and as though offended. "Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrow--but I
won't say good-by yet. I will call round in case you have any
commissions for me," said he, standing before Princess Mary and
turning red, but not taking his departure.

Natasha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary on the other
hand instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly
and intently at him with her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she had
plainly shown before had now quite passed off. With a deep and
long-drawn sigh she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk.

When Natasha left the room Pierre's confusion and awkwardness
immediately vanished and were replaced by eager excitement. He quickly
moved an armchair toward Princess Mary.

"Yes, I wanted to tell you," said he, answering her look as if she
had spoken. "Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess,
my dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know I am not worthy of
her, I know it's impossible to speak of it now. But I want to be a
brother to her. No, not that, I don't, I can't..."

He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.

"Well," he went on with an evident effort at self-control and
coherence. "I don't know when I began to love her, but I have loved
her and her alone all my life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine
life without her. I cannot propose to her at present, but the
thought that perhaps she might someday be my wife and that I may be
missing that possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell
me, can I hope? Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!" he added
after a pause, and touched her hand as she did not reply.

"I am thinking of what you have told me," answered Princess Mary.
"This is what I will say. You are right that to speak to her of love
at present..."

Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to speak of love
was impossible, but she stopped because she had seen by the sudden
change in Natasha two days before that she would not only not be
hurt if Pierre spoke of his love, but that it was the very thing she
wished for.

"To speak to her now wouldn't do," said the princess all the same.

"But what am I to do?"

"Leave it to me," said Princess Mary. "I know..."

Pierre was looking into Princess Mary's eyes.

"Well?... Well?..." he said.

"I know that she loves... will love you," Princess Mary corrected
herself.

Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and with a
frightened expression seized Princess Mary's hand.

"What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You think...?"

"Yes, I think so," said Princess Mary with a smile. "Write to her
parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I wish it
to happen and my heart tells me it will."

"No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can't be.... How happy I
am! No, it can't be!" Pierre kept saying as he kissed Princess
Mary's hands.

"Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to you,"
she said.

"To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I'll go. But I may come again
tomorrow?"

Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natasha was less animated
than she had been the day before; but that day as he looked at her
Pierre sometimes felt as if he was vanishing and that neither he nor
she existed any longer, that nothing existed but happiness. "Is it
possible? No, it can't be," he told himself at every look, gesture,
and word that filled his soul with joy.

When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand, he could
not help holding it a little longer in his own.

"Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this
treasure of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it possible that
it will one day be mine forever, as familiar to me as I am to
myself?... No, that's impossible!..."

"Good-by, Count," she said aloud. "I shall look forward very much to
your return," she added in a whisper.

And these simple words, her look, and the expression on her face
which accompanied them, formed for two months the subject of
inexhaustible memories, interpretations, and happy meditations for
Pierre. "'I shall look forward very much to your return....' Yes, yes,
how did she say it? Yes, 'I shall look forward very much to your
return.' Oh, how happy I am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!"
said Pierre to himself.





CHAPTER XIX


There was nothing in Pierre's soul now at all like what had troubled
it during his courtship of Helene.

He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the
words he had spoken, or say: "Oh, why did I not say that?" and,
"Whatever made me say 'Je vous aime'?" On the contrary, he now
repeated in imagination every word that he or Natasha had spoken and
pictured every detail of her face and smile, and did not wish to
diminish or add anything, but only to repeat it again and again. There
was now not a shadow of doubt in his mind as to whether what he had
undertaken was right or wrong. Only one terrible doubt sometimes
crossed his mind: "Wasn't it all a dream? Isn't Princess Mary
mistaken? Am I not too conceited and self-confident? I believe all
this--and suddenly Princess Mary will tell her, and she will be sure
to smile and say: 'How strange! He must be deluding himself. Doesn't
he know that he is a man, just a man, while I...? I am something
altogether different and higher.'"

That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now
make any plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable
that if only he could attain it, it would be the end of all things.
Everything ended with that.

A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself
incapable, possessed him. The whole meaning of life--not for him alone
but for the whole world--seemed to him centered in his love and the
possibility of being loved by her. At times everybody seemed to him to
be occupied with one thing only--his future happiness. Sometimes it
seemed to him that other people were all as pleased as he was
himself and merely tried to hide that pleasure by pretending to be
busy with other interests. In every word and gesture he saw
allusions to his happiness. He often surprised those he met by his
significantly happy looks and smiles which seemed to express a
secret understanding between him and them. And when he realized that
people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied them with his
whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them that all that
occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of attention.

When it was suggested to him that he should enter the civil service,
or when the war or any general political affairs were discussed on the
assumption that everybody's welfare depended on this or that issue
of events, he would listen with a mild and pitying smile and
surprise people by his strange comments. But at this time he saw
everybody--both those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning
of life (that is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates who
evidently did not understand it--in the bright light of the emotion
that shone within himself, and at once without any effort saw in
everyone he met everything that was good and worthy of being loved.

When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead wife, her
memory aroused in him no feeling but pity that she had not known the
bliss he now knew. Prince Vasili, who having obtained a new post and
some fresh decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed
to him a pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.

Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity.
All the views he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained
true for him always. He not only did not renounce them subsequently,
but when he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the
views he had held at this time of his madness and they always proved
correct.

"I may have appeared strange and queer then," he thought, "but I was
not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had
more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is
worth understanding in life, because... because I was happy."

Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to
discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in
people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love,
and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes
for loving them.





CHAPTER XX


After Pierre's departure that first evening, when Natasha had said
to Princess Mary with a gaily mocking smile: "He looks just, yes, just
as if he had come out of a Russian bath--in a short coat and with
his hair cropped," something hidden and unknown to herself, but
irrepressible, awoke in Natasha's soul.

Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly altered.
To her own surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to
the surface and demanded satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to
have forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer
complained of her position, did not say a word about the past, and
no longer feared to make happy plans for the future. She spoke
little of Pierre, but when Princess Mary mentioned him a
long-extinguished light once more kindled in her eyes and her lips
curved with a strange smile.

The change that took place in Natasha at first surprised Princess
Mary; but when she understood its meaning it grieved her. "Can she
have loved my brother so little as to be able to forget him so
soon?" she thought when she reflected on the change. But when she
was with Natasha she was not vexed with her and did not reproach
her. The reawakened power of life that had seized Natasha was so
evidently irrepressible and unexpected by her that in her presence
Princess Mary felt that she had no right to reproach her even in her
heart.

Natasha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this new feeling
that she did not try to hide the fact that she was no longer sad,
but bright and cheerful.

When Princess Mary returned to her room after her nocturnal talk
with Pierre, Natasha met her on the threshold.

"He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?" she repeated.

And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to beg forgiveness
for her joy settled on Natasha's face.

"I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell me."

Understandable and touching as the look with which Natasha gazed
at her seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry as she was to see her
agitation, these words pained her for a moment. She remembered her
brother and his love.

"But what's to be done? She can't help it," thought the princess.

And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natasha all that
Pierre had said. On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natasha
was astounded.

"To Petersburg!" she repeated as if unable to understand.

But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary's face she
guessed the reason of that sadness and suddenly began to cry.

"Mary," said she, "tell me what I should do! I am afraid of being
bad. Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me...."

"You love him?"

"Yes," whispered Natasha.

"Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake," said Princess
Mary, who because of those tears quite forgave Natasha's joy.

"It won't be just yet--someday. Think what fun it will be when I
am his wife and you marry Nicholas!"

"Natasha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us talk about
you."

They were silent awhile.

"But why go to Petersburg?" Natasha suddenly asked, and hastily
replied to her own question. "But no, no, he must... Yes, Mary, He
must...."





FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 --20





CHAPTER I


Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of European history had
subsided within its shores and seemed to have become calm. But the
mysterious forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of
their motion are unknown to us) continued to operate.

Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the
movement of humanity went on as unceasingly as the flow of time.
Various groups of people formed and dissolved, the coming formation
and dissolution of kingdoms and displacement of peoples was in
course of preparation.

The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from shore to
shore as previously. It was seething in its depths. Historic figures
were not borne by the waves from one shore to another as before.
They now seemed to rotate on one spot. The historical figures at the
head of armies, who formerly reflected the movement of the masses by
ordering wars, campaigns, and battles, now reflected the restless
movement by political and diplomatic combinations, laws, and treaties.

The historians call this activity of the historical figures "the
reaction."

In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical
personages who, in their opinion, caused what they describe as the
reaction. All the well-known people of that period, from Alexander and
Napoleon to Madame de Stael, Photius, Schelling, Fichte,
Chateaubriand, and the rest, pass before their stern judgment seat and
are acquitted or condemned according to whether they conduced to
progress or to reaction.

According to their accounts a reaction took place at that time in
Russia also, and the chief culprit was Alexander I, the same man who
according to them was the chief cause of the liberal movement at the
commencement of his reign, being the savior of Russia.

There is no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist
to learned historian, who does not throw his little stone at Alexander
for things he did wrong at this period of his reign.

"He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In this case he
did well and in that case badly. He behaved admirably at the beginning
of his reign and during 1812, but acted badly by giving a constitution
to Poland, forming the Holy Alliance, entrusting power to Arakcheev,
favoring Golitsyn and mysticism, and afterwards Shishkov and
Photius. He also acted badly by concerning himself with the active
army and disbanding the Semenov regiment."

It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the reproaches the
historians address to him, based on their knowledge of what is good
for humanity.

What do these reproaches mean?

Do not the very actions for which the historians praise Alexander
I (the liberal attempts at the beginning of his reign, his struggle
with Napoleon, the firmness he displayed in 1812 and the campaign of
1813) flow from the same sources--the circumstances of his birth,
education, and life--that made his personality what it was and from
which the actions for which they blame him (the Holy Alliance, the
restoration of Poland, and the reaction of 1820 and later) also
flowed?

In what does the substance of those reproaches lie?

It lies in the fact that an historic character like Alexander I,
standing on the highest possible pinnacle of human power with the
blinding light of history focused upon him; a character exposed to
those strongest of all influences: the intrigues, flattery, and
self-deception inseparable from power; a character who at every moment
of his life felt a responsibility for all that was happening in
Europe; and not a fictitious but a live character who like every man
had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness,
beauty, and truth--that this character--though not lacking in virtue
(the historians do not accuse him of that)--had not the same
conception of the welfare of humanity fifty years ago as a present-day
professor who from his youth upwards has been occupied with
learning: that is, with books and lectures and with taking notes
from them.

But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I was
mistaken in his view of what was good for the people, we must
inevitably assume that the historian who judges Alexander will also
after the lapse of some time turn out to be mistaken in his view of
what is good for humanity. This assumption is all the more natural and
inevitable because, watching the movement of history, we see that
every year and with each new writer, opinion as to what is good for
mankind changes; so that what once seemed good, ten years later
seems bad, and vice versa. And what is more, we find at one and the
same time quite contradictory views as to what is bad and what is good
in history: some people regard giving a constitution to Poland and
forming the Holy Alliance as praiseworthy in Alexander, while others
regard it as blameworthy.

The activity of Alexander or of Napoleon cannot be called useful
or harmful, for it is impossible to say for what it was useful or
harmful. If that activity displeases somebody, this is only because it
does not agree with his limited understanding of what is good. Whether
the preservation of my father's house in Moscow, or the glory of the
Russian arms, or the prosperity of the Petersburg and other
universities, or the freedom of Poland or the greatness of Russia,
or the balance of power in Europe, or a certain kind of European
culture called "progress" appear to me to be good or bad, I must admit
that besides these things the action of every historic character has
other more general purposes inaccessible to me.

But let us assume that what is called science can harmonize all
contradictions and possesses an unchanging standard of good and bad by
which to try historic characters and events; let us say that Alexander
could have done everything differently; let us say that with
guidance from those who blame him and who profess to know the ultimate
aim of the movement of humanity, he might have arranged matters
according to the program his present accusers would have given him--of
nationality, freedom, equality, and progress (these, I think, cover
the ground). Let us assume that this program was possible and had then
been formulated, and that Alexander had acted on it. What would then
have become of the activity of all those who opposed the tendency that
then prevailed in the government--an activity that in the opinion of
the historians was good and beneficent? Their activity would not
have existed: there would have been no life, there would have been
nothing.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the
possibility of life is destroyed.





CHAPTER II


If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to
the attainment of certain ends--the greatness of Russia or of
France, the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas
of the Revolution, general progress, or anything else--then it is
impossible to explain the facts of history without introducing the
conceptions of chance and genius.

If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth
century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have
been accomplished without all the preceding wars and without the
invasion. If the aim was the aggrandizement of France, that might have
been attained without the Revolution and without the Empire. If the
aim was the dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have
accomplished that much better than warfare. If the aim was the
progress of civilization, it is easy to see that there are other
ways of diffusing civilization more expedient than by the
destruction of wealth and of human lives.

Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?

Because it happened so! "Chance created the situation; genius
utilized it," says history.

But what is chance? What is genius?

The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing
thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a
certain stage of understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a
certain event occurs; I think that I cannot know it; so I do not try
to know it and I talk about chance. I see a force producing effects
beyond the scope of ordinary human agencies; I do not understand why
this occurs and I talk of genius.

To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a
special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the
others must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing
conjunction of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances
that this ram, who instead of getting into the general fold every
evening goes into a special enclosure where there are oats--that
this very ram, swelling with fat, is killed for meat.

But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens to
them happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they
need only admit that what happens to them may also have purposes
beyond their ken, and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence
in what happened to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not
know for what purpose they are fattened, they will at least know
that all that happened to the ram did not happen accidentally, and
will no longer need the conceptions of chance or genius.

Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately
intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond
our ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives of
historic characters and perceive the cause of the effect they
produce (incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and then
the words chance and genius become superfluous.

We need only confess that we do not know the purpose of the European
convulsions and that we know only the facts--that is, the murders,
first in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria,
in Spain, and in Russia--and that the movements from the west to the
east and from the east to the west form the essence and purpose of
these events, and not only shall we have no need to see exceptional
ability and genius in Napoleon and Alexander, but we shall be unable
to consider them to be anything but like other men, and we shall not
be obliged to have recourse to chance for an explanation of those
small events which made these people what they were, but it will be
clear that all those small events were inevitable.

By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate purpose, we shall
clearly perceive that just as one cannot imagine a blossom or seed for
any single plant better suited to it than those it produces, so it
is impossible to imagine any two people more completely adapted down
to the smallest detail for the purpose they had to fulfill, than
Napoleon and Alexander with all their antecedents.





CHAPTER III


The fundamental and essential significance of the European events of
the beginning of the nineteenth century lies in the movement of the
mass of the European peoples from west to east and afterwards from
east to west. The commencement of that movement was the movement
from west to east. For the peoples of the west to be able to make
their warlike movement to Moscow it was necessary: (1) that they
should form themselves into a military group of a size able to
endure a collision with the warlike military group of the east, (2)
that they should abandon all established traditions and customs, and
(3) that during their military movement they should have at their head
a man who could justify to himself and to them the deceptions,
robberies, and murders which would have to be committed during that
movement.

And beginning with the French Revolution the old inadequately
large group was destroyed, as well as the old habits and traditions,
and step by step a group was formed of larger dimensions with new
customs and traditions, and a man was produced who would stand at
the head of the coming movement and bear the responsibility for all
that had to be done.

A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions,
without a name, and not even a Frenchman, emerges--by what seem the
strangest chances--from among all the seething French parties, and
without joining any one of them is borne forward to a prominent
position.

The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance
of his opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods, and the dazzling
and self-confident limitations of this man raise him to the head of
the army. The brilliant qualities of the soldiers of the army sent
to Italy, his opponents' reluctance to fight, and his own childish
audacity and self-confidence secure him military fame. Innumerable
so called chances accompany him everywhere. The disfavor into which he
falls with the rulers of France turns to his advantage. His attempts
to avoid his predestined path are unsuccessful: he is not received
into the Russian service, and the appointment he seeks in Turkey comes
to nothing. During the war in Italy he is several times on the verge
of destruction and each time is saved in an unexpected manner. Owing
to various diplomatic considerations the Russian armies--just those
which might have destroyed his prestige--do not appear upon the
scene till he is no longer there.

On his return from Italy he finds the government in Paris in a process
of dissolution in which all those who are in it are inevitably wiped
out and destroyed. And by chance an escape from this dangerous
position presents itself in the form of an aimless and senseless
expedition to Africa. Again so-called chance accompanies him.
Impregnable Malta surrenders without a shot; his most reckless schemes
are crowned with success. The enemy's fleet, which subsequently did
not let a single boat pass, allows his entire army to elude it. In
Africa a whole series of outrages are committed against the almost
unarmed inhabitants. And the men who commit these crimes, especially
their leader, assure themselves that this is admirable, this is
glory--it resembles Caesar and Alexander the Great and is therefore
good.

This ideal of glory and grandeur--which consists not merely in
considering nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on
every crime one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible
supernatural significance--that ideal, destined to guide this man
and his associates, had scope for its development in Africa.
Whatever he does succeeds. The plague does not touch him. The
cruelty of murdering prisoners is not imputed to him as a fault. His
childishly rash, uncalled-for, and ignoble departure from Africa,
leaving his comrades in distress, is set down to his credit, and again
the enemy's fleet twice lets him slip past. When, intoxicated by the
crimes he has committed so successfully, he reaches Paris, the
dissolution of the republican government, which a year earlier might
have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and his presence there
now as a newcomer free from party entanglements can only serve to
exalt him--and though he himself has no plan, he is quite ready for
his new role.

He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the parties
snatched at him and demanded his participation.

He alone--with his ideal of glory and grandeur developed in Italy
and Egypt, his insane self-adulation, his boldness in crime and
frankness in lying--he alone could justify what had to be done.

He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so almost apart from
his will and despite his indecision, his lack of a plan, and all his
mistakes, he is drawn into a conspiracy that aims at seizing power and
the conspiracy is crowned with success.

He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm he wishes
to flee, considering himself lost. He pretends to fall into a swoon
and says senseless things that should have ruined him. But the once
proud and shrewd rulers of France, feeling that their part is played
out, are even more bewildered than he, and do not say the words they
should have said to destroy him and retain their power.

Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all men as if by
agreement co-operate to confirm that power. Chance forms the
characters of the rulers of France, who submit to him; chance forms
the character of Paul I of Russia who recognizes his government;
chance contrives a plot against him which not only fails to harm him
but confirms his power. Chance puts the Duc d'Enghien in his hands and
unexpectedly causes him to kill him--thereby convincing the mob more
forcibly than in any other way that he had the right, since he had the
might. Chance contrives that though he directs all his efforts to
prepare an expedition against England (which would inevitably have
ruined him) he never carries out that intention, but unexpectedly
falls upon Mack and the Austrians, who surrender without a battle.
Chance and genius give him the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance
all men, not only the French but all Europe--except England which does
not take part in the events about to happen--despite their former
horror and detestation of his crimes, now recognize his authority, the
title he has given himself, and his ideal of grandeur and glory, which
seems excellent and reasonable to them all.

