War and Peace (147 page)

Prince Andrey, who had thought that he did not care whether they took Moscow as they had taken Smolensk, was suddenly pulled up in his speech by a nervous catch in his throat. He walked to and fro several
times in silence, but his eyes blazed with feverish brilliance and his lips quivered, as he began to speak again.

“If there were none of this playing at generosity in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for, as now. Then there would not be wars because Pavel Ivanitch had insulted Mihail Ivanitch. But if there is war as now, let it be really war. And then the intensity of warfare would be something quite different. All these Westphalians and Hessians Napoleon is leading against us would not have come to fight us in Russia, and we should not have gone to war in Austria and in Prussia without knowing what for. War is not a polite recreation, but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war. We ought to accept it sternly and solemnly as a fearful necessity. It all comes to this: have done with lying, and if it’s war, then it’s war and not a game, or else warfare is simply the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous.… The military is the most honoured calling. And what is war, what is needed for success in war, what are the morals of the military world? The object of warfare is murder; the means employed in warfare—spying, treachery, and the encouragement of it, the ruin of a country, the plundering of its inhabitants and robbery for the maintenance of the army, trickery and lying, which are called military strategy; the morals of the military class—absence of all independence, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in spite of all that, it is the highest class, respected by every one. All sovereigns, except the Chinese, wear a military uniform, and give the greatest rewards to the man who succeeds in killing most people.… They meet together to murder one another, as we shall do to-morrow; they slaughter and mutilate tens of thousands of men, and then offer up thanksgiving services for the number of men they have killed (and even add to it in the telling), and glorify the victory, supposing that the more men have been slaughtered the greater the achievement. How God can look down from above and hear them!” shrieked Prince Andrey in a shrill, piercing voice. “Ah, my dear boy, life has been a bitter thing for me of late. I see that I have come to understand too much. And it is not good for man to taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.… Ah, well, it’s not for long!” he added. “But you are getting sleepy and it’s time I was in bed too. Go back to Gorky,” said Prince Andrey suddenly.

“Oh no!” answered Pierre, gazing with eyes full of scared sympathy at Prince Andrey.

“You must be off; before a battle one needs to get a good sleep,”
repeated Prince Andrey. He went quickly up to Pierre, embraced and kissed him. “Good-bye, be off,” he cried, “whether we see each other again or not …” and turning hurriedly, he went off into the barn.

It was already dark, and Pierre could not distinguish whether the expression of his face was exasperated or affectionate.

Pierre stood for some time in silence, hesitating whether to go after him or to return to Gorky. “No; he does not want me!” Pierre made up his mind, “and I know this is our last meeting!” He heaved a deep sigh and rode back to Gorky.

Prince Andrey lay down on a rug in the barn, but he could not sleep.

He closed his eyes. One set of images followed another in his mind. On one mental picture he dwelt long and joyfully. He vividly recalled one evening in Petersburg. Natasha with an eager, excited face had been telling him how in looking for mushrooms the previous summer she had lost her way in a great forest. She described incoherently the dark depths of the forest, and her feelings, and her talk with a bee-keeper she met, and every minute she broke off in her story, saying: “No, I can’t, I’m not describing it properly; no, you won’t understand me,” although Prince Andrey tried to assure her that he understood and did really understand all she wanted to convey to him. Natasha was dissatisfied with her own words; she felt that they did not convey the passionately poetical feeling she had known that day and tried to give expression to. “It was all so exquisite, that old man, and it was so dark in the forest … and such a kind look in his … no, I can’t describe it,” she had said, flushed and moved.

Prince Andrey smiled now the same happy smile he had smiled then, gazing into her eyes. “I understood her,” thought Prince Andrey, “and more than understood her: that spiritual force, that sincerity, that openness of soul, the very soul of her, which seemed bound up with her body, the very soul it was I loved in her … loved so intensely, so passionately …” and all at once he thought how his love had ended. “
He
cared nothing for all that.
He
saw nothing of it, had no notion of it. He saw in her a pretty and
fresh
young girl with whom he did not deign to unite his life permanently. And I?… And he is still alive and happy.” Prince Andrey jumped up as though suddenly scalded, and began walking to and fro before the barn again.