As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming movement,
the western forces push toward the east several times in 1805, 1806,
1807, and 1809, gaining strength and growing. In 1811 the group of
people that had formed in France unites into one group with the
peoples of Central Europe. The strength of the justification of the
man who stands at the head of the movement grows with the increased
size of the group. During the ten-year preparatory period this man had
formed relations with all the crowned heads of Europe. The discredited
rulers of the world can oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate
Napoleonic ideal of glory and grandeur. One after another they
hasten to display their insignificance before him. The King of Prussia
sends his wife to seek the great man's mercy; the Emperor of Austria
considers it a favor that this man receives a daughter of the Caesars
into his bed; the Pope, the guardian of all that the nations hold
sacred, utilizes religion for the aggrandizement of the great man.
It is not Napoleon who prepares himself for the accomplishment of
his role, so much as all those round him who prepare him to take on
himself the whole responsibility for what is happening and has to
happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud he commits, which in
the mouths of those around him is not at once represented as a great
deed. The most suitable fete the Germans can devise for him is a
celebration of Jena and Auerstadt. Not only is he great, but so are
his ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, and his brothers-in-law.
Everything is done to deprive him of the remains of his reason and
to prepare him for his terrible part. And when he is ready so too
are the forces.

The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goal--Moscow.
That city is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier losses than the
opposing armies had suffered in the former war from Austerlitz to
Wagram. But suddenly instead of those chances and that genius which
hitherto had so consistently led him by an uninterrupted series of
successes to the predestined goal, an innumerable sequence of
inverse chances occur--from the cold in his head at Borodino to the
sparks which set Moscow on fire, and the frosts--and instead of
genius, stupidity and immeasurable baseness become evident.

The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are
now not for Napoleon but always against him.

A countermovement is then accomplished from east to west with a
remarkable resemblance to the preceding movement from west to east.
Attempted drives from east to west--similar to the contrary
movements of 1805, 1807, and 1809--precede the great westward
movement; there is the same coalescence into a group of enormous
dimensions; the same adhesion of the people of Central Europe to the
movement; the same hesitation midway, and the same increasing rapidity
as the goal is approached.

Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government
and army are destroyed. Napoleon himself is no longer of any
account; all his actions are evidently pitiful and mean, but again
an inexplicable chance occurs. The allies detest Napoleon whom they
regard as the cause of their sufferings. Deprived of power and
authority, his crimes and his craft exposed, he should have appeared
to them what he appeared ten years previously and one year later--an
outlawed brigand. But by some strange chance no one perceives this.
His part is not yet ended. The man who ten years before and a year
later was considered an outlawed brigand is sent to an island two
days' sail from France, which for some reason is presented to him as
his dominion, and guards are given to him and millions of money are
paid him.





CHAPTER IV


The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal channels. The
waves of the great movement abate, and on the calm surface eddies
are formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have
caused the floods to abate.

But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed. The
diplomatists think that their disagreements are the cause of this
fresh pressure of natural forces; they anticipate war between their
sovereigns; the position seems to them insoluble. But the wave they
feel to be rising does not come from the quarter they expect. It rises
again from the same point as before--Paris. The last backwash of the
movement from the west occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the
apparently insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the military
movement of that period of history.

The man who had devastated France returns to France alone, without
any conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, but
by strange chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the man
they cursed the day before and will curse again a month later.

This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.

That act is performed.

The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash off
his powder and paint: he will not be wanted any more.

And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to
himself in solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues
and lies when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to
the whole world what it was that people had mistaken for strength as
long as an unseen hand directed his actions.

The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped the
actor shows him to us.

"See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was
not he but I who moved you?"

But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people
understood this.

Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life of
Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement from
east to west.

What was needed for him who, overshadowing others, stood at the head
of that movement from east to west?

What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy with
European affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests;
a moral superiority over those sovereigns of the day who co-operated
with him; a mild and attractive personality; and a personal
grievance against Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander I; all
this had been prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life:
his education, his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded
him, and by Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.

During the national war he was inactive because he was not needed.
But as soon as the necessity for a general European war presented
itself he appeared in his place at the given moment and, uniting the
nations of Europe, led them to the goal.

The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander possesses
all possible power. How does he use it?

Alexander I--the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his early
years had striven only for his people's welfare, the originator of the
liberal innovations in his fatherland--now that he seemed to possess
the utmost power and therefore to have the possibility of bringing
about the welfare of his peoples--at the time when Napoleon in exile
was drawing up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made
mankind happy had he retained power--Alexander I, having fulfilled his
mission and feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly recognizes
the insignificance of that supposed power, turns away from it, and
gives it into the hands of contemptible men whom he despises, saying
only:

"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am a man like
the rest of you. Let me live like a man and think of my soul and of
God."

As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself,
and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to
comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet
has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.

A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is
afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet
admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it
exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee
collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it
exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life
of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed
the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate
its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of
a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this
the purpose of the bee's existence. Another, observing the migration
of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that
in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the
bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes
the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in
the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the
ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.

All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee
to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of
historic characters and nations.





CHAPTER V


Natasha's wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in 1813, was the
last happy event in the family of the old Rostovs. Count Ilya Rostov
died that same year and, as always happens, after the father's death
the family group broke up.

The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow and the
flight from it, the death of Prince Andrew, Natasha's despair, Petya's
death, and the old countess' grief fell blow after blow on the old
count's head. He seemed to be unable to understand the meaning of
all these events, and bowed his old head in a spiritual sense as if
expecting and inviting further blows which would finish him. He seemed
now frightened and distraught and now unnaturally animated and
enterprising.

The arrangements for Natasha's marriage occupied him for a while. He
ordered dinners and suppers and obviously tried to appear cheerful,
but his cheerfulness was not infectious as it used to be: on the
contrary it evoked the compassion of those who knew and liked him.

When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet and began to
complain of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his
bed. He realized from the first that he would not get up again,
despite the doctor's encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in
an armchair by his pillow without undressing. Every time she gave
him his medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand. On his last
day, sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for
having dissipated their property--that being the chief fault of
which he was conscious. After receiving communion and unction he
quietly died; and next day a throng of acquaintances who came to pay
their last respects to the deceased filled the house rented by the
Rostovs. All these acquaintances, who had so often dined and danced at
his house and had so often laughed at him, now said, with a common
feeling of self-reproach and emotion, as if justifying themselves:
"Well, whatever he may have been he was a most worthy man. You don't
meet such men nowadays.... And which of us has not weaknesses of his
own?"

It was just when the count's affairs had become so involved that
it was impossible to say what would happen if he lived another year
that he unexpectedly died.

Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the news of his
father's death reached him. He at once resigned his commission, and
without waiting for it to be accepted took leave of absence and went
to Moscow. The state of the count's affairs became quite obvious a
month after his death, surprising everyone by the immense total of
small debts the existence of which no one had suspected. The debts
amounted to double the value of the property.

Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance.
But he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his father's memory, which
he held sacred, and therefore would not hear of refusing and
accepted the inheritance together with the obligation to pay the
debts.

The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained by a vague but
powerful influence exerted on them while he lived by the count's
careless good nature, all proceeded to enforce their claims at once.
As always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should
get paid first, and those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given
them as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors.
Nicholas was allowed no respite and no peace, and those who had seemed
to pity the old man--the cause of their losses (if they were
losses)--now remorselessly pursued the young heir who had
voluntarily undertaken the debts and was obviously not guilty of
contracting them.

Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the estate was sold
by auction for half its value, and half the debts still remained
unpaid. Nicholas accepted thirty thousand rubles offered him by his
brother-in-law Bezukhov to pay off debts he regarded as genuinely
due for value received. And to avoid being imprisoned for the
remainder, as the creditors threatened, he re-entered the government
service.

He could not rejoin the army where he would have been made colonel
at the next vacancy, for his mother now clung to him as her one hold
on life; and so despite his reluctance to remain in Moscow among people
who had known him before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil
service, he accepted a post in Moscow in that service, doffed the
uniform of which he was so fond, and moved with his mother and Sonya
to a small house on the Sivtsev Vrazhek.

Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time and had
no clear idea of Nicholas' circumstances. Having borrowed money from
his brother-in-law, Nicholas tried to hide his wretched condition from
him. His position was the more difficult because with his salary of
twelve hundred rubles he had not only to keep himself, his mother, and
Sonya, but had to shield his mother from knowledge of their poverty.
The countess could not conceive of life without the luxurious
conditions she had been used to from childhood and, unable to
realize how hard it was for her son, kept demanding now a carriage
(which they did not keep) to send for a friend, now some expensive
article of food for herself, or wine for her son, or money to buy a
present as a surprise for Natasha or Sonya, or for Nicholas himself.

Sonya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her, put up with her
whims and secret ill-will, and helped Nicholas to conceal their
poverty from the old countess. Nicholas felt himself irredeemably
indebted to Sonya for all she was doing for his mother and greatly
admired her patience and devotion, but tried to keep aloof from her.

He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too perfect, and
because there was nothing to reproach her with. She had all that
people are valued for, but little that could have made him love her.
He felt that the more he valued her the less he loved her. He had
taken her at her word when she wrote giving him his freedom and now
behaved as if all that had passed between them had been long forgotten
and could never in any case be renewed.

Nicholas' position became worse and worse. The idea of putting
something aside out of his salary proved a dream. Not only did he
not save anything, but to comply with his mother's demands he even
incurred some small debts. He could see no way out of this
situation. The idea of marrying some rich woman, which was suggested
to him by his female relations, was repugnant to him. The other way
out--his mother's death--never entered his head. He wished for nothing
and hoped for nothing, and deep in his heart experienced a gloomy
and stern satisfaction in an uncomplaining endurance of his
position. He tried to avoid his old acquaintances with their
commiseration and offensive offers of assistance; he avoided all
distraction and recreation, and even at home did nothing but play
cards with his mother, pace silently up and down the room, and smoke
one pipe after another. He seemed carefully to cherish within
himself the gloomy mood which alone enabled him to endure his
position.





CHAPTER VI


At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to Moscow. From
reports current in town she learned how the Rostovs were situated, and
how "the son has sacrificed himself for his mother," as people were
saying.

"I never expected anything else of him," said Princess Mary to
herself, feeling a joyous sense of her love for him. Remembering her
friendly relations with all the Rostovs which had made her almost a
member of the family, she thought it her duty to go to see them. But
remembering her relations with Nicholas in Voronezh she was shy
about doing so. Making a great effort she did however go to call on
them a few weeks after her arrival in Moscow.

Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess' room could only
be reached through his. But instead of being greeted with pleasure
as she had expected, at his first glance at her his face assumed a
cold, stiff, proud expression she had not seen on it before. He
inquired about her health, led the way to his mother, and having sat
there for five minutes left the room.

When the princess came out of the countess' room Nicholas met her
again, and with marked solemnity and stiffness accompanied her to
the anteroom. To her remarks about his mother's health he made no
reply. "What's that to you? Leave me in peace," his looks seemed to
say.

"Why does she come prowling here? What does she want? I can't bear
these ladies and all these civilities!" said he aloud in Sonya's
presence, evidently unable to repress his vexation, after the
princess' carriage had disappeared.

"Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?" cried Sonya, hardly able
to conceal her delight. "She is so kind and Mamma is so fond of her!"

Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of the princess
any more. But after her visit the old countess spoke of her several
times a day.

She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on her,
expressed a wish to see her often, but yet always became ill-humored
when she began to talk about her.

Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke of the
princess, but his silence irritated her.

"She is a very admirable and excellent young woman," said she,
"and you must go and call on her. You would at least be seeing
somebody, and I think it must be dull for you only seeing us."

"But I don't in the least want to, Mamma."

"You used to want to, and now you don't. Really I don't understand
you, my dear. One day you are dull, and the next you refuse to see
anyone."

"But I never said I was dull."

"Why, you said yourself you don't want even to see her. She is a
very admirable young woman and you always liked her, but now
suddenly you have got some notion or other in your head. You hide
everything from me."

"Not at all, Mamma."

"If I were asking you to do something disagreeable now--but I only
ask you to return a call. One would think mere politeness required
it.... Well, I have asked you, and now I won't interfere any more
since you have secrets from your mother."

"Well, then, I'll go if you wish it."

"It doesn't matter to me. I only wish it for your sake."

Nicholas sighed, bit his mustache, and laid out the cards for a
patience, trying to divert his mother's attention to another topic.

The same conversation was repeated next day and the day after, and
the day after that.

After her visit to the Rostovs and her unexpectedly chilly reception
by Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to herself that she had been
right in not wishing to be the first to call.

"I expected nothing else," she told herself, calling her pride to
her aid. "I have nothing to do with him and I only wanted to see the
old lady, who was always kind to me and to whom I am under many
obligations."

But she could not pacify herself with these reflections; a feeling
akin to remorse troubled her when she thought of her visit. Though she
had firmly resolved not to call on the Rostovs again and to forget the
whole matter, she felt herself all the time in an awkward position.
And when she asked herself what distressed her, she had to admit
that it was her relation to Rostov. His cold, polite manner did not
express his feeling for her (she knew that) but it concealed
something, and until she could discover what that something was, she
felt that she could not be at ease.

One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom attending to her
nephew's lessons, she was informed that Rostov had called. With a firm
resolution not to betray herself and not show her agitation, she
sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne and went with her to the drawing room.

Her first glance at Nicholas' face told her that he had only come to
fulfill the demands of politeness, and she firmly resolved to maintain
the tone in which he addressed her.

They spoke of the countess' health, of their mutual friends, of
the latest war news, and when the ten minutes required by propriety
had elapsed after which a visitor may rise, Nicholas got up to say
good-by.

With Mademoiselle Bourienne's help the princess had maintained the
conversation very well, but at the very last moment, just when he
rose, she was so tired of talking of what did not interest her, and
her mind was so full of the question why she alone was granted so
little happiness in life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat
still, her luminous eyes gazing fixedly before her, not noticing
that he had risen.

Nicholas glanced at her and, wishing to appear not to notice her
abstraction, made some remark to Mademoiselle Bourienne and then again
looked at the princess. She still sat motionless with a look of
suffering on her gentle face. He suddenly felt sorry for her and was
vaguely conscious that he might be the cause of the sadness her face
expressed. He wished to help her and say something pleasant, but could
think of nothing to say.

"Good-by, Princess!" said he.

She started, flushed, and sighed deeply.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said as if waking up. "Are you going
already, Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but the cushion for the
countess!"

"Wait a moment, I'll fetch it," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she
left the room.

They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another.

"Yes, Princess," said Nicholas at last with a sad smile, "it doesn't
seem long ago since we first met at Bogucharovo, but how much water
has flowed since then! In what distress we all seemed to be then,
yet I would give much to bring back that time... but there's no
bringing it back."

Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her own luminous
ones as he said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden
meaning of his words which would explain his feeling for her.

"Yes, yes," said she, "but you have no reason to regret the past,
Count. As I understand your present life, I think you will always
recall it with satisfaction, because the self-sacrifice that fills
it now..."

"I cannot accept your praise," he interrupted her hurriedly. "On the
contrary I continually reproach myself.... But this is not at all an
interesting or cheerful subject."

His face again resumed its former stiff and cold expression. But the
princess had caught a glimpse of the man she had known and loved,
and it was to him that she now spoke.

"I thought you would allow me to tell you this," she said. "I had
come so near to you... and to all your family that I thought you would
not consider my sympathy misplaced, but I was mistaken," and
suddenly her voice trembled. "I don't know why," she continued,
recovering herself, "but you used to be different, and..."

"There are a thousand reasons why," laying special emphasis on the
why. "Thank you, Princess," he added softly. "Sometimes it is hard."

"So that's why! That's why!" a voice whispered in Princess Mary's
soul. "No, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank look, not only
that handsome exterior, that I loved in him. I divined his noble,
resolute, self-sacrificing spirit too," she said to herself. "Yes,
he is poor now and I am rich.... Yes, that's the only reason....
Yes, were it not for that..." And remembering his former tenderness,
and looking now at his kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood
the cause of his coldness.

"But why, Count, why?" she almost cried, unconsciously moving closer
to him. "Why? Tell me. You must tell me!"

He was silent.

"I don't understand your why, Count," she continued, "but it's
hard for me... I confess it. For some reason you wish to deprive me of
our former friendship. And that hurts me." There were tears in her
eyes and in her voice. "I have had so little happiness in life that
every loss is hard for me to bear.... Excuse me, good-by!" and
suddenly she began to cry and was hurrying from the room.

"Princess, for God's sake!" he exclaimed, trying to stop her.
"Princess!"

She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one
another's eyes--and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly
became possible, inevitable, and very near.





CHAPTER VII


In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to
Bald Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya.

Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without
selling any of his wife's property, and having received a small
inheritance on the death of a cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as
well.

In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairs
that he was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and was
negotiating to buy back Otradnoe--that being his pet dream.

Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it
that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas
was a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the
English ones then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical
treatises on estate management, disliked factories, the raising of
expensive products, and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not
make a hobby of any particular part of the work on his estate. He
always had before his mind's eye the estate as a whole and not any
particular part of it. The chief thing in his eyes was not the
nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air, nor manures, nor
special plows, but that most important agent by which nitrogen,
oxygen, manure, and plow were made effective--the peasant laborer.
When Nicholas first began farming and began to understand its
different branches, it was the serf who especially attracted his
attention. The peasant seemed to him not merely a tool, but also a
judge of farming and an end in himself. At first he watched the serfs,
trying to understand their aims and what they considered good and bad,
and only pretended to direct them and give orders while in reality
learning from them their methods, their manner of speech, and their
judgment of what was good and bad. Only when he had understood the
peasants' tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their
language, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin to
them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to perform
toward them the duties demanded of him. And Nicholas' management
produced very brilliant results.

Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of the
estates he at once unerringly appointed as bailiff, village elder, and
delegate, the very men the serfs would themselves have chosen had they
had the right to choose, and these posts never changed hands. Before
analyzing the properties of manure, before entering into the debit and
credit (as he ironically called it), he found out how many cattle
the peasants had and increased the number by all possible means. He
kept the peasant families together in the largest groups possible, not
allowing the family groups to divide into separate households. He
was hard alike on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to
get them expelled from the commune.

He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the peasants' hay and
corn as of his own, and few landowners had their crops sown and
harvested so early and so well, or got so good a return, as did
Nicholas.

He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs--the
"drones" as he called them--and everyone said he spoiled them by his
laxity. When a decision had to be taken regarding a domestic serf,
especially if one had to be punished, he always felt undecided and
consulted everybody in the house; but when it was possible to have a
domestic serf conscripted instead of a land worker he did so without
the least hesitation. He never felt any hesitation in dealing with the
peasants. He knew that his every decision would be approved by them
all with very few exceptions.

He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or to
make things easy for or reward anyone, merely because he felt inclined
to do so. He could not have said by what standard he judged what he
should or should not do, but the standard was quite firm and
definite in his own mind.

Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, he
would say: "What can one do with our Russian peasants?" and imagined
that he could not bear them.

Yet he loved "our Russian peasants" and their way of life with his
whole soul, and for that very reason had understood and assimilated
the one way and manner of farming which produced good results.

Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband's and
regretted that she could not share it; but she could not understand
the joys and vexations he derived from that world, to her so remote
and alien. She could not understand why he was so particularly
animated and happy when, after getting up at daybreak and spending the
whole morning in the fields or on the threshing floor, he returned
from the sowing or mowing or reaping to have tea with her. She did not
understand why he spoke with such admiration and delight of the
farming of the thrifty and well-to-do peasant Matthew Ermishin, who
with his family had carted corn all night; or of the fact that his
(Nicholas') sheaves were already stacked before anyone else had his
harvest in. She did not understand why he stepped out from the
window to the veranda and smiled under his mustache and winked so
joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall on the dry and thirsty
shoots of the young oats, or why when the wind carried away a
threatening cloud during the hay harvest he would return from the
barn, flushed, sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of wormwood and
gentian in his hair and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would say:
"Well, one more day and my grain and the peasants' will all be under
cover."

Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always ready
to anticipate her wishes, should become almost desperate when she
brought him a petition from some peasant men or women who had appealed
to her to be excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, should
obstinately refuse her, angrily asking her not to interfere in what
was not her business. She felt he had a world apart, which he loved
passionately and which had laws she had not fathomed.

Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke of the good work
he was doing for his serfs, he would be vexed and reply: "Not in the
least; it never entered my head and I wouldn't do that for their good!
That's all poetry and old wives' talk--all that doing good to one's
neighbor! What I want is that our children should not have to go
begging. I must put our affairs in order while I am alive, that's all.
And to do that, order and strictness are essential.... That's all
about it!" said he, clenching his vigorous fist. "And fairness, of
course," he added, "for if the peasant is naked and hungry and has
only one miserable horse, he can do no good either for himself or
for me."

And all Nicholas did was fruitful--probably just because he
refused to allow himself to think that he was doing good to others for
virtue's sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring
estates came to beg him to buy them, and long after his death the
memory of his administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs.
"He was a master... the peasants' affairs first and then his own. Of
course he was not to be trifled with either--in a word, he was a
real master!"





CHAPTER VIII


One matter connected with his management sometimes worried Nicholas,
and that was his quick temper together with his old hussar habit of
making free use of his fists. At first he saw nothing reprehensible in
this, but in the second year of his marriage his view of that form
of punishment suddenly changed.

Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from Bogucharovo, a
man who had succeeded to the post when Dron died and who was accused
of dishonesty and various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the
porch to question him, and immediately after the elder had given a few
replies the sound of cries and blows were heard. On returning to lunch
Nicholas went up to his wife, who sat with her head bent low over
her embroidery frame, and as usual began to tell her what he had
been doing that morning. Among other things he spoke of the
Bogucharovo elder. Countess Mary turned red and then pale, but
continued to sit with head bowed and lips compressed and gave her
husband no reply.

"Such an insolent scoundrel!" he cried, growing hot again at the
mere recollection of him. "If he had told me he was drunk and did
not see... But what is the matter with you, Mary?" he suddenly asked.

Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but hastily looked
down again and her lips puckered.

"Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?"

The looks of the plain Countess Mary always improved when she was in
tears. She never cried from pain or vexation, but always from sorrow
or pity, and when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible
charm.

The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no longer restrain
herself and began to cry.

"Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do you... Nicholas!"
and she covered her face with her hands.

Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her side, and
paced up and down the room. He understood what she was weeping
about, but could not in his heart at once agree with her that what
he had regarded from childhood as quite an everyday event was wrong.
"Is it just sentimentality, old wives' tales, or is she right?" he
asked himself. Before he had solved that point he glanced again at her
face filled with love and pain, and he suddenly realized that she
was right and that he had long been sinning against himself.

"Mary," he said softly, going up to her, "it will never happen
again; I give you my word. Never," he repeated in a trembling voice
like a boy asking for forgiveness.

The tears flowed faster still from the countess' eyes. She took
his hand and kissed it.

"Nicholas, when did you break your cameo?" she asked to change the
subject, looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with a cameo
of Laocoon's head.

"Today--it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don't remind me of it!"
and again he flushed. "I give you my word of honor it shan't occur
again, and let this always be a reminder to me," and he pointed to the
broken ring.

After that, when in discussions with his village elders or
stewards the blood rushed to his face and his fists began to clench,
Nicholas would turn the broken ring on his finger and would drop his
eyes before the man who was making him angry. But he did forget
himself once or twice within a twelvemonth, and then he would go and
confess to his wife, and would again promise that this should really
be the very last time.

"Mary, you must despise me!" he would say. "I deserve it."

"You should go, go away at once, if you don't feel strong enough
to control yourself," she would reply sadly, trying to comfort her
husband.

Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected but not
liked. He did not concern himself with the interests of his own class,
and consequently some thought him proud and others thought him stupid.
The whole summer, from spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with
the work on his farm. In autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the
same business like seriousness--leaving home for a month, or even two,
with his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or spent his
time reading. The books he read were chiefly historical, and on
these he spent a certain sum every year. He was collecting, as he
said, a serious library, and he made it a rule to read through all the
books he bought. He would sit in his study with a grave air,
reading--a task he first imposed upon himself as a duty, but which
afterwards became a habit affording him a special kind of pleasure and
a consciousness of being occupied with serious matters. In winter,
except for business excursions, he spent most of his time at home
making himself one with his family and entering into all the details
of his children's relations with their mother. The harmony between him
and his wife grew closer and closer and he daily discovered fresh
spiritual treasures in her.

From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his house. Before
that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself
and Sonya, blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess
Mary to be gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized
the wrong he had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward her, and
imagined that her wealth had influenced Nicholas' choice. She could
not find fault with Sonya in any way and tried to be fond of her,
but often felt ill-will toward her which she could not overcome.

Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about Sonya and about
her own injustice toward her.

"You know," said Natasha, "you have read the Gospels a great
deal--there is a passage in them that just fits Sonya."

"What?" asked Countess Mary, surprised.

"'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not
shall be taken away.' You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I
don't know. Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don't know, but from her is
taken away, and everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am
dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to
marry her, but I always had a sort of presentiment that it would not
come off. She is a sterile flower, you know--like some strawberry
blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she
doesn't feel it as you or I would."

Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words in the Gospel
must be understood differently, yet looking at Sonya she agreed with
Natasha's explanation. It really seemed that Sonya did not feel her
position trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a
sterile flower. She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of
the family as a whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the
people but to the home. She waited on the old countess, petted and
spoiled the children, was always ready to render the small services
for which she had a gift, and all this was unconsciously accepted from
her with insufficient gratitude.

The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the
same scale as under the old prince.

The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more
than simple. The immense house on the old stone foundations was of
wood, plastered only inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished
with very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by
their own serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was
spacious and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for
visitors. Whole families of the Rostovs' and Bolkonskis' relations
sometimes came to Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of
servants and stayed for months. Besides that, four times a year, on
the name days and birthdays of the hosts, as many as a hundred
visitors would gather there for a day or two. The rest of the year
life pursued its unbroken routine with its ordinary occupations, and
its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers, provided out of the
produce of the estate.





CHAPTER IX


It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natasha
had been staying at her brother's with her husband and children
since early autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his
own for three weeks as he said, but had remained there nearly seven
weeks and was expected back every minute.

Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas' old friend the retired
General Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the Rostovs this
fifth of December.

On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of
visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for
a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to
the new church he had built, and then receive visitors who would
come to congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about
the elections of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled to
spend the eve of that day in his usual way. He examined the
bailiff's accounts of the village in Ryazan which belonged to his
wife's nephew, wrote two business letters, and walked over to the
granaries, cattle yards and stables before dinner. Having taken
precautions against the general drunkenness to be expected on the
morrow because it was a great saint's day, he returned to dinner,
and without having time for a private talk with his wife sat down at
the long table laid for twenty persons, at which the whole household
had assembled. At that table were his mother, his mother's old lady
companion Belova, his wife, their three children with their
governess and tutor, his wife's nephew with his tutor, Sonya, Denisov,
Natasha, her three children, their governess, and old Michael
Ivanovich, the late prince's architect, who was living on in
retirement at Bald Hills.

Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When her husband
took his place she concluded, from the rapid manner in which after
taking up his table napkin he pushed back the tumbler and wineglass
standing before him, that he was out of humor, as was sometimes the
case when he came in to dinner straight from the farm--especially
before the soup. Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and when
she herself was in a good frame of mind quietly waited till he had had
his soup and then began to talk to him and make him admit that there
was no cause for his ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that and
was hurt that he should be angry with her without any reason, and
she felt unhappy. She asked him where he had been. He replied. She
again inquired whether everything was going well on the farm. Her
unnatural tone made him wince unpleasantly and he replied hastily.

"Then I'm not mistaken," thought Countess Mary. "Why is he cross
with me?" She concluded from his tone that he was vexed with her and
wished to end the conversation. She knew her remarks sounded
unnatural, but could not refrain from asking some more questions.

Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon became general
and lively, and she did not talk to her husband. When they left the
table and went as usual to thank the old countess, Countess Mary
held out her hand and kissed her husband, and asked him why he was
angry with her.

"You always have such strange fancies! I didn't even think of
being angry," he replied.

But the word always seemed to her to imply: "Yes, I am angry but I
won't tell you why."

Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sonya
and the old countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to
disagree, could find nothing to reproach them with; but even they
had their moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always
just after they had been happiest together, they suddenly had a
feeling of estrangement and hostility, which occurred most
frequently during Countess Mary's pregnancies, and this was such a
time.

"Well, messieurs et mesdames," said Nicholas loudly and with
apparent cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary that he did it on
purpose to vex her), "I have been on my feet since six this morning.
Tomorrow I shall have to suffer, so today I'll go and rest."

And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room
and lay down on the sofa.

"That's always the way," thought Countess Mary. "He talks to
everyone except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive to him,
especially when I am in this condition." She looked down at her
expanded figure and in the glass at her pale, sallow, emaciated face
in which her eyes now looked larger than ever.

And everything annoyed her--Denisov's shouting and laughter,
Natasha's talk, and especially a quick glance Sonya gave her.

Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found for feeling
irritated.

Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything
of what they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the
nursery.

The children were playing at "going to Moscow" in a carriage made of
chairs and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with
them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable
crossness worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with
difficulty, went to the small sitting room.

"Perhaps he is not asleep; I'll have an explanation with him," she
said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his
mother, followed her on tiptoe. She did not notice him.

"Mary, dear, I think he is asleep--he was so tired," said Sonya,
meeting her in the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Mary that
she crossed her path everywhere). "Andrew may wake him."

Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt
that Sonya was right, and for that very reason flushed and with
evident difficulty refrained from saying something harsh. She made
no reply, but to avoid obeying Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow
her quietly and went to the door. Sonya went away by another door.
From the room in which Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his
even breathing, every slightest tone of which was familiar to his
wife. As she listened to it she saw before her his smooth handsome
forehead, his mustache, and his whole face, as she had so often seen
it in the stillness of the night when he slept. Nicholas suddenly
moved and cleared his throat. And at that moment little Andrew shouted
from outside the door: "Papa! Mamma's standing here!" Countess Mary
turned pale with fright and made signs to the boy. He grew silent, and
quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to Countess Mary. She knew how
Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through the door she heard
Nicholas clearing his throat again and stirring, and his voice said
crossly:

"I can't get a moment's peace.... Mary, is that you? Why did you
bring him here?"

"I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me..."

Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary moved away from the
door and took the boy back to the nursery. Five minutes later little
black-eyed three-year-old Natasha, her father's pet, having learned
from her brother that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting
room, ran to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed little
girl boldly opened the creaking door, went up to the sofa with
energetic steps of her sturdy little legs, and having examined the
position of her father, who was asleep with his back to her, rose on
tiptoe and kissed the hand which lay under his head. Nicholas turned
with a tender smile on his face.

"Natasha, Natasha!" came Countess Mary's frightened whisper from the
door. "Papa wants to sleep."

"No, Mamma, he doesn't want to sleep," said little Natasha with
conviction. "He's laughing."

Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in his arms.

"Come in, Mary," he said to his wife.

She went in and sat down by her husband.

"I did not notice him following me," she said timidly. "I just
looked in."

Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at his wife
and, seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm around her and
kissed her hair.

"May I kiss Mamma?" he asked Natasha.

Natasha smiled bashfully.

"Again!" she commanded, pointing with a peremptory gesture to the
spot where Nicholas had placed the kiss.

"I don't know why you think I am cross," said Nicholas, replying
to the question he knew was in his wife's mind.

"You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are
like that. It always seems to me..."

"Mary, don't talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he
said gaily.

"It seems to be that you can't love me, that I am so plain...
always... and now... in this cond..."

"Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it's love
that makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and women of that kind
who are loved for their beauty. But do I love my wife? I don't love
her, but... I don't know how to put it. Without you, or when something
comes between us like this, I seem lost and can't do anything. Now
do I love my finger? I don't love it, but just try to cut it off!"

"I'm not like that myself, but I understand. So you're not angry
with me?"

"Awfully angry!" he said, smiling and getting up. And smoothing
his hair he began to pace the room.

"Do you know, Mary, what I've been thinking?" he began,
immediately thinking aloud in his wife's presence now that they had
made it up.

He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did not care. A
thought had occurred to him and so it belonged to her also. And he
told her of his intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till
spring.

Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some remark, and
in her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts were about the
children.

"You can see the woman in her already," she said in French, pointing
to little Natasha. "You reproach us women with being illogical. Here
is our logic. I say: 'Papa wants to sleep!' but she says, 'No, he's
laughing.' And she was right," said Countess Mary with a happy smile.

"Yes, yes." And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his strong
hand, lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held her by the
legs, and paced the room with her. There was an expression of carefree
happiness on the faces of both father and daughter.

"But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one,"
his wife whispered in French.

"Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show..."

At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley and footsteps
in the hall and anteroom, as if someone had arrived.

"Somebody has come."

"I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see," said Countess Mary
and left the room.

In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little
daughter a gallop round the room. Out of breath, he took the
laughing child quickly from his shoulder and pressed her to his heart.
His capers reminded him of dancing, and looking at the child's round
happy little face he thought of what she would be like when he was
an old man, taking her into society and dancing the mazurka with her
as his old father had danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter.

"It is he, it is he, Nicholas!" said Countess Mary, re-entering
the room a few minutes later. "Now our Natasha has come to life. You
should have seen her ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed
away so long. Well, come along now, quick, quick! It's time you two
were parted," she added, looking smilingly at the little girl who
clung to her father.

Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.

Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.

"I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy,"
she whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but at the same time
she sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though
she felt, through her happiness, that there is another sort of
happiness unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily
thought at that instant.





CHAPTER X


Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already
had three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she
was now nursing. She had grown stouter and broader, so that it was
difficult to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively
Natasha of former days. Her features were more defined and had a calm,
soft, and serene expression. In her face there was none of the
ever-glowing animation that had formerly burned there and constituted
its charm. Now her face and body were often all that one saw, and her
soul was not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a strong,
handsome, and fertile woman. The old fire very rarely kindled in her
face now. That happened only when, as was the case that day, her
husband returned home, or a sick child was convalescent, or when she
and Countess Mary spoke of Prince Andrew (she never mentioned him to
her husband, who she imagined was jealous of Prince Andrew's memory),
or on the rare occasions when something happened to induce her to
sing, a practice she had quite abandoned since her marriage. At the
rare moments when the old fire did kindle in her handsome, fully
developed body she was even more attractive than in former days.

Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in
Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow, or with her mother, that is
to say, in Nicholas' house. The young Countess Bezukhova was not often
seen in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her
and found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha liked
solitude--she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even
thought that she did not--but with her pregnancies, her
confinements, the nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of
her husband's life, she had demands on her time which could be
satisfied only by renouncing society. All who had known Natasha before
her marriage wondered at the change in her as at something
extraordinary. Only the old countess with her maternal instinct had
realized that all Natasha's outbursts had been due to her need of
children and a husband--as she herself had once exclaimed at
Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnest--and her mother was now
surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never
understood Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that
Natasha would make an exemplary wife and mother.

"Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all
bounds," said the countess, "so that it even becomes absurd."

Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk,
especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let
herself go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments,
should be even more careful of her appearance than when she was
unmarried, and should fascinate her husband as much as she did before
he became her husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once abandoned
all her witchery, of which her singing had been an unusually powerful
part. She gave it up just because it was so powerfully seductive. She
took no pains with her manners or with delicacy of speech, or with her
toilet, or to show herself to her husband in her most becoming
attitudes, or to avoid inconveniencing him by being too exacting. She
acted in contradiction to all those rules. She felt that the
allurements instinct had formerly taught her to use would now be
merely ridiculous in the eyes of her husband, to whom she had from the
first moment given herself up entirely--that is, with her whole soul,
leaving no corner of it hidden from him. She felt that her unity with
her husband was not maintained by the poetic feelings that had
attracted him to her, but by something else--indefinite but firm as
the bond between her own body and soul.

To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing
romantic songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange
as to adorn herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others
might perhaps have been agreeable--she did not know--but she had no
time at all for it. The chief reason for devoting no time either to
singing, to dress, or to choosing her words was that she really had no
time to spare for these things.

We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed
in a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject
so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's
entire attention is devoted to it.

The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha's attention was her
family: that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should
belong entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she
had to bear, bring into the world, nurse, and bring up.

And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her
whole soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the
larger did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did
her powers appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one
thing and yet was unable to accomplish all that she considered
necessary.

There were then as now conversations and discussions about women's
rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and
rights, though these themes were not yet termed questions as they
are now; but these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natasha,
she positively did not understand them.

These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing
in marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that
is, only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance,
which lies in the family.

Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the
question of how to get the greatest gratification from one's dinner,
did not then and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of
a dinner is the nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is
the family.

If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats
two dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain
his purpose, for his stomach will not digest the two dinners.

If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to
have many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in
that case will not have a family.

If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is
the family, the whole question resolves itself into not eating more
than one can digest, and not having more wives or husbands than are
needed for the family--that is, one wife or one husband. Natasha
needed a husband. A husband was given her and he gave her a family.
And she not only saw no need of any other or better husband, but as
all the powers of her soul were intent on serving that husband and
family, she could not imagine and saw no interest in imagining how
it would be if things were different.

Natasha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the
society of her relatives--Countess Mary, and her brother, her
mother, and Sonya. She valued the company of those to whom she could
come striding disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and
with joyful face show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby's
napkin, and from whom she could hear reassuring words to the effect
that baby was much better.

To such an extent had Natasha let herself go that the way she dressed
and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy--she was
jealous of Sonya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty or
plain--were habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The general
opinion was that Pierre was under his wife's thumb, which was really
true. From the very first days of their married life Natasha had
announced her demands. Pierre was greatly surprised by his wife's
view, to him a perfectly novel one, that every moment of his life
belonged to her and to the family. His wife's demands astonished him,
but they also flattered him, and he submitted to them.

Pierre's subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not
flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman;
did not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money
on a whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time,
except on business--in which his wife included his intellectual
pursuits, which she did not in the least understand but to which she
attributed great importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had
the right to regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as
he chose. At home Natasha placed herself in the position of a slave to
her husband, and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was
occupied--that is, was reading or writing in his study. Pierre had but
to show a partiality for anything to get just what he liked done
always. He had only to express a wish and Natasha would jump up and
run to fulfill it.