On the 25th of August, on the eve of the battle of Borodino, the prefect of the French Emperor’s palace, M. de Beausset, and Colonel Fabvier, arrived, the former from Paris, and the latter from Madrid, at Napoleon’s encampment at Valuev.

After changing into a court uniform M. de Beausset ordered the package he had brought for the Emperor to be carried before him, and walked into the first compartment of Napoleon’s tent, where he busied himself while conversing with the aides-de-camp in unpacking the box.

Fabvier stood talking with generals of his acquaintance in the entrance of the tent.

The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom, he was finishing his toilet. With snorts and grunts of satisfaction, he was turning first his stout back and then his plump, hirsute chest towards the flesh-brush with which a valet was rubbing him down. Another valet, holding a bottle with one finger on it, was sprinkling eau de cologne on the Emperor’s pampered person with an expression which seemed to say that he alone knew where and how much eau de cologne must be sprinkled. Napoleon’s short hair was wet and matted on his brow. But his face, though puffy and yellow, expressed physical satisfaction.

“Go on, hard, go on …” he said, shrugging and clearing his throat, to the valet brushing him. An adjutant, who had come into the bedroom to report to the Emperor the number of prisoners taken in the last engagement, was standing at the door, after giving his message, awaiting permission to withdraw. Napoleon, frowning, glanced up from under his brows at the adjutant. “No prisoners,” he repeated the adjutant’s words. “They are working their own destruction. So much the worse for the Russian army,” said he. “Harder, brush harder,” he said, hunching his fat shoulders before the valet. “Good. Let Beausset come in and Fabvier too,” he said to the adjutant, nodding.

“I obey, sire,” and the adjutant disappeared.

The two valets rapidly dressed his majesty, and in the blue uniform of the guards he walked into the reception-room with firm, rapid steps.

Beausset meanwhile was in great haste setting up the present he had brought from the Empress on two chairs just before the Emperor as he entered. But the Emperor had been so unaccountably rapid over getting dressed and coming in that he had not time to have the surprise ready for him.

Napoleon at once noticed what they were about, and guessed they were not ready. He did not want to deprive them of the pleasure of preparing an agreeable surprise for him. He pretended not to see M. de Beausset, and beckoned Fabvier to him. Napoleon, frowning sternly, listened in silence to what Fabvier was saying of the gallantry and devotion of his army, fighting before Salamanca, at the other end of Europe; they had, he said, but one dream—to be worthy of their Emperor, and one fear—to displease him. The result of the battle had been disastrous. Napoleon made ironical remarks during Fabvier’s account of it, as though he had not expected it to be otherwise in his absence.

“I must make up for it at Moscow,” said Napoleon.
“A tantôt,”
he added, and summoned Beausset, who had by this time succeeded in preparing his effect, had stood something on the chairs and thrown a cover over it.

Beausset made a courtier’s low bow, such as only the old retainers of the Bourbons knew how to make, and approached him, handing him a letter.

Napoleon addressed him gaily and pinched him by the ear.

“You have been quick, delighted to see you. Well, what is Paris saying?” he said, his look of sternness suddenly changing to the most cordial expression.

“Sire, all Paris is regretting your absence,” answered Beausset, as in duty bound. But though Napoleon knew Beausset was bound to say this or something like it, though at his lucid moments he knew it was all false, he was glad to hear this from him. He condescended to pinch his ear again.

“I am very sorry to have made you to travel so far,” he said.

“Sire, I expected to find you at least at the gates of Moscow,” said Beausset.

Napoleon smiled, and lifting his head absently looked round to the right. An adjutant approached obsequiously with a gold snuffbox and offered it. Napoleon took it.

“Yes, it’s a happy chance for you,” he said, putting the open snuffbox to his nose. “You are fond of travelling, and in three days you will see Moscow. You probably did not expect to see the Asiatic capital. You will have a delightful journey.”

Beausset bowed with gratitude for this interest in his tastes for travel (of which he had till that moment been unaware).

“Ah! what’s this?” said Napoleon, observing that all the courtiers
were gazing at something concealed under a covering. Beausset with courtier-like agility retired two steps with a half turn, not showing his back, and at the same moment twitched off the covering, saying: “A present to your majesty from the Empress.”