The entire household was governed according to Pierre's supposed
orders, that is, by his wishes which Natasha tried to guess. Their way
of life and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties,
Natasha's occupations, the children's upbringing, were all selected
not merely with regard to Pierre's expressed wishes, but to what
Natasha from the thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his
wishes to be. And she deduced the essentials of his wishes quite
correctly, and having once arrived at them clung to them
tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to change his mind she would
fight him with his own weapons.

Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of
their first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet
nurse three times and Natasha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day
told her of Rousseau's view, with which he quite agreed, that to have
a wet nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was born,
despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of her
husband himself--who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing her
baby herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injurious--she
insisted on having her own way, and after that nursed all her babies
herself.

It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and
wife would have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his
surprise and delight would find in his wife's ideas and actions the
very thought against which she had argued, but divested of
everything superfluous that in the excitement of the dispute he had
added when expressing his opinion.

After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and firm
consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt this because he
saw himself reflected in his wife. He felt the good and bad within
himself inextricably mingled and overlapping. But only what was really
good in him was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was
rejected. And this was not the result of logical reasoning but was a
direct and mysterious reflection.





CHAPTER XI


Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the
Rostovs he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to
come to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were
being discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the
principal founders.

On reading that letter (she always read her husband's letters)
Natasha herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though
she would feel his absence very acutely. She attributed immense
importance to all her husband's intellectual and abstract interests
though she did not understand them, and she always dreaded being a
hindrance to him in such matters. To Pierre's timid look of inquiry
after reading the letter she replied by asking him to go, but to fix a
definite date for his return. He was given four weeks' leave of
absence.

Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a
fortnight before, Natasha had been in a constant state of alarm,
depression, and irritability.

Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied
with the present state of affairs, had arrived during that
fortnight. He looked at Natasha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad
likeness of a person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies,
and talk about the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former
enchantress.

Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her
mother, her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to
console her tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay
in returning.

"It's all nonsense, all rubbish--those discussions which lead to
nothing and all those idiotic societies!" Natasha declared of the very
affairs in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.

And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy. No one
else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this
little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she
was conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his
little nose. That creature said: "You are angry, you are jealous,
you would like to pay him out, you are afraid--but here am I! And I am
he..." and that was unanswerable. It was more than true.

During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the baby for
comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him
and he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was
just what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety
about her husband more easily.

She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre's sleigh was
heard at the front door, and the old nurse--knowing how to please
her mistress--entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a
beaming face.

"Has he come?" Natasha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move
lest she should rouse the dozing baby.

"He's come, ma'am," whispered the nurse.

The blood rushed to Natasha's face and her feet involuntarily moved,
but she could not jump up and run out. The baby again opened his
eyes and looked at her. "You're here?" he seemed to be saying, and
again lazily smacked his lips.

Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natasha rocked him a little,
handed him to the nurse, and went with rapid steps toward the door.
But at the door she stopped as if her conscience reproached her for
having in her joy left the child too soon, and she glanced round.
The nurse with raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of
his cot.

"Go, ma'am! Don't worry, go!" she whispered, smiling, with the
kind of familiarity that grows up between a nurse and her mistress.

Natasha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.

Denisov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with
his pipe, now for the first time recognized the old Natasha. A flood
of brilliant, joyful light poured from her transfigured face.

"He's come!" she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denisov felt that he
too was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had
returned.

On reaching the vestibule Natasha saw a tall figure in a fur coat
unwinding his scarf. "It's he! It's really he! He has come!" she
said to herself, and rushing at him embraced him, pressed his head
to her breast, and then pushed him back and gazed at his ruddy,
happy face, covered with hoarfrost. "Yes, it is he, happy and
contented..."

Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense she had
experienced for the last fortnight, and the joy that had lit up her
face vanished; she frowned and overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of
reproaches and angry words.

"Yes, it's all very well for you. You are pleased, you've had a good
time.... But what about me? You might at least have shown
consideration for the children. I am nursing and my milk was
spoiled.... Petya was at death's door. But you were enjoying yourself.
Yes, enjoying..."

Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come
sooner; he knew this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a
minute or two; above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy.
He wanted to smile but dared not even think of doing so. He made a
piteous, frightened face and bent down.

"I could not, on my honor. But how is Petya?"

"All right now. Come along! I wonder you're not ashamed! If only you
could see what I was like without you, how I suffered!"

"You are well?"

"Come, come!" she said, not letting go of his arm. And they went
to their rooms.

When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he was in the
nursery holding his baby son, who was again awake, on his huge right
palm and dandling him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby's
broad face with its toothless open mouth. The storm was long since
over and there was bright, joyous sunshine on Natasha's face as she
gazed tenderly at her husband and child.

"And have you talked everything well over with Prince Theodore?" she
asked.

"Yes, capitally."

"You see, he holds it up." (She meant the baby's head.) "But how
he did frighten me... You've seen the princess? Is it true she's in
love with that..."

"Yes, just fancy..."

At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in. Pierre with the
baby on his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries.
But in spite of much that was interesting and had to be discussed, the
baby with the little cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all
his attention.

"How sweet!" said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the
baby. "Now, Nicholas," she added, turning to her husband, "I can't
understand how it is you don't see the charm of these delicious
marvels."

"I don't and can't," replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby.
"A lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!"

"And yet he's such an affectionate father," said Countess Mary,
vindicating her husband, "but only after they are a year old or so..."

"Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly," said Natasha. "He says his
hand is just made for a baby's seat. Just look!"

"Only not for this..." Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a laugh, and
shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse.





CHAPTER XII


As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several
perfectly distinct worlds which merged into one harmonious whole,
though each retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the
others. Every event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house
was important to all these worlds, but each had its own special
reasons to rejoice or grieve over that occurrence independently of the
others.

For instance, Pierre's return was a joyful and important event and
they all felt it to be so.

The servants--the most reliable judges of their masters because they
judge not by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their
acts and way of life--were glad of Pierre's return because they knew
that when he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day
to attend to the estate, and would be in better spirits and temper,
and also because they would all receive handsome presents for the
holidays.

The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre's return
because no one else drew them into the social life of the household as
he did. He alone could play on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only
piece) to which, as he said, all possible dances could be danced,
and they felt sure he had brought presents for them all.

Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent,
with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted
because Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his
rapturous and passionate affection. No one had instilled into him this
love for Pierre whom he saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had
brought him up had done her utmost to make him love her husband as she
loved him, and little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him
with just a shade of contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did
not want to be an hussar or a Knight of St. George like his uncle
Nicholas; he wanted to be learned, wise, and kind like Pierre. In
Pierre's presence his face always shone with pleasure and he flushed
and was breathless when Pierre spoke to him. He did not miss a
single word he uttered, and would afterwards, with Dessalles or by
himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of everything Pierre had
said. Pierre's past life and his unhappiness prior to 1812 (of which
young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture from some words he
had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity, Platon
Karataev (of whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natasha
(of whom the lad was also particularly fond), and especially
Pierre's friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not
remember--all this made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.

From broken remarks about Natasha and his father, from the emotion
with which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful,
reverent tenderness with which Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who
was only just beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that
his father had loved Natasha and when dying had left her to his
friend. But the father whom the boy did not remember appeared to him a
divinity who could not be pictured, and of whom he never thought
without a swelling heart and tears of sadness and rapture. So the
boy also was happy that Pierre had arrived.

The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and
unite any company he was in.

The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were
pleased to have back a friend whose presence made life run more
smoothly and peacefully.

The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and
especially that Natasha would now be herself again.

Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and
made haste to satisfy all their expectations.

Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the
aid of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not
forgetting his mother--and brother-in-law's commissions, nor the dress
material for a present to Belova, nor toys for his wife's nephews.
In the early days of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that
his wife should expect him not to forget to procure all the things
he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback by her serious
annoyance when on his first trip he forgot everything. But in time
he grew used to this demand. Knowing that Natasha asked nothing for
herself, and gave him commissions for others only when he himself
had offered to undertake them, he now found an unexpected and
childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for everyone in the
house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred Natasha's censure
it was only for buying too many and too expensive things. To her other
defects (as most people thought them, but which to Pierre were
qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now added
stinginess.

From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing
entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he
spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs--which had
been in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife's
debts--had begun to improve.

Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive
luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no
longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt that his way of life had
now been settled once for all till death and that to change it was not
in his power, and so that way of life proved economical.

With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.

"What do you think of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff
like a shopman.

Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on
her lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the
things he showed her.

"That's for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the
material. "It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?"

Pierre told her the price.

"Too dear!" Natasha remarked. "How pleased the children will be
and Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this," she added,
unable to suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb
set with pearls, of a kind then just coming into fashion.

"Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it," returned
Pierre.

"When am I to wear it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair.
"When I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be
fashionable again by then. Well, let's go now."

And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and
then to the old countess' rooms.

The countess was sitting with her companion Belova, playing
grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha came into the drawing
room with parcels under their arms.

The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with
a frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper
lip had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.

After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession,
she felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left
without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or
kept awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She
wanted nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity
only death could give her. But until death came she had to go on
living, that is, to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in
very young children and very old people was particularly evident in
her. Her life had no external aims--only a need to exercise her
various functions and inclinations was apparent. She had to eat,
sleep, think, speak, weep, work, give vent to her anger, and so on,
merely because she had a stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a
liver. She did these things not under any external impulse as people
in the full vigor of life do, when behind the purpose for which they
strive that of exercising their functions remains unnoticed. She
talked only because she physically needed to exercise her tongue and
lungs. She cried as a child does, because her nose had to be
cleared, and so on. What for people in their full vigor is an aim
was for her evidently merely a pretext.

Thus in the morning--especially if she had eaten anything rich the
day before--she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the
handiest pretext Belova's deafness.

She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other
end of the room.

"It seems a little warmer today, my dear," she would murmur.

And when Belova replied: "Oh yes, they've come," she would mutter
angrily: "O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!"

Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or
too damp or not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability
her face would grow yellow, and her maids knew by infallible
symptoms when Belova would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the
countess' face yellow. Just as she needed to work off her spleen so
she had sometimes to exercise her still-existing faculty of
thinking--and the pretext for that was a game of patience. When she
needed to cry, the deceased count would be the pretext. When she
wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext,
and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext would be
Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed exercise, which was
usually toward seven o'clock when she had had an after-dinner rest
in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same
stories over and over again to the same audience.

The old lady's condition was understood by the whole household
though no one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible
effort to satisfy her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a
sad smile between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the
common understanding of her condition expressed.

But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had
played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole
self, that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to
yield to her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being
formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so much to be
pitied. "Memento mori," said these glances.

Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and
the little children failed to understand this and avoided her.





CHAPTER XIII


When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the countess was
in one of her customary states in which she needed the mental exertion
of playing patience, and so--though by force of habit she greeted
him with the words she always used when Pierre or her son returned
after an absence: "High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of
waiting for you. Well, thank God!" and received her presents with
another customary remark: "It's not the gift that's precious, my dear,
but that you give it to me, an old woman..."--yet it was evident
that she was not pleased by Pierre's arrival at that moment when it
diverted her attention from the unfinished game.

She finished her game of patience and only then examined the
presents. They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid
workmanship, a bright-blue Sevres tea cup with shepherdesses
depicted on it and with a lid, and a gold snuffbox with the count's
portrait on the lid which Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in
Petersburg. The countess had long wished for such a box, but as she
did not want to cry just then she glanced indifferently at the
portrait and gave her attention chiefly to the box for cards.

"Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up," said she as she always
did. "But best of all you have brought yourself back--for I never
saw anything like it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are
we to do with her? She is like a mad woman when you are away.
Doesn't see anything, doesn't remember anything," she went on,
repeating her usual phrases. "Look, Anna Timofeevna," she added to her
companion, "see what a box for cards my son has brought us!"

Belova admired the presents and was delighted with her dress
material.

Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denisov had
much to talk about that they could not discuss before the old
countess--not that anything was hidden from her, but because she had
dropped so far behindhand in many things that had they begun to
converse in her presence they would have had to answer inopportune
questions and to repeat what they had already told her many times:
that so-and-so was dead and so-and-so was married, which she would
again be unable to remember--yet they sat at tea round the samovar
in the drawing room from habit, and Pierre answered the countess'
questions as to whether Prince Vasili had aged and whether Countess
Mary Alexeevna had sent greetings and still thought of them, and other
matters that interested no one and to which she herself was
indifferent.

Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable,
continued all through teatime. All the grown-up members of the
family were assembled near the round tea table at which Sonya presided
beside the samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses had
had tea and their voices were audible from the next room. At tea all
sat in their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the stove at a small
table where his tea was handed to him; Milka, the old gray borzoi
bitch (daughter of the first Milka), with a quite gray face and
large black eyes that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the
armchair beside him; Denisov, whose curly hair, mustache, and whiskers
had turned half gray, sat beside countess Mary with his general's
tunic unbuttoned; Pierre sat between his wife and the old countess. He
spoke of what he knew might interest the old lady and that she could
understand. He told her of external social events and of the people
who had formed the circle of her contemporaries and had once been a
real, living, and distinct group, but who were now for the most part
scattered about the world and like herself were garnering the last
ears of the harvests they had sown in earlier years. But to the old
countess those contemporaries of hers seemed to be the only serious
and real society. Natasha saw by Pierre's animation that his visit had
been interesting and that he had much to tell them but dare not say it
before the old countess. Denisov, not being a member of the family,
did not understand Pierre's caution and being, as a malcontent, much
interested in what was occurring in Petersburg, kept urging Pierre
to tell them about what had happened in the Semenovsk regiment, then
about Arakcheev, and then about the Bible Society. Once or twice
Pierre was carried away and began to speak of these things, but
Nicholas and Natasha always brought him back to the health of Prince
Ivan and Countess Mary Alexeevna.

"Well, and all this idiocy--Gossner and Tatawinova?" Denisov
asked. "Is that weally still going on?"

"Going on?" Pierre exclaimed. "Why more than ever! The Bible Society
is the whole government now!"

"What is that, mon cher ami?" asked the countess, who had
finished her tea and evidently needed a pretext for being angry
after her meal. "What are you saying about the government? I don't
understand."

"Well, you know, Maman," Nicholas interposed, knowing how to
translate things into his mother's language, "Prince Alexander
Golitsyn has founded a society and in consequence has great influence,
they say."

"Arakcheev and Golitsyn," incautiously remarked Pierre, "are now the
whole government! And what a government! They see treason everywhere
and are afraid of everything."

"Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a most
estimable man. I used to meet him at Mary Antonovna's," said the
countess in an offended tone; and still more offended that they all
remained silent, she went on: "Nowadays everyone finds fault. A Gospel
Society! Well, and what harm is there in that?" and she rose
(everybody else got up too) and with a severe expression sailed back
to her table in the sitting room.

The melancholy silence that followed was broken by the sounds of the
children's voices and laughter from the next room. Evidently some
jolly excitement was going on there.

"Finished, finished!" little Natasha's gleeful yell rose above
them all.

Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natasha he
never lost sight of) and smiled happily.

"That's delightful music!" said he.

"It means that Anna Makarovna has finished her stocking," said
Countess Mary.

"Oh, I'll go and see," said Pierre, jumping up. "You know," he
added, stopping at the door, "why I'm especially fond of that music?
It is always the first thing that tells me all is well. When I was
driving here today, the nearer I got to the house the more anxious I
grew. As I entered the anteroom I heard Andrusha's peals of laughter
and that meant that all was well."

"I know! I know that feeling," said Nicholas. "But I mustn't go
there--those stockings are to be a surprise for me."

Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and laughter grew
still louder.

"Come, Anna Makarovna," Pierre's voice was heard saying, "come here
into the middle of the room and at the word of command, 'One, two,'
and when I say 'three'... You stand here, and you in my arms--well
now! One, two!..." said Pierre, and a silence followed: "three!" and a
rapturously breathless cry of children's voices filled the room. "Two,
two!" they shouted.

This meant two stockings, which by a secret process known only to
herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the same time on the same
needles, and which, when they were ready, she always triumphantly
drew, one out of the other, in the children's presence.





CHAPTER XIV


Soon after this the children came in to say good night. They
kissed everyone, the tutors and governesses made their bows, and
they went out. Only young Nicholas and his tutor remained. Dessalles
whispered to the boy to come downstairs.

"No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me stay," replied
Nicholas Bolkonski also in a whisper.

"Ma tante, please let me stay," said he, going up to his aunt.

His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy. Countess Mary
glanced at him and turned to Pierre.

"When you are here he can't tear himself away," she said.

"I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles. Good
night!" said Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned
to young Nicholas with a smile. "You and I haven't seen anything of
one another yet... How like he is growing, Mary!" he added, addressing
Countess Mary.

"Like my father?" asked the boy, flushing crimson and looking up
at Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes.

Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the
children had interrupted. Countess Mary sat down doing woolwork;
Natasha did not take her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denisov
rose, asked for their pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from
Sonya--who sat weary but resolute at the samovar--and questioned
Pierre. The curly-headed, delicate boy sat with shining eyes unnoticed
in a corner, starting every now and then and muttering something to
himself, and evidently experiencing a new and powerful emotion as he
turned his curly head, with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down
collar, toward the place where Pierre sat.

The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip about those in
power, in which most people see the chief interest of home politics.
Denisov, dissatisfied with the government on account of his own
disappointments in the service, heard with pleasure of the things done
in Petersburg which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and
sharp comments on what Pierre told them.

"One used to have to be a German--now one must dance with Tatawinova
and Madame Kwudener, and wead Ecka'tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they
should let that fine fellow Bonaparte lose--he'd knock all this
nonsense out of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semenov wegiment
to a fellow like that Schwa'tz!" he cried.

Nicholas, though free from Denisov's readiness to find fault with
everything, also thought that discussion of the government was a
very serious and weighty matter, and the fact that A had been
appointed Minister of This and B Governor General of That, and that
the Emperor had said so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, seemed
to him very important. And so he thought it necessary to take an
interest in these things and to question Pierre. The questions put
by these two kept the conversation from changing its ordinary
character of gossip about the higher government circles.

But Natasha, knowing all her husband's ways and ideas, saw that he
had long been wishing but had been unable to divert the conversation
to another channel and express his own deeply felt idea for the sake
of which he had gone to Petersburg to consult with his new friend
Prince Theodore, and she helped him by asking how his affairs with
Prince Theodore had gone.

"What was it about?" asked Nicholas.

"Always the same thing," said Pierre, looking round at his
listeners. "Everybody sees that things are going so badly that they
cannot be allowed to go on so and that it is the duty of all decent
men to counteract it as far as they can."

"What can decent men do?" Nicholas inquired, frowning slightly.
"What can be done?"

"Why, this..."

"Come into my study," said Nicholas.

Natasha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse her baby,
now heard the nurse calling her and went to the nursery. Countess Mary
followed her. The men went into the study and little Nicholas
Bolkonski followed them unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the
writing table in a shady corner by the window.

"Well, what would you do?" asked Denisov.

"Always some fantastic schemes," said Nicholas.

"Why this," began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing the room,
sometimes stopping short, gesticulating, and lisping: "the position in
Petersburg is this: the Emperor does not look into anything. He has
abandoned himself altogether to this mysticism" (Pierre could not
tolerate mysticism in anyone now). "He seeks only for peace, and
only these people sans foi ni loi* can give it him--people who
recklessly hack at and strangle everything--Magnitski, Arakcheev,
and tutti quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after
your estates yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your
steward was the more readily your object might be attained," he said
to Nicholas.


*Without faith or law.


"Well, what does that lead up to?" said Nicholas.

"Well, everything is going to ruin! Robbery in the law courts, in
the army nothing but flogging, drilling, and Military Settlements; the
people are tortured, enlightenment is suppressed. All that is young
and honest is crushed! Everyone sees that this cannot go on.
Everything is strained to such a degree that it will certainly break,"
said Pierre (as those who examine the actions of any government have
always said since governments began). "I told them just one thing in
Petersburg."

"Told whom?"

"Well, you know whom," said Pierre, with a meaning glance from under
his brows. "Prince Theodore and all those. To encourage culture and
philanthropy is all very well of course. The aim is excellent but in
the present circumstances something else is needed."

At that moment Nicholas noticed the presence of his nephew. His face
darkened and he went up to the boy.

"Why are you here?"

"Why? Let him be," said Pierre, taking Nicholas by the arm and
continuing. "That is not enough, I told them. Something else is
needed. When you stand expecting the overstrained string to snap at
any moment, when everyone is expecting the inevitable catastrophe,
as many as possible must join hands as closely as they can to
withstand the general calamity. Everything that is young and strong is
being enticed away and depraved. One is lured by women, another by
honors, a third by ambition or money, and they go over to that camp.
No independent men, such as you or I, are left. What I say is widen
the scope of our society, let the mot d'ordre be not virtue alone
but independence and action as well!"

Nicholas, who had left his nephew, irritably pushed up an
armchair, sat down in it, and listened to Pierre, coughing
discontentedly and frowning more and more.

"But action with what aim?" he cried. "And what position will you
adopt toward the government?"

"Why, the position of assistants. The society need not be secret
if the government allows it. Not merely is it not hostile to
government, but it is a society of true conservatives--a society of
gentlemen in the full meaning of that word. It is only to prevent some
Pugachev or other from killing my children and yours, and Arakcheev
from sending me off to some Military Settlement. We join hands only
for the public welfare and the general safety."

"Yes, but it's a secret society and therefore a hostile and
harmful one which can only cause harm."

"Why? Did the Tugendbund which saved Europe" (they did not then
venture to suggest that Russia had saved Europe) "do any harm? The
Tugendbund is an alliance of virtue: it is love, mutual help... it
is what Christ preached on the Cross."

Natasha, who had come in during the conversation, looked joyfully at
her husband. It was not what he was saying that pleased her--that
did not even interest her, for it seemed to her that was all extremely
simple and that she had known it a long time (it seemed so to her
because she knew that it sprang from Pierre's whole soul), but it
was his animated and enthusiastic appearance that made her glad.

The boy with the thin neck stretching out from the turn-down
collar--whom everyone had forgotten--gazed at Pierre with even greater
and more rapturous joy. Every word of Pierre's burned into his heart,
and with a nervous movement of his fingers he unconsciously broke the
sealing wax and quill pens his hands came upon on his uncle's table.

"It is not at all what you suppose; but that is what the German
Tugendbund was, and what I am proposing."

"No, my fwiend! The Tugendbund is all vewy well for the sausage
eaters, but I don't understand it and can't even pwonounce it,"
interposed Denisov in a loud and resolute voice. "I agwee that
evewything here is wotten and howwible, but the Tugendbund I don't
understand. If we're not satisfied, let us have a bunt of our own.
That's all wight. Je suis vot'e homme!"*


*"I'm your man."


Pierre smiled, Natasha began to laugh, but Nicholas knitted his
brows still more and began proving to Pierre that there was no
prospect of any great change and that all the danger he spoke of
existed only in his imagination. Pierre maintained the contrary, and
as his mental faculties were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas
felt himself cornered. This made him still angrier, for he was fully
convinced, not by reasoning but by something within him stronger
than reason, of the justice of his opinion.

"I will tell you this," he said, rising and trying with nervously
twitching fingers to prop up his pipe in a corner, but finally
abandoning the attempt. "I can't prove it to you. You say that
everything here is rotten and that an overthrow is coming: I don't see
it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance is a conditional
matter, and to that I reply: 'You are my best friend, as you know, but
if you formed a secret society and began working against the
government--be it what it may--I know it is my duty to obey the
government. And if Arakcheev ordered me to lead a squadron against you
and cut you down, I should not hesitate an instant, but should do it.'
And you may argue about that as you like!"

An awkward silence followed these words. Natasha was the first to
speak, defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defense
was weak and inapt but she attained her object. The conversation was
resumed, and no longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone of Nicholas'
last remark.

When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas Bolkonski
went up to Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes.

"Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he agree
with you?" he asked.

And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex,
and powerful process of thought and feeling must have been going on in
this boy during that conversation, and remembering all he had said
he regretted that the lad should have heard him. He had, however, to
give him an answer.

"Yes, I think so," he said reluctantly, and left the study.

The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time to notice what
he had done to the things on the table. He flushed and went up to
Nicholas.

"Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally," he said,
pointing to the broken sealing wax and pens.

Nicholas started angrily.

"All right, all right," he said, throwing the bits under the table.

And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty, he turned
away from the boy.

"You ought not to have been here at all," he said.





CHAPTER XV


The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies,
but turned on the subject Nicholas liked best--recollections of
1812. Denisov started these and Pierre was particularly agreeable
and amusing about them. The family separated on the most friendly
terms.

After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given
instructions to the steward who had been waiting for him, went to
the bedroom in his dressing gown, where he found his wife still at her
table, writing.

"What are you writing, Mary?" Nicholas asked.

Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she was writing
would not be understood or approved by her husband.

She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from him, but at
the same time was glad he had surprised her at it and that she would
now have to tell him.

"A diary, Nicholas," she replied, handing him a blue exercise book
filled with her firm, bold writing.

"A diary?" Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he took up
the book.

It was in French.


December 4. Today when Andrusha (her eldest boy) woke up he did
not wish to dress and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was
naughty and obstinate. I tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then
I took the matter in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse's
help to get the other children up, telling him that I did not love
him. For a long time he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped
out of bed, ran to me in his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not
calm him for a long time. It was plain that what troubled him most was
that he had grieved me. Afterwards in the evening when I gave him
his ticket, he again began crying piteously and kissing me. One can do
anything with him by tenderness.


"What is a 'ticket'?" Nicholas inquired.

"I have begun giving the elder ones marks every evening, showing how
they have behaved."

Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing at him, and
continued to turn over the pages and read. In the diary was set down
everything in the children's lives that seemed noteworthy to their
mother as showing their characters or suggesting general reflections
on educational methods. They were for the most part quite
insignificant trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or to the
father either, now that he read this diary about his children for
the first time.

Under the date "5" was entered:


Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding.
He had none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others
while they were eating! I think that punishment by depriving
children of sweets only develops their greediness. Must tell
Nicholas this.


Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant
eyes gazed at him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her
diary? There could be no doubt not only of his approval but also of
his admiration for his wife.

Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or
even done at all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of
which the sole aim was the children's moral welfare delighted him. Had
Nicholas been able to analyze his feelings he would have found that
his steady, tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling
of wonder at her spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost
beyond his reach, in which she had her being.

He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own
insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the
more that she with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part
of himself.

"I quite, quite approve, my dearest!" said he with a significant
look, and after a short pause he added: "And I behaved badly today.
You weren't in the study. We began disputing--Pierre and I--and I lost
my temper. But he is impossible: such a child! I don't know what would
become of him if Natasha didn't keep him in hand.... Have you any idea
why he went to Petersburg? They have formed..."

"Yes, I know," said Countess Mary. "Natasha told me."

"Well, then, you know," Nicholas went on, growing hot at the mere
recollection of their discussion, "he wanted to convince me that it is
every honest man's duty to go against the government, and that the
oath of allegiance and duty... I am sorry you weren't there. They
all fell on me--Denisov and Natasha... Natasha is absurd. How she
rules over him! And yet there need only be a discussion and she has no
words of her own but only repeats his sayings..." added Nicholas,
yielding to that irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge
those nearest and dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying
about Natasha could have been applied word for word to himself in
relation to his wife.

"Yes, I have noticed that," said Countess Mary.

"When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he
started proving goodness knows what! A pity you were not there--what
would you have said?"

"As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natasha so. Pierre
says everybody is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that
it is our duty to help our neighbor. Of course he is right there,"
said Countess Mary, "but he forgets that we have other duties nearer
to us, duties indicated to us by God Himself, and that though we might
expose ourselves to risks we must not risk our children."

"Yes, that's it! That's just what I said to him," put in Nicholas,
who fancied he really had said it. "But they insisted on their own
view: love of one's neighbor and Christianity--and all this in the
presence of young Nicholas, who had gone into my study and broke all
my things."

"Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about little
Nicholas," said Countess Mary. "He is such an exceptional boy. I am
afraid I neglect him in favor of my own: we all have children and
relations while he has no one. He is constantly alone with his
thoughts."

"Well, I don't think you need reproach yourself on his account.
All that the fondest mother could do for her son you have done and are
doing for him, and of course I am glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine
lad! This evening he listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and
fancy--as we were going in to supper I looked and he had broken
everything on my table to bits, and he told me of it himself at
once! I never knew him to tell an untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!"
repeated Nicholas, who at heart was not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but
was always anxious to recognize that he was a fine lad.

"Still, I am not the same as his own mother," said Countess Mary. "I
feel I am not the same and it troubles me. A wonderful boy, but I am
dreadfully afraid for him. It would be good for him to have
companions."

"Well it won't be for long. Next summer I'll take him to
Petersburg," said Nicholas. "Yes, Pierre always was a dreamer and
always will be," he continued, returning to the talk in the study
which had evidently disturbed him. "Well, what business is it of
mine what goes on there--whether Arakcheev is bad, and all that?
What business was it of mine when I married and was so deep in debt
that I was threatened with prison, and had a mother who could not
see or understand it? And then there are you and the children and
our affairs. Is it for my own pleasure that I am at the farm or in the
office from morning to night? No, but I know I must work to comfort my
mother, to repay you, and not to leave the children such beggars as
I was."

Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not live by bread
alone and that he attached too much importance to these matters. But
she knew she must not say this and that it would be useless to do
so. She only took his hand and kissed it. He took this as a sign of
approval and a confirmation of his thoughts, and after a few
minutes' reflection continued to think aloud.

"You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofanych" (this was his overseer)
"came back from the Tambov estate and told me they are already
offering eighty thousand rubles for the forest."

And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the possibility of
repurchasing Otradnoe before long, and added: "Another ten years of
life and I shall leave the children... in an excellent position."

Countess Mary listened to her husband and understood all that he
told her. She knew that when he thought aloud in this way he would
sometimes ask her what he had been saying, and be vexed if he
noticed that she had been thinking about something else. But she had
to force herself to attend, for what he was saying did not interest
her at all. She looked at him and did not think, but felt, about
something different. She felt a submissive tender love for this man
who would never understand all that she understood, and this seemed to
make her love for him still stronger and added a touch of passionate
tenderness. Besides this feeling which absorbed her altogether and
hindered her from following the details of her husband's plans,
thoughts that had no connection with what he was saying flitted
through her mind. She thought of her nephew. Her husband's account
of the boy's agitation while Pierre was speaking struck her
forcibly, and various traits of his gentle, sensitive character
recurred to her mind; and while thinking of her nephew she thought
also of her own children. She did not compare them with him, but
compared her feeling for them with her feeling for him, and felt
with regret that there was something lacking in her feeling for
young Nicholas.

Sometimes it seemed to her that this difference arose from the
difference in their ages, but she felt herself to blame toward him and
promised in her heart to do better and to accomplish the
impossible--in this life to love her husband, her children, little
Nicholas, and all her neighbors, as Christ loved mankind. Countess
Mary's soul always strove toward the infinite, the eternal, and the
absolute, and could therefore never be at peace. A stern expression of
the lofty, secret suffering of a soul burdened by the body appeared on
her face. Nicholas gazed at her. "O God! What will become of us if she
dies, as I always fear when her face is like that?" thought he, and
placing himself before the icon he began to say his evening prayers.





CHAPTER XVI


Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only a husband
and wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity,
understanding and expressing each other's thoughts in ways contrary to
all rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions, and
in a quite peculiar way. Natasha was so used to this kind of talk with
her husband that for her it was the surest sign of something being
wrong between them if Pierre followed a line of logical reasoning.
When he began proving anything, or talking argumentatively and calmly
and she, led on by his example, began to do the same, she knew that
they were on the verge of a quarrel.

From the moment they were alone and Natasha came up to him with
wide-open happy eyes, and quickly seizing his head pressed it to her
bosom, saying: "Now you are all mine, mine! You won't escape!"--from
that moment this conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic
and contrary to them because quite different subjects were talked
about at one and the same time. This simultaneous discussion of many
topics did not prevent a clear understanding but on the contrary was
the surest sign that they fully understood one another.

Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning, and
contradictory, except the feeling that guides the dream, so in this
intercourse contrary to all laws of reason, the words themselves
were not consecutive and clear but only the feeling that prompted
them.

Natasha spoke to Pierre about her brother's life and doings, of
how she had suffered and lacked life during his own absence, and of
how she was fonder than ever of Mary, and how Mary was in every way
better than herself. In saying this Natasha was sincere in
acknowledging Mary's superiority, but at the same time by saying it
she made a demand on Pierre that he should, all the same, prefer her
to Mary and to all other women, and that now, especially after
having seen many women in Petersburg, he should tell her so afresh.

Pierre, answering Natasha's words, told her how intolerable it had
been for him to meet ladies at dinners and balls in Petersburg.

"I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies," he said. "It was
simply dull. Besides, I was very busy."

Natasha looked intently at him and went on:

"Mary is so splendid," she said. "How she understands children! It
is as if she saw straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance,
Mitya was naughty..."

"How like his father he is," Pierre interjected.

Natasha knew why he mentioned Mitya's likeness to Nicholas: the
recollection of his dispute with his brother-in-law was unpleasant and
he wanted to know what Natasha thought of it.

"Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with anything not
generally accepted. But I understand that you value what opens up a
fresh line," said she, repeating words Pierre had once uttered.

"No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and discussions are
an amusement--almost a pastime," said Pierre. "For instance, he is
collecting a library and has made it a rule not to buy a new book till
he has read what he had already bought--Sismondi and Rousseau and
Montesquieu," he added with a smile. "You know how much I..." he began
to soften down what he had said; but Natasha interrupted him to show
that this was unnecessary.

"So you say ideas are an amusement to him...."

"Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in Petersburg
I saw everyone as in a dream. When I am taken up by a thought, all
else is mere amusement."

"Ah, I'm so sorry I wasn't there when you met the children," said
Natasha. "Which was most delighted? Lisa, I'm sure."

"Yes," Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his mind.
"Nicholas says we ought not to think. But I can't help it. Besides,
when I was in Petersburg I felt (I can say this to you) that the whole
affair would go to pieces without me--everyone was pulling his own
way. But I succeeded in uniting them all; and then my idea is so clear
and simple. You see, I don't say that we ought to oppose this and
that. We may be mistaken. What I say is: 'Join hands, you who love the
right, and let there be but one banner--that of active virtue.' Prince
Sergey is a fine fellow and clever."

Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of Pierre's
idea, but one thing disconcerted her. "Can a man so important and
necessary to society be also my husband? How did this happen?" She
wished to express this doubt to him. "Now who could decide whether
he is really cleverer than all the others?" she asked herself, and
passed in review all those whom Pierre most respected. Judging by what
he had said there was no one he had respected so highly as Platon
Karataev.

"Do you know what I am thinking about?" she asked. "About Platon
Karataev. Would he have approved of you now, do you think?"

Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He understood
his wife's line of thought.

"Platon Karataev?" he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely
trying to imagine Karataev's opinion on the subject. "He would not
have understood... yet perhaps he would."

"I love you awfully!" Natasha suddenly said. "Awfully, awfully!"

"No, he would not have approved," said Pierre, after reflection.
"What he would have approved of is our family life. He was always so
anxious to find seemliness, happiness, and peace in everything, and
I should have been proud to let him see us. There now--you talk of
my absence, but you wouldn't believe what a special feeling I have for
you after a separation...."

"Yes, I should think..." Natasha began.

"No, it's not that. I never leave off loving you. And one couldn't
love more, but this is something special.... Yes, of course-" he did
not finish because their eyes meeting said the rest.

"What nonsense it is," Natasha suddenly exclaimed, "about
honeymoons, and that the greatest happiness is at first! On the
contrary, now is the best of all. If only you did not go away! Do
you remember how we quarreled? And it was always my fault. Always
mine. And what we quarreled about--I don't even remember!"

"Always about the same thing," said Pierre with a smile. "Jealo..."

"Don't say it! I can't bear it!" Natasha cried, and her eyes
glittered coldly and vindictively. "Did you see her?" she added, after
a pause.

"No, and if I had I shouldn't have recognized her."

They were silent for a while.

"Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the study I was looking at
you," Natasha began, evidently anxious to disperse the cloud that had
come over them. "You are as like him as two peas--like the boy." (She
meant her little son.) "Oh, it's time to go to him.... The milk's
come.... But I'm sorry to leave you."

They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly turning to one
another at the same time they both began to speak. Pierre began with
self-satisfaction and enthusiasm, Natasha with a quiet, happy smile.
Having interrupted one another they both stopped to let the other
continue.

"No. What did you say? Go on, go on."

"No, you go on, I was talking nonsense," said Natasha.

Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to his
complacent reflections on his success in Petersburg. At that moment it
seemed to him that he was chosen to give a new direction to the
whole of Russian society and to the whole world.

"I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are
always simple ones. My whole idea is that if vicious people are united
and constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same. Now
that's simple enough."

"Yes."

"And what were you going to say?"

"I? Only nonsense."

"But all the same?"

"Oh nothing, only a trifle," said Natasha, smilingly still more
brightly. "I only wanted to tell you about Petya: today nurse was
coming to take him from me, and he laughed, shut his eyes, and clung
to me. I'm sure he thought he was hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now
he's crying. Well, good-by!" and she left the room.


Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkonski's bedroom a
little lamp was burning as usual. (The boy was afraid of the dark
and they could not cure him of it.) Dessalles slept propped up on four
pillows and his Roman nose emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring.
Little Nicholas, who had just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat
up in bed and gazed before him with wide-open eyes. He had awaked from
a terrible dream. He had dreamed that he and Uncle Pierre, wearing
helmets such as were depicted in his Plutarch, were leading a huge
army. The army was made up of white slanting lines that filled the air
like the cobwebs that float about in autumn and which Dessalles called
les fils de la Vierge. In front was Glory, which was similar to
those threads but rather thicker. He and Pierre were borne along
lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer to their goal. Suddenly the
threads that moved them began to slacken and become entangled and it
grew difficult to move. And Uncle Nicholas stood before them in a
stern and threatening attitude.