It was a portrait, painted in brilliant colours by Gérard, of the child of Napoleon and the daughter of the Austrian Emperor, the little boy whom every one for some unknown reason called the King of Rome.

The very pretty, curly-headed child, with eyes like the Christ with the Sistine Madonna, had been portrayed playing cup and ball. The ball represented the terrestrial globe and the cup in the other hand was a sceptre.

Though it was not altogether clear what the painter had intended to express by representing the so-called King of Rome tossing the terrestrial globe on a sceptre, the allegory apparently seemed to Napoleon, as it had to every one who had seen it in Paris, quite clear and extremely pleasing.

“The King of Rome!” he said, pointing with a graceful gesture to the portrait. “Admirable!” With the characteristic Italian facility for changing his expression at will, he went up to the portrait and assumed an air of pensive tenderness. He felt that what he might say or do at that moment would be historical. And it struck him that the best line he could take at that moment, at the height of his grandeur—so great that his child was playing cup and ball with the earth—would be to display, in contrast with that grandeur, the simplest, fatherly tenderness. His eyes were veiled by emotion; he moved up, looked round for a chair (a chair seemed to spring up under him), and sat down, facing the portrait. At a single gesture from him all withdrew on tip-toe, leaving the great man to himself and his feelings. After sitting there a little while and passing his fingers, he could not have said why, over the rough surface of the painting, he got up and again sent for Beausset and the officer on duty. He gave orders for the portrait to be carried out in front of his tent, so that the Old Guard, standing about his tent, might not be deprived of the happiness of seeing the King of Rome, the son and heir of their adored Emperor.

While he sat at breakfast with M. de Beausset—whom he had honoured by an invitation to join him—he heard, as he had expected, enthusiastic shouts from the soldiers and officers of the Old Guard, who had run up to see the portrait.

“Vive l’Empereur! Vive le roi de Rome! Vive l’Empereur!”
shouted enthusiastic voices.

After breakfast, in Beausset’s presence, Napoleon dictated his proclamation to the army.

“Courte et énergique!”
Napoleon pronounced it, when he had read over the proclamation that he had dictated straight off without corrections. It was as follows:

“Soldiers! This is the battle you have so greatly desired. Victory is in your hands. It is essential for us; it will give us everything we need: comfortable quarters and a speedy return to our own country. Behave as you behaved at Austerlitz, Friedland, Vitebsk, and Smolensk. May posterity recall with pride your achievement on this day! And may they say of each of you: he was at the great battle before Moscow!”

“Before Moscow,” repeated Napoleon, and inviting M. de Beausset, so fond of travel, to accompany him on his ride, he went out of the tent to the saddled horses awaiting them outside.

“Your majesty is too kind,” said Beausset, in response to the invitation to accompany the Emperor. He was very sleepy. He could not ride well, and was afraid of horses.

But Napoleon nodded to the traveller, and Beausset had to mount. When Napoleon came out of the tent the shouts of the Guards before his son’s portrait were redoubled. Napoleon frowned.

“Take him away,” he said, with a gracefully majestic gesture, pointing to the portrait. “It is too early yet for him to look upon the field of battle.”

Beausset, dropping his eyelids, and bowing his head, heaved a deep sigh, to testify how well he was able to appreciate and comprehend the Emperor’s words.

The whole of that day, the 25th of August, Napoleon spent, so his historians relate, on horseback, inspecting the locality, criticising the plans submitted to him by his marshals, and giving commands in person to his generals.

The original line of the Russian disposition, along the Kolotcha, had been broken through, and, in consequence of the taking of the Shevardino redoubt on the previous day, part of that line—the left flank—had been drawn further back. That part of the line had not been strengthened, was no longer protected by the river, and more open and
level ground lay before it. It was obvious to any man, military or non-military, that it was that part of the line that the French should attack. One would have thought that no great deliberation would be necessary to reach this conclusion; that all the care and anxiety of the Emperor and his marshals were unnecessary, and that there was absolutely no need of that peculiar high degree of talent called genius, which they are so fond of ascribing to Napoleon. But the historians, who described the battle afterwards, and the men surrounding Napoleon at the time, and he himself, thought otherwise.