"Have you done this?" he said, pointing to some broken sealing wax and
pens. "I loved you, but I have orders from Arakcheev and will kill the
first of you who moves forward." Little Nicholas turned to look at
Pierre but Pierre was no longer there. In his place was his
father--Prince Andrew--and his father had neither shape nor form, but
he existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with
love: he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father
caressed and pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer and nearer to
them. Terror seized young Nicholas and he awoke.

"My father!" he thought. (Though there were two good portraits of
Prince Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human
form.) "My father has been with me and caressed me. He approved of
me and of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it.
Mucius Scaevola burned his hand. Why should not the same sort of thing
happen to me? I know they want me to learn. And I will learn. But
someday I shall have finished learning, and then I will do
something. I only pray God that something may happen to me such as
happened to Plutarch's men, and I will act as they did. I will do
better. Everyone shall know me, love me, and be delighted with me!"
And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and he began to cry.

"Are you ill?" he heard Dessalles' voice asking.

"No," answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.

"He is good and kind and I am fond of him!" he thought of Dessalles.
"But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father?
Oh, Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he
would be satisfied...."





SECOND EPILOGUE





CHAPTER I


History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put
into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a
single nation, appears impossible.

The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to
describe and seize the apparently elusive--the life of a people.
They described the activity of individuals who ruled the people, and
regarded the activity of those men as representing the activity of the
whole nation.

The question: how did individuals make nations act as they wished
and by what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the
ancients met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations
to the will of a chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so
as to accomplish ends that were predestined.

For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in the
direct participation of the Deity in human affairs.

Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.

It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in
man's subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward
which nations are led, modern history should study not the
manifestations of power but the causes that produce it. But modern
history has not done this. Having in theory rejected the view held
by the ancients, it still follows them in practice.

Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided by
the will of God, modern history has given us either heroes endowed
with extraordinary, superhuman capacities, or simply men of very
various kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses.
Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or
Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the
progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims--the
welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its highest
abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by
which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small
northwesterly portion of a large continent.

Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without
replacing them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has
obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the
divine authority of the kings and the "fate" of the ancients, to reach
the same conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations
guided by individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to
which these nations and humanity at large are tending.

At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon
to Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent
novelty of their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.

In the first place the historian describes the activity of
individuals who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian
considers only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men,
while another includes also orators, learned men, reformers,
philosophers, and poets). Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward
which humanity is being led is known to the historians: to one of them
this goal is the greatness of the Roman, Spanish, or French realm;
to another it is liberty, equality, and a certain kind of civilization
of a small corner of the world called Europe.

In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is
expressed by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it
moves eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east
westward. In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with
remarkable symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west,
attracting to it, as the first movement had done, the nations of
middle Europe. The counter movement reaches the starting point of
the first movement in the west--Paris--and subsides.

During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left
untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions of
men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions of
Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one
another.

What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people
burn houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these
events? What force made men act so? These are the instinctive,
plain, and most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it
encounters the monuments and tradition of that period.

For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns
to the science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity
to know themselves.

If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have
said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and
directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that
reply, would have been clear and complete. One might believe or
disbelieve in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone
believing in it there would have been nothing unintelligible in the
history of that period, nor would there have been any contradictions.

But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit
the conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the
Deity in human affairs, and therefore history ought to give other
answers.

Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know
what this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced
these events? Then listen:

"Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such
and such mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France
badly. His descendants were weak men and they too ruled France
badly. And they had such and such favorites and such and such
mistresses. Moreover, certain men wrote some books at that time. At
the end of the eighteenth century there were a couple of dozen men
in Paris who began to talk about all men being free and equal. This
caused people all over France to begin to slash at and drown one
another. They killed the king and many other people. At that time
there was in France a man of genius--Napoleon. He conquered
everybody everywhere--that is, he killed many people because he was
a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and
killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he
returned to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all
obeyed him. Having become an Emperor he again went out to kill
people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there too he killed a great
many. In Russia there was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to
restore order in Europe and therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807
he suddenly made friends with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled
and again began killing many people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand
men into Russia and captured Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from
Moscow, and the Emperor Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and
others, united Europe to arm against the disturber of its peace. All
Napoleon's allies suddenly became his enemies and their forces
advanced against the fresh forces he raised. The Allies defeated
Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent him
to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the title of Emperor and
showing him every respect, though five years before and one year later
they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand. Then Louis XVIII,
who till then had been the laughingstock both of the French and the
Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears before his Old
Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then the skillful
statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who managed to
sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and thereby extended
the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by these conversations
made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomatists and
monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of again ordering
their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon arrived in
France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating him,
immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were angry
at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated
the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent
him to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the
beloved France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that
rock and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a
reaction occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress
their subjects."

It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic--a caricature
of the historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild
expression of the contradictory replies, not meeting the questions,
which all the historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the
histories of separate states to the writers of general histories and
the new histories of the culture of that period.

The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact
that modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has
asked.

If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement
of humanity and of the peoples, the first question--in the absence
of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible--is: what is
the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously
replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was
very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.

All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it
is not what was asked. All that would be interesting if we
recognized a divine power based on itself and always consistently
directing its nations through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we
do not acknowledge such a power, and therefore before speaking about
Napoleons, Louis-es, and authors, we ought to be shown the
connection existing between these men and the movement of the nations.

If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it
should be explained in what this new force consists, for the whole
interest of history lies precisely in that force.

History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to
everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone
reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new
force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really
quite well known to everybody.





CHAPTER II


What force moves the nations?

Biographical historians and historians of separate nations
understand this force as a power inherent in heroes and rulers. In
their narration events occur solely by the will of a Napoleon, and
Alexander, or in general of the persons they describe. The answers
given by this kind of historian to the question of what force causes
events to happen are satisfactory only as long as there is but one
historian to each event. As soon as historians of different
nationalities and tendencies begin to describe the same event, the
replies they give immediately lose all meaning, for this force is
understood by them all not only differently but often in quite
contradictory ways. One historian says that an event was produced by
Napoleon's power, another that it was produced by Alexander's, a third
that it was due to the power of some other person. Besides this,
historians of that kind contradict each other even in their
statement as to the force on which the authority of some particular
person was based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that Napoleon's power
was based on his virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it was
based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the historians
of this class, by mutually destroying one another's positions, destroy
the understanding of the force which produces events, and furnish no
reply to history's essential question.

Writers of universal history who deal with all the nations seem to
recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians' view of the
force which produces events. They do not recognize it as a power
inherent in heroes and rulers, but as the resultant of a
multiplicity of variously directed forces. In describing a war or
the subjugation of a people, a general historian looks for the cause
of the event not in the power of one man, but in the interaction of
many persons connected with the event.

According to this view the power of historical personages,
represented as the product of many forces, can no longer, it would
seem, be regarded as a force that itself produces events. Yet in
most cases universal historians still employ the conception of power
as a force that itself produces events, and treat it as their cause.
In their exposition, an historic character is first the product of his
time, and his power only the resultant of various forces, and then his
power is itself a force producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and
others, for instance, at one time prove Napoleon to be a product of
the Revolution, of the ideas of 1789 and so forth, and at another
plainly say that the campaign of 1812 and other things they do not
like were simply the product of Napoleon's misdirected will, and
that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested in their development by
Napoleon's caprice. The ideas of the Revolution and the general temper
of the age produced Napoleon's power. But Napoleon's power
suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of the
age.

This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only does it occur
at every step, but the universal historians' accounts are all made
up of a chain of such contradictions. This contradiction occurs
because after entering the field of analysis the universal
historians stop halfway.

To find component forces equal to the composite or resultant
force, the sum of the components must equal the resultant. This
condition is never observed by the universal historians, and so to
explain the resultant forces they are obliged to admit, in addition to
the insufficient components, another unexplained force affecting the
resultant action.

Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813 or the
restoration of the Bourbons plainly assert that these events were
produced by the will of Alexander. But the universal historian
Gervinus, refuting this opinion of the specialist historian, tries to
prove that the campaign of 1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons
were due to other things beside Alexander's will--such as the activity
of Stein, Metternich, Madame de Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte
Chateaubriand, and others. The historian evidently decomposes
Alexander's power into the components: Talleyrand, Chateaubriand, and
the rest--but the sum of the components, that is, the interactions of
Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Stael, and the others, evidently
does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon of millions of
Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That Chateaubriand, Madame de
Stael, and others spoke certain words to one another only affected
their mutual relations but does not account for the submission of
millions. And therefore to explain how from these relations of theirs
the submission of millions of people resulted--that is, how component
forces equal to one A gave a resultant equal to a thousand times
A--the historian is again obliged to fall back on power--the force he
had denied--and to recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that
is, he has to admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And
that is just what the universal historians do, and consequently they
not only contradict the specialist historians but contradict
themselves.

Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according to
whether they want rain or fine weather: "The wind has blown the clouds
away," or, "The wind has brought up the clouds." And in the same way
the universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them and fits in
with their theory, say that power is the result of events, and
sometimes, when they want to prove something else, say that power
produces events.

A third class of historians--the so-called historians of
culture--following the path laid down by the universal historians who
sometimes accept writers and ladies as forces producing events--again
take that force to be something quite different. They see it in what
is called culture--in mental activity.

The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their
progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical
events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one
another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that
such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense
number of indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these
historians select the indication of intellectual activity and say that
this indication is the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove
that the cause of events lies in intellectual activity, only by a
great stretch can one admit that there is any connection between
intellectual activity and the movement of peoples, and in no case
can one admit that intellectual activity controls people's actions,
for that view is not confirmed by such facts as the very cruel murders
of the French Revolution resulting from the doctrine of the equality
of man, or the very cruel wars and executions resulting from the
preaching of love.

But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised arguments
with which these histories are filled--admitting that nations are
governed by some undefined force called an idea--history's essential
question still remains unanswered, and to the former power of monarchs
and to the influence of advisers and other people introduced by the
universal historians, another, newer force--the idea--is added, the
connection of which with the masses needs explanation. It is
possible to understand that Napoleon had power and so events occurred;
with some effort one may even conceive that Napoleon together with
other influences was the cause of an event; but how a book, Le Contrat
social, had the effect of making Frenchmen begin to drown one
another cannot be understood without an explanation of the causal
nexus of this new force with the event.

Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live
contemporaneously, and so it is possible to find some connection
between the intellectual activity of men and their historical
movements, just as such a connection may be found between the
movements of humanity and commerce, handicraft, gardening, or anything
else you please. But why intellectual activity is considered by the
historians of culture to be the cause or expression of the whole
historical movement is hard to understand. Only the following
considerations can have led the historians to such a conclusion: (1)
that history is written by learned men, and so it is natural and
agreeable for them to think that the activity of their class
supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity, just as a
similar belief is natural and agreeable to traders, agriculturists,
and soldiers (if they do not express it, that is merely because
traders and soldiers do not write history), and (2) that spiritual
activity, enlightenment, civilization, culture, ideas, are all
indistinct, indefinite conceptions under whose banner it is very
easy to use words having a still less definite meaning, and which
can therefore be readily introduced into any theory.

But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this
kind (which may possibly even be of use to someone for something)
the histories of culture, to which all general histories tend more and
more to approximate, are significant from the fact that after
seriously and minutely examining various religious, philosophic, and
political doctrines as causes of events, as soon as they have to
describe an actual historic event such as the campaign of 1812 for
instance, they involuntarily describe it as resulting from an exercise
of power--and say plainly that that was the result of Napoleon's will.
Speaking so, the historians of culture involuntarily contradict
themselves, and show that the new force they have devised does not
account for what happens in history, and that history can only be
explained by introducing a power which they apparently do not
recognize.





CHAPTER III


A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?" A peasant
says the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves because
its wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement
lies in the smoke which the wind carries away.

The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation.
To refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is no
devil, or another peasant would have to explain to him that it is
not the devil but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, as
a result of the contradiction, will they see that they are both wrong.
But the man who says that the movement of the wheels is the cause
refutes himself, for having once begun to analyze he ought to go on
and explain further why the wheels go round; and till he has reached
the ultimate cause of the movement of the locomotive in the pressure
of steam in the boiler, he has no right to stop in his search for
the cause. The man who explains the movement of the locomotive by
the smoke that is carried back has noticed that the wheels do not
supply an explanation and has taken the first sign that occurs to
him and in his turn has offered that as an explanation.

The only conception that can explain the movement of the
locomotive is that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.

The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples
is that of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the
peoples.

Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces of
different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement
observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as the
peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a force
resulting from several other forces, like the movement of the
wheels; others again as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that
is blown away.

So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whether
Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the histories of
all, absolutely all those who take part in an event, it is quite
impossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conception
of a force compelling men to direct their activity toward a certain
end. And the only such conception known to historians is that of
power.

This conception is the one handle by means of which the material
of history, as at present expounded, can be dealt with, and anyone who
breaks that handle off, as Buckle did, without finding some other
method of treating historical material, merely deprives himself of the
one possible way of dealing with it. The necessity of the conception
of power as an explanation of historical events is best demonstrated
by the universal historians and historians of culture themselves,
for they professedly reject that conception but inevitably have
recourse to it at every step.

In dealing with humanity's inquiry, the science of history up to now
is like money in circulation--paper money and coin. The biographies
and special national histories are like paper money. They can be
used and can circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm to
anyone and even advantageously, as long as no one asks what is the
security behind them. You need only forget to ask how the will of
heroes produces events, and such histories as Thiers' will be
interesting and instructive and may perhaps even possess a tinge of
poetry. But just as doubts of the real value of paper money arise
either because, being easy to make, too much of it gets made or
because people try to exchange it for gold, so also doubts
concerning the real value of such histories arise either because too
many of them are written or because in his simplicity of heart someone
inquires: by what force did Napoleon do this?--that is, wants to
exchange the current paper money for the real gold of actual
comprehension.

The writers of universal histories and of the history of culture are
like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide to
substitute for it money made of metal that has not the specific
gravity of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do no more
than that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is
deceived by tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle.
As gold is gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchange
but also for use, so universal historians will be valuable only when
they can reply to history's essential question: what is power? The
universal historians give contradictory replies to that question,
while the historians of culture evade it and answer something quite
different. And as counters of imitation gold can be used only among
a group of people who agree to accept them as gold, or among those who
do not know the nature of gold, so universal historians and historians
of culture, not answering humanity's essential question, serve as
currency for some purposes of their own, only in universities and
among the mass of readers who have a taste for what they call "serious
reading."





CHAPTER IV


Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the divine
subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and the
subjection of that man's will to the Deity, history cannot without
contradictions take a single step till it has chosen one of two
things: either a return to the former belief in the direct
intervention of the Deity in human affairs or a definite explanation
of the meaning of the force producing historical events and termed
"power."

A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been
destroyed; and so it is essential to explain what is meant by power.

Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are so
accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that the
question: why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when Napoleon
uttered certain words, seems to us senseless. He had the power and
so what he ordered was done.

This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was
given him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes
essential to determine what is this power of one man over others.

It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weak
one--a domination based on the application or threat of physical
force, like the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effect
of moral force, as in their simplicity some historians think who say
that the leading figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted
with a special strength of soul and mind called genius. This power
cannot be based on the predominance of moral strength, for, not to
mention heroes such as Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions
differ widely, history shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a
Metternich, who ruled over millions of people, had any particular
moral qualities, but on the contrary were generally morally weaker
than any of the millions they ruled over.

If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moral
qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for
elsewhere--in the relation to the people of the man who wields the
power.

And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence,
that exchange bank of history which offers to exchange history's
understanding of power for true gold.

Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed
or tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.

In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions of how
a state and power might be arranged were it possible for all that to
be arranged, it is all very clear; but when applied to history that
definition of power needs explanation.

The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power as the
ancients regarded fire--namely, as something existing absolutely.
But for history, the state and power are merely phenomena, just as for
modern physics fire is not an element but a phenomenon.

From this fundamental difference between the view held by history
and that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence can tell
minutely how in its opinion power should be constituted and what
power--existing immutably outside time--is, but to history's questions
about the meaning of the mutations of power in time it can answer
nothing.

If power be the collective will of the people transferred to their
ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the people? If
not, then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal when
he was taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later on, were those
criminals whom he arrested?

Do palace revolutions--in which sometimes only two or three people
take part--transfer the will of the people to a new ruler? In
international relations, is the will of the people also transferred to
their conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine
transferred to Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian people
transferred to Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with the
French went to fight the Austrians?

To these questions three answers are possible:

Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always
unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen,
and that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggle
against the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded as
an infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of the
people is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definite
and known conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts, and
even destructions of power result from a nonobservance by the rulers
of the conditions under which their power was entrusted to them; or
(3) that the will of the people is delegated to the rulers
conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown and indefinite, and
that the appearance of several authorities, their struggles and
their falls, result solely from the greater or lesser fulfillment by
the rulers of these unknown conditions on which the will of the people
is transferred from some people to others.

And these are the three ways in which the historians do explain
the relation of the people to their rulers.

Some historians--those biographical and specialist historians
already referred to--in their simplicity failing to understand the
question of the meaning of power, seem to consider that the collective
will of the people is unconditionally transferred to historical
persons, and therefore when describing some single state they assume
that particular power to be the one absolute and real power, and
that any other force opposing this is not a power but a violation of
power--mere violence.

Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods of
history, has the inconvenience--in application to complex and stormy
periods in the life of nations during which various powers arise
simultaneously and struggle with one another--that a Legitimist
historian will prove that the National Convention, the Directory,
and Bonaparte were mere infringers of the true power, while a
Republican and a Bonapartist will prove: the one that the Convention
and the other that the Empire was the real power, and that all the
others were violations of power. Evidently the explanations
furnished by these historians being mutually contradictory can only
satisfy young children.

Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set of
historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of the
will of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders have
power only conditionally on carrying out the program that the will
of the people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what this
program consists in these historians do not say, or if they do they
continually contradict one another.

Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation's
progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness, wealth,
freedom, or enlightenment of citizens of France or some other country.
But not to mention the historians' contradictions as to the nature
of this program--or even admitting that some one general program of
these conditions exists--the facts of history almost always contradict
that theory. If the conditions under which power is entrusted
consist in the wealth, freedom, and enlightenment of the people, how
is it that Louis XIV and Ivan the Terrible end their reigns
tranquilly, while Louis XVI and Charles I are executed by their
people? To this question historians reply that Louis XIV's activity,
contrary to the program, reacted on Louis XVI. But why did it not
react on Louis XIV or on Louis XV--why should it react just on Louis
XVI? And what is the time limit for such reactions? To these questions
there are and can be no answers. Equally little does this view explain
why for several centuries the collective will is not withdrawn from
certain rulers and their heirs, and then suddenly during a period of
fifty years is transferred to the Convention, to the Directory, to
Napoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, to
Charles X, to Louis Philippe, to a Republican government, and to
Napoleon III. When explaining these rapid transfers of the people's
will from one individual to another, especially in view of
international relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians
are obliged to admit that some of these transfers are not normal
delegations of the people's will but are accidents dependent on
cunning, on mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a
ruler, or a party leader. So that the greater part of the events of
history--civil wars, revolutions, and conquests--are presented by
these historians not as the results of free transferences of the
people's will, but as results of the ill-directed will of one or
more individuals, that is, once again, as usurpations of power. And so
these historians also see and admit historical events which are
exceptions to the theory.

These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed that some
plants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist that
all that grows does so by sprouting into two leaves, and that the
palm, the mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into full growth
and no longer resemble two leaves, are deviations from the theory.

Historians of the third class assume that the will of the people
is transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that the
conditions are unknown to us. They say that historical personages have
power only because they fulfill the will of the people which has
been delegated to them.

But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not in the
historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance have
those leaders?

The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of the
people: the activity of the leaders represents the activity of the
people.

But in that case the question arises whether all the activity of the
leaders serves as an expression of the people's will or only some part
of it. If the whole activity of the leaders serves as the expression
of the people's will, as some historians suppose, then all the details
of the court scandals contained in the biographies of a Napoleon or
a Catherine serve to express the life of the nation, which is
evident nonsense; but if it is only some particular side of the
activity of an historical leader which serves to express the
people's life, as other so-called "philosophical" historians
believe, then to determine which side of the activity of a leader
expresses the nation's life, we have first of all to know in what
the nation's life consists.

Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some most
obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover all
conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of
humanity's movement. The most usual generalizations adopted by
almost all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment,
progress, civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization
as the goal of the movement of humanity, the historians study the
men of whom the greatest number of monuments have remained: kings,
ministers, generals, authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, to
the extent to which in their opinion these persons have promoted or
hindered that abstraction. But as it is in no way proved that the
aim of humanity does consist in freedom, equality, enlightenment, or
civilization, and as the connection of the people with the rulers
and enlighteners of humanity is only based on the arbitrary assumption
that the collective will of the people is always transferred to the
men whom we have noticed, it happens that the activity of the millions
who migrate, burn houses, abandon agriculture, and destroy one another
never is expressed in the account of the activity of some dozen people
who did not burn houses, practice agriculture, or slay their fellow
creatures.

History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the peoples
of the west at the end of the eighteenth century and their drive
eastward explained by the activity of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, their
mistresses and ministers, and by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau,
Diderot, Beaumarchais, and others?

Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan and
Siberia expressed by details of the morbid character of Ivan the
Terrible and by his correspondence with Kurbski?

Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explained
by the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es and their
ladies? For us that movement of the peoples from west to east, without
leaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit,
remains incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible is the
cessation of that movement when a rational and sacred aim for the
Crusade--the deliverance of Jerusalem--had been clearly defined by
historic leaders. Popes, kings, and knights incited the peoples to
free the Holy Land; but the people did not go, for the unknown cause
which had previously impelled them to go no longer existed. The
history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers can evidently not cover
the life of the peoples. And the history of the Godfreys and the
Minnesingers has remained the history of Godfreys and Minnesingers,
but the history of the life of the peoples and their impulses has
remained unknown.

Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us
the life of the peoples.

The history of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions of
life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had a
hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau was
suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why
after the Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor why
during the French Revolution they guillotined one another.

If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the newest
historians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers, but not
the history of the life of the peoples.





CHAPTER V


The life of the nations is not contained in the lives of a few
men, for the connection between those men and the nations has not been
found. The theory that this connection is based on the transference of
the collective will of a people to certain historical personages is an
hypothesis unconfirmed by the experience of history.

The theory of the transference of the collective will of the
people to historic persons may perhaps explain much in the domain of
jurisprudence and be essential for its purposes, but in its
application to history, as soon as revolutions, conquests, or civil
wars occur--that is, as soon as history begins--that theory explains
nothing.

The theory seems irrefutable just because the act of transference of
the people's will cannot be verified, for it never occurred.

Whatever happens and whoever may stand at the head of affairs, the
theory can always say that such and such a person took the lead
because the collective will was transferred to him.

The replies this theory gives to historical questions are like the
replies of a man who, watching the movements of a herd of cattle and
paying no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in
different parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman,
should attribute the direction the herd takes to what animal happens
to be at its head.

"The herd goes in that direction because the animal in front leads
it and the collective will of all the other animals is vested in
that leader." This is what historians of the first class say--those
who assume the unconditional transference of the people's will.

"If the animals leading the herd change, this happens because the
collective will of all the animals is transferred from one leader to
another, according to whether the animal is or is not leading them
in the direction selected by the whole herd." Such is the reply
historians who assume that the collective will of the people is
delegated to rulers under conditions which they regard as known. (With
this method of observation it often happens that the observer,
influenced by the direction he himself prefers, regards those as
leaders who, owing to the people's change of direction, are no
longer in front, but on one side, or even in the rear.)

"If the animals in front are continually changing and the
direction of the whole herd is constantly altered, this is because
in order to follow a given direction the animals transfer their will
to the animals that have attracted our attention, and to study the
movements of the herd we must watch the movements of all the prominent
animals moving on all sides of the herd." So say the third class of
historians who regard all historical persons, from monarchs to
journalists, as the expression of their age.

The theory of the transference of the will of the people to historic
persons is merely a paraphrase--a restatement of the question in other
words.

What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the
collective will of the people transferred to one person. Under what
condition is the will of the people delegated to one person? On
condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people.
That is, power is power: in other words, power is a word the meaning
of which we do not understand.


If the realm of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning,
then having subjected to criticism the explanation of "power" that
juridical science gives us, humanity would conclude that power is
merely a word and has no real existence. But to understand phenomena
man has, besides abstract reasoning, experience by which he verifies
his reflections. And experience tells us that power is not merely a
word but an actually existing phenomenon.

Not to speak of the fact that no description of the collective
activity of men can do without the conception of power, the
existence of power is proved both by history and by observing
contemporary events.

Whenever an event occurs a man appears or men appear, by whose
will the event seems to have taken place. Napoleon III issues a decree
and the French go to Mexico. The King of Prussia and Bismarck issue
decrees and an army enters Bohemia. Napoleon I issues a decree and
an army enters Russia. Alexander I gives a command and the French
submit to the Bourbons. Experience shows us that whatever event occurs
it is always related to the will of one or of several men who have
decreed it.

The historians, in accord with the old habit of acknowledging divine
intervention in human affairs, want to see the cause of events in
the expression of the will of someone endowed with power, but that
supposition is not confirmed either by reason or by experience.

On the one side reflection shows that the expression of a man's
will--his words--are only part of the general activity expressed in an
event, as for instance in a war or a revolution, and so without
assuming an incomprehensible, supernatural force--a miracle--one
cannot admit that words can be the immediate cause of the movements of
millions of men. On the other hand, even if we admitted that words
could be the cause of events, history shows that the expression of the
will of historical personages does not in most cases produce any
effect, that is to say, their commands are often not executed, and
sometimes the very opposite of what they order occurs.

Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of humanity
we cannot regard "power" as the cause of events.

Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation
that exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution
of that will by others.

To explain the conditions of that relationship we must first
establish a conception of the expression of will, referring it to
man and not to the Deity.

If the Deity issues a command, expresses His will, as ancient
history tells us, the expression of that will is independent of time
and is not caused by anything, for the Divinity is not controlled by
an event. But speaking of commands that are the expression of the will
of men acting in time and in relation to one another, to explain the
connection of commands with events we must restore: (1) the
condition of all that takes place: the continuity of movement in
time both of the events and of the person who commands, and (2) the
inevitability of the connection between the person commanding and
those who execute his command.





CHAPTER VI


Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent on time,
can relate to a whole series of events occurring over a period of
years or centuries, and only the Deity, independent of everything, can
by His sole will determine the direction of humanity's movement; but
man acts in time and himself takes part in what occurs.

Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we see that
no command can be executed without some preceding order having been
given rendering the execution of the last command possible.

No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a whole
series of occurrences; but each command follows from another, and
never refers to a whole series of events but always to one moment only
of an event.

When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies to go to
war, we combine in one simultaneous expression a whole series of
consecutive commands dependent one on another. Napoleon could not have
commanded an invasion of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered
such and such papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to
Petersburg; tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to the army, the
fleet, the commissariat, and so on and so on--millions of commands,
which formed a whole series corresponding to a series of events
which brought the French armies into Russia.

If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning an
invasion of England and expended on no other undertaking so much
time and effort, and yet during his whole reign never once attempted
to execute that design but undertook an expedition into Russia, with
which country he considered it desirable to be in alliance (a
conviction he repeatedly expressed)--this came about because his
commands did not correspond to the course of events in the first case,
but did so correspond in the latter.

For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that a man
should order what can be executed. But to know what can and what
cannot be executed is impossible, not only in the case of Napoleon's
invasion of Russia in which millions participated, but even in the
simplest event, for in either case millions of obstacles may arise
to prevent its execution. Every order executed is always one of an
immense number unexecuted. All the impossible orders inconsistent with
the course of events remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones get
linked up with a consecutive series of commands corresponding to a
series of events, and are executed.

Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which
precedes it is due to the fact that when the event has taken place and
out of thousands of others those few commands which were consistent
with that event have been executed, we forget about the others that
were not executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the
chief source of our error in this matter is due to the fact that in
the historical accounts a whole series of innumerable, diverse, and
petty events, such for instance as all those which led the French
armies to Russia, is generalized into one event in accord with the
result produced by that series of events, and corresponding with
this generalization the whole series of commands is also generalized
into a single expression of will.

We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and invaded it. In
reality in all Napoleon's activity we never find anything resembling
an expression of that wish, but find a series of orders, or
expressions of his will, very variously and indefinitely directed.
Amid a long series of unexecuted orders of Napoleon's one series,
for the campaign of 1812, was carried out--not because those orders
differed in any way from the other, unexecuted orders but because they
coincided with the course of events that led the French army into
Russia; just as in stencil work this or that figure comes out not
because the color was laid on from this side or in that way, but
because it was laid on from all sides over the figure cut in the
stencil.

So that examining the relation in time of the commands to the
events, we find that a command can never be the cause of the event,
but that a certain definite dependence exists between the two.

To understand in what this dependence consists it is necessary to
reinstate another omitted condition of every command proceeding not
from the Deity but from a man, which is, that the man who gives the
command himself takes part in the event.

This relation of the commander to those he commands is just what
is called power. This relation consists in the following:

For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in
which regardless of the difference of the aims set for the common
action, the relation between those taking part in it is always the
same.

Men uniting in these combinations always assume such relations
toward one another that the larger number take a more direct share,
and the smaller number a less direct share, in the collective action
for which they have combined.

Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective action one
of the most striking and definite examples is an army.

Every army is composed of lower grades of the service--the rank
and file--of whom there are always the greatest number; of the next
higher military rank--corporals and noncommissioned officers of whom
there are fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom there are
still fewer, and so on to the highest military command which is
concentrated in one person.

A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone,
of which the base with the largest diameter consists of the rank and
file; the next higher and smaller section of the cone consists of
the next higher grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point
of which will represent the commander in chief.

The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section
of the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing,
hacking, burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for
these actions from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The
noncommissioned officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the
action itself less frequently than the soldiers, but they already give
commands. An officer still less often acts directly himself, but
commands still more frequently. A general does nothing but command the
troops, indicates the objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon
himself. The commander in chief never takes direct part in the
action itself, but only gives general orders concerning the movement
of the mass of the troops. A similar relation of people to one another
is seen in every combination of men for common activity--in
agriculture, trade, and every administration.

And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of
a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in
any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to
the highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action,
combine in such relations that the more directly they participate in
performing the action the less they can command and the more
numerous they are, while the less their direct participation in the
action itself, the more they command and the fewer of them there
are; rising in this way from the lowest ranks to the man at the top,
who takes the least direct share in the action and directs his
activity chiefly to commanding.

This relation of the men who command to those they command is what
constitutes the essence of the conception called power.

Having restored the condition of time under which all events
occur, we find that a command is executed only when it is related to a
corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of
relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that
by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest
part in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively
directed to commanding.





CHAPTER VII


When an event is taking place people express their opinions and
wishes about it, and as the event results from the collective activity
of many people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sure
to be fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions
expressed is fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the event
as a command preceding it.

Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion as to
how and where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happens
that this is done as one of them said. He ordered it. There we have
command and power in their primary form. The man who worked most
with his hands could not think so much about what he was doing, or
reflect on or command what would result from the common activity;
while the man who commanded more would evidently work less with his
hands on account of his greater verbal activity.

When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to a common
aim there is a yet sharper division of those who, because their
activity is given to directing and commanding, take less part in the
direct work.

When a man works alone he always has a certain set of reflections
which as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify his
present activity, and guide him in planning his future actions. Just
the same is done by a concourse of people, allowing those who do not
take a direct part in the activity to devise considerations,
justifications, and surmises concerning their collective activity.

For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown and
kill one another. And corresponding to the event its justification
appears in people's belief that this was necessary for the welfare
of France, for liberty, and for equality. People ceased to kill one
another, and this event was accompanied by its justification in the
necessity for a centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and
so on. Men went from the west to the east killing their fellow men,
and the event was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France,
the baseness of England, and so on. History shows us that these
justifications of the events have no common sense and are all
contradictory, as in the case of killing a man as the result of
recognizing his rights, and the killing of millions in Russia for
the humiliation of England. But these justifications have a very
necessary significance in their own day.

These justifications release those who produce the events from moral
responsibility. These temporary aims are like the broom fixed in front
of a locomotive to clear the snow from the rails in front: they
clear men's moral responsibilities from their path.

Without such justification there would be no reply to the simplest
question that presents itself when examining each historical event.
How is it that millions of men commit collective crimes--make war,
commit murder, and so on?

With the present complex forms of political and social life in
Europe can any event that is not prescribed, decreed, or ordered by
monarchs, ministers, parliaments, or newspapers be imagined? Is
there any collective action which cannot find its justification in
political unity, in patriotism, in the balance of power, or in
civilization? So that every event that occurs inevitably coincides
with some expressed wish and, receiving a justification, presents
itself as the result of the will of one man or of several men.

In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves it cuts
will always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on board the ship
the movement of those waves will be the only perceptible motion.

Only by watching closely moment by moment the movement of that
flow and comparing it with the movement of the ship do we convince
ourselves that every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movement
of the ship, and that we were led into error by the fact that we
ourselves were imperceptibly moving.

We see the same if we watch moment by moment the movement of
historical characters (that is, re-establish the inevitable
condition of all that occurs--the continuity of movement in time)
and do not lose sight of the essential connection of historical
persons with the masses.

When the ship moves in one direction there is one and the same
wave ahead of it, when it turns frequently the wave ahead of it also
turns frequently. But wherever it may turn there always will be the
wave anticipating its movement.

Whatever happens it always appears that just that event was foreseen
and decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the rush of water which neither
directs nor increases its movement foams ahead of it, and at a
distance seems to us not merely to move of itself but to govern the
ship's movement also.


Examining only those expressions of the will of historical persons
which, as commands, were related to events, historians have assumed
that the events depended on those commands. But examining the events
themselves and the connection in which the historical persons stood to
the people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent on
events. The incontestable proof of this deduction is that, however
many commands were issued, the event does not take place unless
there are other causes for it, but as soon as an event occurs--be it
what it may--then out of all the continually expressed wishes of
different people some will always be found which by their meaning
and their time of utterance are related as commands to the events.

Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and positively
to these two essential questions of history:

(1) What is power?

(2) What force produces the movement of the nations?

(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other individuals, in
which the more this person expresses opinions, predictions, and
justifications of the collective action that is performed, the less is
his participation in that action.

(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor by
intellectual activity, nor even by a combination of the two as
historians have supposed, but by the activity of all the people who
participate in the events, and who always combine in such a way that
those taking the largest direct share in the event take on
themselves the least responsibility and vice versa.

Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event;
physically it is those who submit to the power. But as the moral
activity is inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the event
is neither in the one nor in the other but in the union of the two.

Or in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable to
the phenomena we are examining.

In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity--that final
limit to which in every domain of thought man's reason arrives if it
is not playing with the subject. Electricity produces heat, heat
produces electricity. Atoms attract each other and atoms repel one
another.

Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of atoms, we
cannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is so because it is
inconceivable otherwise, because it must be so and that it is a law.
The same applies to historical events. Why war and revolution occur we
do not know. We only know that to produce the one or the other action,
people combine in a certain formation in which they all take part, and
we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or in
other words that it is a law.





CHAPTER VIII


If history dealt only with external phenomena, the establishment
of this simple and obvious law would suffice and we should have
finished our argument. But the law of history relates to man. A
particle of matter cannot tell us that it does not feel the law of
attraction or repulsion and that that law is untrue, but man, who is
the subject of history, says plainly: I am free and am therefore not
subject to the law.

The presence of the problem of man's free will, though
unexpressed, is felt at every step of history.

All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered
this question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and
the false path historical science has followed are due solely to the
lack of a solution of that question.

If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act
as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected
incidents.

If in a thousand years even one man in a million could act freely,
that is, as he chose, it is evident that one single free act of that
man's in violation of the laws governing human action would destroy
the possibility of the existence of any laws for the whole of
humanity.

If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free will
cannot exist, for then man's will is subject to that law.

In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which from most
ancient times has occupied the best human minds and from most
ancient times has been presented in its whole tremendous significance.

The problem is that regarding man as a subject of observation from
whatever point of view--theological, historical, ethical, or
philosophic--we find a general law of necessity to which he (like
all that exists) is subject. But regarding him from within ourselves
as what we are conscious of, we feel ourselves to be free.

This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite apart from
and independent of reason. Through his reason man observes himself,
but only through consciousness does he know himself.

Apart from consciousness of self no observation or application of
reason is conceivable.

To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man must first of
all be conscious of himself as living. A man is only conscious of
himself as a living being by the fact that he wills, that is, is
conscious of his volition. But his will--which forms the essence of
his life--man recognizes (and can but recognize) as free.

If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always directed
by one and the same law (whether he observes the necessity of taking
food, using his brain, or anything else) he cannot recognize this
never-varying direction of his will otherwise than as a limitation
of it. Were it not free it could not be limited. A man's will seems to
him to be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as
free.

You say: I am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let it fall.
Everyone understands that this illogical reply is an irrefutable
demonstration of freedom.

That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is not
subject to reason.

If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate and
independent source of self-consciousness it would be subject to
reasoning and to experience, but in fact such subjection does not
exist and is inconceivable.

A series of experiments and arguments proves to every man that he,
as an object of observation, is subject to certain laws, and man
submits to them and never resists the laws of gravity or
impermeability once he has become acquainted with them. But the same
series of experiments and arguments proves to him that the complete
freedom of which he is conscious in himself is impossible, and that
his every action depends on his organization, his character, and the
motives acting upon him; yet man never submits to the deductions of
these experiments and arguments. Having learned from experiment and
argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this
and always expects the law that he has learned to be fulfilled.

But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws,
he does not and cannot believe this.

However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the
same conditions and with the same character he will do the same
thing as before, yet when under the same conditions and with the
same character he approaches for the thousandth time the action that
always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before
the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or
sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him
that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in
precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational
conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot
imagine life. He feels that however impossible it may be, it is so,
for without this conception of freedom not only would he be unable
to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single
moment.

He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to
life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame
and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness,
health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion
and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of
freedom.

A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of
life.

If the conception of freedom appears to reason to be a senseless
contradiction like the possibility of performing two actions at one
and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that
only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.

This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom,
uncontrolled by experiment or argument, recognized by all thinkers and
felt by everyone without exception, this consciousness without which
no conception of man is possible constitutes the other side of the
question.

Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-seeing
God. What is sin, the conception of which arises from the
consciousness of man's freedom? That is a question for theology.

The actions of men are subject to general immutable laws expressed
in statistics. What is man's responsibility to society, the conception
of which results from the conception of freedom? That is a question
for jurisprudence.

Man's actions proceed from his innate character and the motives
acting upon him. What is conscience and the perception of right and
wrong in actions that follows from the consciousness of freedom?
That is a question for ethics.

Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears
subject to laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from
that connection appears to be free. How should the past life of nations
and of humanity be regarded--as the result of the free, or as the
result of the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for
history.

Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of
knowledge--thanks to that most powerful engine of ignorance, the
diffusion of printed matter--has the question of the freedom of will
been put on a level on which the question itself cannot exist. In our
time the majority of so-called advanced people--that is, the crowd of
ignoramuses--have taken the work of the naturalists who deal with one
side of the question for a solution of the whole problem.

They say and write and print that the soul and freedom do not exist,
for the life of man is expressed by muscular movements and muscular
movements are conditioned by the activity of the nerves; the soul
and free will do not exist because at an unknown period of time we
sprang from the apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that
thousands of years ago that same law of necessity which with such
ardor they are now trying to prove by physiology and comparative
zoology was not merely acknowledged by all the religions and all the
thinkers, but has never been denied. They do not see that the role
of the natural sciences in this matter is merely to serve as an
instrument for the illumination of one side of it. For the fact
that, from the point of view of observation, reason and the will are
merely secretions of the brain, and that man following the general law
may have developed from lower animals at some unknown period of
time, only explains from a fresh side the truth admitted thousands
of years ago by all the religious and philosophic theories--that
from the point of view of reason man is subject to the law of
necessity; but it does not advance by a hair's breadth the solution of
the question, which has another, opposite, side, based on the
consciousness of freedom.

If men descended from the apes at an unknown period of time, that is
as comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at
a certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is
the time, in the second case it is the origin); and the question of
how man's consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of
necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by comparative
physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a rabbit, or an ape, we can
observe only the muscular nervous activity, but in man we observe
consciousness as well as the muscular and nervous activity.

The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can solve this
question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side of the walls
of a church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief
superintendent of the work, should in an access of zeal plaster over
the windows, icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should
be delighted that from their point of view as plasterers, everything
is now so smooth and regular.





CHAPTER IX


For the solution of the question of free will or inevitability,
history has this advantage over other branches of knowledge in which
the question is dealt with, that for history this question does not
refer to the essence of man's free will but its manifestation in the
past and under certain conditions.

In regard to this question, history stands to the other sciences
as experimental science stands to abstract science.

The subject for history is not man's will itself but our
presentation of it.

And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by the
incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not exist as it
does for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History surveys a
presentation of man's life in which the union of these two
contradictions has already taken place.

In actual life each historic event, each human action, is very clearly
and definitely understood without any sense of contradiction, although
each event presents itself as partly free and partly compulsory.

To solve the question of how freedom and necessity are combined
and what constitutes the essence of these two conceptions, the
philosophy of history can and should follow a path contrary to that
taken by other sciences. Instead of first defining the conceptions
of freedom and inevitability in themselves, and then ranging the
phenomena of life under those definitions, history should deduce a
definition of the conception of freedom and inevitability themselves
from the immense quantity of phenomena of which it is cognizant and
that always appear dependent on these two elements.

Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or of an
individual we may consider, we always regard it as the result partly
of man's free will and partly of the law of inevitability.

Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and the
incursions of the barbarians, or of the decrees of Napoleon III, or of
someone's action an hour ago in choosing one direction out of
several for his walk, we are unconscious of any contradiction. The
degree of freedom and inevitability governing the actions of these
people is clearly defined for us.

Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to
differences in the point of view from which we regard the event, but
every human action appears to us as a certain combination of freedom
and inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure
of freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more
freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we perceive,
and the more inevitability the less freedom.

The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases
according to the point of view from which the action is regarded,
but their relation is always one of inverse proportion.

A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry
mother exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man
trained to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a
defenseless man--seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject
to the law of necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which
these people were placed, and more free to one who does not know
that the man was himself drowning, that the mother was hungry, that
the soldier was in the ranks, and so on. Similarly a man who committed
a murder twenty years ago and has since lived peaceably and harmlessly
in society seems less guilty and his action more due to the law of
inevitability, to someone who considers his action after twenty
years have elapsed than to one who examined it the day after it was
committed. And in the same way every action of an insane, intoxicated,
or highly excited man appears less free and more inevitable to one who
knows the mental condition of him who committed the action, and
seems more free and less inevitable to one who does not know it. In
all these cases the conception of freedom is increased or diminished
and the conception of compulsion is correspondingly decreased or
increased, according to the point of view from which the action is
regarded. So that the greater the conception of necessity the
smaller the conception of freedom and vice versa.

Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of jurisprudence,
and history itself understand alike this relation between necessity
and freedom.

All cases without exception in which our conception of freedom and
necessity is increased and diminished depend on three considerations:

(1) The relation to the external world of the man who commits the
deeds.

(2) His relation to time.

(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action.

The first consideration is the clearness of our perception of the
man's relation to the external world and the greater or lesser
clearness of our understanding of the definite position occupied by
the man in relation to everything coexisting with him. This is what
makes it evident that a drowning man is less free and more subject
to necessity than one standing on dry ground, and that makes the
actions of a man closely connected with others in a thickly
populated district, or of one bound by family, official, or business
duties, seem certainly less free and more subject to necessity than
those of a man living in solitude and seclusion.

If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to everything
around him, each action of his seems to us free. But if we see his
relation to anything around him, if we see his connection with
anything whatever--with a man who speaks to him, a book he reads,
the work on which he is engaged, even with the air he breathes or
the light that falls on the things about him--we see that each of
these circumstances has an influence on him and controls at least some
side of his activity. And the more we perceive of these influences the
more our conception of his freedom diminishes and the more our
conception of the necessity that weighs on him increases.

The second consideration is the more or less evident time relation
of the man to the world and the clearness of our perception of the
place the man's action occupies in time. That is the ground which
makes the fall of the first man, resulting in the production of the
human race, appear evidently less free than a man's entry into
marriage today. It is the reason why the life and activity of people
who lived centuries ago and are connected with me in time cannot
seem to me as free as the life of a contemporary, the consequences
of which are still unknown to me.

The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends
in this respect on the greater or lesser lapse of time between the
performance of the action and our judgment of it.

If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in approximately the same
circumstances as those I am in now, my action appears to me
undoubtedly free. But if I examine an act performed a month ago, then
being in different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing that if
that act had not been committed much that resulted from it--good,
agreeable, and even essential--would not have taken place. If I
reflect on an action still more remote, ten years ago or more, then
the consequences of my action are still plainer to me and I find it
hard to imagine what would have happened had that action not been
performed. The farther I go back in memory, or what is the same thing
the farther I go forward in my judgment, the more doubtful becomes my
belief in the freedom of my action.

In history we find a very similar progress of conviction
concerning the part played by free will in the general affairs of
humanity. A contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the doing
of all the known participants, but with a more remote event we already
see its inevitable results which prevent our considering anything else
possible. And the farther we go back in examining events the less
arbitrary do they appear.

The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the result of
the crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still
seem to us, though already questionably, to be the outcome of their
heroes' will. But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying
its definite place in history and without which we cannot imagine
the modern history of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the
Crusades that event appeared as merely due to the will of certain
people. In regard to the migration of the peoples it does not enter
anyone's head today to suppose that the renovation of the European
world depended on Attila's caprice. The farther back in history the
object of our observation lies, the more doubtful does the free will
of those concerned in the event become and the more manifest the law
of inevitability.

The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that
endless chain of causation inevitably demanded by reason, in which
each phenomenon comprehended, and therefore man's every action, must
have its definite place as a result of what has gone before and as a
cause of what will follow.

The better we are acquainted with the physiological,
psychological, and historical laws deduced by observation and by which
man is controlled, and the more correctly we perceive the
physiological, psychological, and historical causes of the action, and
the simpler the action we are observing and the less complex the
character and mind of the man in question, the more subject to
inevitability and the less free do our actions and those of others
appear.

When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a
crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we
ascribe a greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we
most urgently demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of
a virtuous act we rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case
we recognize in it more individuality, originality, and
independence. But if even one of the innumerable causes of the act
is known to us we recognize a certain element of necessity and are
less insistent on punishment for the crime, or the acknowledgment of
the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom of the apparently
original action. That a criminal was reared among male factors
mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father or
mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more
comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems
less deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The
founder of a sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when
we know how or by what the way was prepared for his activity. If we
have a large range of examples, if our observation is constantly
directed to seeking the correlation of cause and effect in people's
actions, their actions appear to us more under compulsion and less
free the more correctly we connect the effects with the causes. If
we examined simple actions and had a vast number of such actions under
observation, our conception of their inevitability would be still
greater. The dishonest conduct of the son of a dishonest father, the
misconduct of a woman who had fallen into bad company, a drunkard's
relapse into drunkenness, and so on are actions that seem to us less
free the better we understand their cause. If the man whose actions we
are considering is on a very low stage of mental development, like a
child, a madman, or a simpleton--then, knowing the causes of the act
and the simplicity of the character and intelligence in question, we
see so large an element of necessity and so little free will that as
soon as we know the cause prompting the action we can foretell the
result.

On these three considerations alone is based the conception of
irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating circumstances admitted
by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less
according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in
which the man was placed whose action is being judged, and according
to the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of
the action and its investigation, and according to the greater or
lesser understanding of the causes that led to the action.





CHAPTER X


Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually
diminishes or increases according to the greater or lesser
connection with the external world, the greater or lesser remoteness
of time, and the greater or lesser dependence on the causes in
relation to which we contemplate a man's life.

So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the
external world is well known, where the time between the action and
its examination is great, and where the causes of the action are
most accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability
and a minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent on
external conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and the
causes of whose action are beyond our ken, we get the conception of
a minimum of inevitability and a maximum of freedom.

In neither case--however we may change our point of view, however
plain we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and the
external world, however inaccessible it may be to us, however long or
short the period of time, however intelligible or incomprehensible the
causes of the action may be--can we ever conceive either complete
freedom or complete necessity.

(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the
influence of the external world, we never get a conception of
freedom in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what
surrounds him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My
action seems to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my
arm in every direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in
which there was least obstruction to that action either from things
around me or from the construction of my own body. I chose one out
of all the possible directions because in it there were fewest
obstacles. For my action to be free it was necessary that it should
encounter no obstacles. To conceive of a man being free we must
imagine him outside space, which is evidently impossible.

(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time
of the deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I
examine an action committed a second ago I must still recognize it
as not being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which
it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself:
could I have abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has
already passed? To convince myself of this I do not lift it the next
moment. But I am not now abstaining from doing so at the first
moment when I asked the question. Time has gone by which I could not
detain, the arm I then lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now
refrain from lifting, nor is the air in which I lifted it the same
that now surrounds me. The moment in which the first movement was made
is irrevocable, and at that moment I could make only one movement, and
whatever movement I made would be the only one. That I did not lift my
arm a moment later does not prove that I could have abstained from
lifting it then. And since I could make only one movement at that
single moment of time, it could not have been any other. To imagine it
as free, it is necessary to imagine it in the present, on the boundary
between the past and the future--that is, outside time, which is
impossible.

(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be
increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is,
an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of
the expression of will in any action, our own or another's, the
first demand of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause,
for without a cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to
perform an action independently of any cause, but my wish to perform
an action without a cause is the cause of my action.

But even if--imagining a man quite exempt from all influences,
examining only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any
cause--we were to admit so infinitely small a remainder of
inevitability as equaled zero, we should even then not have arrived at
the conception of complete freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by
the external world, standing outside of time and independent of cause,
is no longer a man.

In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite
devoid of freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability.

(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space
in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for
the number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of
space. And therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men
are defined, there is no complete inevitability but a certain
measure of freedom remains.

(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action
we are examining and the judgment upon it, that period will be finite,
while time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never
be absolute inevitability.

(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any
action, we shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and
so again we never reach absolute inevitability.

But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of
freedom to equal zero, we assumed in some given case--as for
instance in that of a dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot--complete
absence of freedom, by so doing we should destroy the very
conception of man in the case we are examining, for as soon as there
is no freedom there is also no man. And so the conception of the
action of a man subject solely to the law of inevitability without any
element of freedom is just as impossible as the conception of a
man's completely free action.

And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of
inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of
an infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of
time, and an infinite series of causes.

To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of
inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond
time, and free from dependence on cause.

In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom we
should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of
inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content.

In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability
we should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time,
and cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and
unlimited would be nothing, or mere content without form.

We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man's
whole outlook on the universe is constructed--the incomprehensible
essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.

Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it
visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time
is infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable
otherwise. (3) The connection between cause and effect has no
beginning and can have no end.

Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me,
consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time by the
fixed moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as
living, consequently I am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I
feel myself to be the cause of every manifestation of my life.

Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability.
Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom.

Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man's
consciousness. Inevitability without content is man's reason in its
three forms.

Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines.
Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the form.

Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one
another as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and
separately incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability.

Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's life.

Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define
one another as form and content, no conception of life is possible.

All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation
of free will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws
of reason.

All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain
relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence
of life to the laws of reason.

The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious
of them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity,
animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life
in man and we call that freedom.

But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but
felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which
we know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the
first knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton's law), so
too the force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which
everyone is conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know
the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that
every man dies, up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and
historic laws).

All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the
laws of reason.

Man's free will differs from every other force in that man is
directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way
differs from any other force. The forces of gravitation,
electricity, or chemical affinity are only distinguished from one
another in that they are differently defined by reason. Just so the
force of man's free will is distinguished by reason from the other
forces of nature only by the definition reason gives it. Freedom,
apart from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason that
define it, differs in no way from gravitation, or heat, or the force
that makes things grow; for reason, it is only a momentary undefinable
sensation of life.

And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly
bodies, the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity,
or of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of
astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the
same way does the force of free will form the content of history.
But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of
this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the
subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free
will in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause
forms the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of
metaphysics.

In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of
inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital
force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above
what we know of the essence of life.

So also in history what is known to us we call laws of
inevitability, what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for
history only an expression for the unknown remainder of what we know
about the laws of human life.





CHAPTER XI


History examines the manifestations of man's free will in connection
with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is,
it defines this freedom by the laws of reason, and so history is a
science only in so far as this free will is defined by those laws.

The recognition of man's free will as something capable of
influencing historical events, that is, as not subject to laws, is the
same for history as the recognition of a free force moving the
heavenly bodies would be for astronomy.

That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of
laws, that is, of any science whatever. If there is even a single body
moving freely, then the laws of Kepler and Newton are negatived and no
conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists.
If any single action is due to free will, then not a single historical
law can exist, nor any conception of historical events.

For history, lines exist of the movement of human wills, one end
of which is hidden in the unknown but at the other end of which a
consciousness of man's will in the present moves in space, time, and
dependence on cause.

The more this field of motion spreads out before our eyes, the
more evident are the laws of that movement. To discover and define
those laws is the problem of history.

From the standpoint from which the science of history now regards
its subject on the path it now follows, seeking the causes of events
in man's freewill, a scientific enunciation of those laws is
impossible, for however man's free will may be restricted, as soon
as we recognize it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law
becomes impossible.

Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal,
that is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity, can we
convince ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of the causes,
and then instead of seeking causes, history will take the discovery of
laws as its problem.

The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of
thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously
with the self-destruction toward which--ever dissecting and dissecting
the causes of phenomena--the old method of history is moving.

All human sciences have traveled along that path. Arriving at
infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons
the process of analysis and enters on the new process of the
integration of unknown, infinitely small, quantities. Abandoning the
conception of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property
common to all unknown, infinitely small, elements.

In another form but along the same path of reflection the other
sciences have proceeded. When Newton enunciated the law of gravity
he did not say that the sun or the earth had a property of attraction;
he said that all bodies from the largest to the smallest have the
property of attracting one another, that is, leaving aside the
question of the cause of the movement of the bodies, he expressed
the property common to all bodies from the infinitely large to the
infinitely small. The same is done by the natural sciences: leaving
aside the question of cause, they seek for laws. History stands on the
same path. And if history has for its object the study of the movement
of the nations and of humanity and not the narration of episodes in
the lives of individuals, it too, setting aside the conception of
cause, should seek the laws common to all the inseparably
interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will.





CHAPTER XII


From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the
mere recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth
that moves sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the
ancients. By disproving that law it might have been possible to retain
the old conception of the movements of the bodies, but without
disproving it, it would seem impossible to continue studying the
Ptolemaic worlds. But even after the discovery of the law of
Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still studied for a long time.

From the time the first person said and proved that the number of
births or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this
or that mode of government is determined by certain geographical and
economic conditions, and that certain relations of population to
soil produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history
had been built were destroyed in their essence.

By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have
been retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to
continue studying historic events as the results of man's free will.
For if a certain mode of government was established or certain
migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such and such
geographic, ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will
of those individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of
government or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as
the cause.

And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with
the laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative
philology, and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions.

The struggle between the old views and the new was long and
stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on
guard for the old views and accused the new of violating revelation.
But when truth conquered, theology established itself just as firmly
on the new foundation.

Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding
between the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the
same way stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of
subverting revelation.

In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes
passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret
for the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the
other is the passion for destruction.

To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical
philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would
destroy faith in God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the
miracle of Joshua the son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of
Copernicus and Newton, to Voltaire for example, it seemed that the
laws of astronomy destroyed religion, and he utilized the law of
gravitation as a weapon against religion.

Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of
inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and
evil, and all the institutions of state and church that have been
built up on those conceptions.

So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of
inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion,
though the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus
in astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation
on which the institutions of state and church are erected.

As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of
history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the
recognition or nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the
measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability
of the earth, in history it is the independence of personality--free
will.

As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the
earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's
fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the
difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of
space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the
independence of one's own personality. But as in astronomy the new
view said: "It is true that we do not feel the movement of the
earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while
by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,"
so also in history the new view says: "It is true that we are not
conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we
arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external
world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws."

In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness
of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did
not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce
a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of
which we are not conscious.