| IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE towards which the Tsar rode there stood, facing each other, the battalion of the Preobrazhensky regiment on the right, and the battalion of the French guards in bearskin caps on the left. While the Emperor was riding up to one flank of the battalions, who presented arms, another crowd of horsemen was galloping up to the opposite flank, and at the head of them Rostov recognised Napoleon. That figure could be no one else. He galloped up, wearing a little hat, the ribbon of St. Andrey across his shoulder, and a blue uniform open over a white vest. He was riding a grey Arab horse of extremely fine breed, with a crimson, gold-embroidered saddle-cloth. Riding up to Alexander, he raised his hat, and at that moment Rostov, with his cavalryman’s eye, could not help noticing that Napoleon had a bad and uncertain seat on horseback. The battalions shouted hurrah, and vive l’Empereur! Napoleon said something to Alexander. Both Emperors dismounted from their horses and took each other by the hands. Napoleon’s face wore an unpleasantly hypocritical smile. Alexander was saying something to him with a cordial expression. In spite of the kicking of the horses of the French gendarmes, who were keeping back the crowd, Rostov watched every movement of the Emperor Alexander and of Bonaparte, and never took his eyes off them. What struck him as something unexpected and strange was that Alexander behaved as though Bonaparte were his equal, and that Bonaparte in his manner to the Russian Tsar seemed perfectly at ease, as though this equal and intimate relation with a monarch were something natural and customary with him. Alexander and Napoleon, with a long tail of suite, moved towards the right flank of the Preobrazhensky battalion, close up to the crowd which was standing there. The crowd found itself unexpectedly so close to the Emperors, that Rostov, who stood in the front part of it, began to be afraid he might be recognised. “Sire, I ask your permission to give the Legion of Honour to the bravest of your soldiers,” said a harsh, precise voice, fully articulating every letter. It was little Bonaparte speaking, looking up straight into Alexander’s eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to him, and bending his head smiled amiably. “To him who bore himself most valiantly in this last war,” added Napoleon, emphasising each syllable, and with an assurance and composure, revolting to Rostov, scanning the rows of Russian soldiers drawn up before him, all presenting arms, and all gazing immovably at the face of their own Emperor. “Will your majesty allow me to ask the opinion of the colonel?” said Alexander, and he took a few hurried steps towards Prince Kozlovsky, the commander of the battalion. Bonaparte was meanwhile taking the glove off his little white hand, and, tearing it, he threw it away. An adjutant, rushing hurriedly forward from behind, picked it up. “Give it to whom?” the Emperor Alexander asked of Kozlovsky in Russian, in a low voice. “As your majesty commands.” The Emperor frowned, with a look of displeasure, and, looking round, said: “Well, we must give him an answer.” Kozlovsky scanned the ranks with a resolute air, taking in Rostov too, in that glance. “Won’t it be me!” thought Rostov. “Lazarev!” the colonel called with a scowling face; and Lazarev, the soldier who was the best shot in firing at the range, stepped smartly forward. “Where are you off to? Stand still!” voices whispered to Lazarev, who did not know where he was to go. Lazarev stopped short, with a sidelong scared look at his colonel, and his face quivered, as one so often sees in soldiers called up in front of the ranks. Napoleon gave a slight backward turn of his head, and a slight motion of his little fat hand, as though seeking something with it. The members of his suite, who guessed the same second what was wanted, were all in a bustle; they whispered together, passing something from one to another, and a page—the same one Rostov had seen the previous evening at Boris’s quarters—ran forward, and respectfully bowing over the outstretched hand and not keeping it one instant waiting, put in it an order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without looking at it, pressed two fingers together; the order was between them. Napoleon approached Lazarev, who stood rolling his eyes, and still gazing obstinately at his own Emperor only. Napoleon looked round at the Emperor Alexander, as though to show that what he was doing now he was doing for the sake of his ally. The little white hand, with the order in it, just touched the button of the soldier Lazarev. It was as though Napoleon knew that it was enough for his, Napoleon’s, hand to deign to touch the soldier’s breast, for that soldier to be happy, rewarded, and distinguished from every one in the world. Napoleon merely laid the cross on Lazarev’s breast, and, dropping his hand, turned to Alexander, as though he knew that cross would be sure to stick on Lazarev’s breast. The cross did, in fact, stick on. Officious hands, Russian and French, were instantaneously ready to support it, to fasten it to his uniform. Lazarev looked darkly at the little man with white hands who was doing something to him, and still standing rigidly, presenting arms, he looked again straight into Alexander’s face, as though he were asking him: “Was he to go on standing there, or was it his pleasure for him to go now, or perhaps to do something else?” But no order was given him, and he remained for a good while still in the same rigid position. The Emperors mounted their horses and rode away. The Preobrazhensky battalion broke up, and, mingling with the French guards, sat down to the tables prepared for them. Lazarev was put in the place of honour. French and Russian officers embraced him, congratulated him, and shook hands with him. Crowds of officers and common people flocked up simply to look at Lazarev. There was a continual hum of laughter and French and Russian chatter round the tables in the square. Two officers with flushed faces passed by Rostov, looking cheerful and happy. “What do you say to the banquet, my boy? All served on silver,” one was saying. “Seen Lazarev?” “Yes.” “They say the Preobrazhenskies are to give them a dinner tomorrow.” “I say, what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs pension for life.” “Here’s a cap, lads!” cried a Preobrazhensky soldier, putting on a French soldier’s fur cap. “It’s awfully nice, first-rate!” “Have you heard the watchword?” said an officer of the guards to another. “The day before yesterday it was ‘Napoléon, France, bravoure’; to-day it’s ‘Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.” One day our Emperor gives it, and next day Napoleon. To-morrow the Emperor is to send the St. George to the bravest of the French guards. Can’t be helped! Must respond in the same way.” Boris, with his comrade Zhilinsky, had come too to look at the banquet. On his way back Boris noticed Rostov, who was standing at the corner of a house. “Rostov! good day; we haven’t seen each other,” he said, and could not refrain from asking him what was the matter, so strangely gloomy and troubled was the face of Rostov. “Nothing, nothing,” answered Rostov. “Are you coming in?” “Yes.” Rostov stood a long while in the corner, looking at the fête from a distance. His brain was seething in an agonising confusion, which he could not work out to any conclusion. Horrible doubts were stirring in his soul. He thought of Denisov with his changed expression, his submission, and all the hospital with torn-off legs and arms, with the filth and disease. So vividly he recalled that hospital smell of corpse that he looked round to ascertain where the stench came from. Then he thought of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his white hands—treated now with cordiality and respect by the Emperor Alexander. For what, then, had those legs and arms been torn off, those men been killed? Then he thought of Lazarev rewarded, and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He caught himself in such strange reflections that he was terrified at them. Hunger and the savoury smell of the Preobrazhensky dinner roused him from this mood; he must get something to eat before going away. He went to an hotel which he had seen in the morning. In the hotel he found such a crowd of people, and of officers who had come, as he had, in civilian dress, that he had difficulty in getting dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him at table. The conversation naturally turned on the peace. The two officers, Rostov’s comrades, like the greater part of the army, were not satisfied with the peace concluded after Friedland. They said that had they kept on a little longer it would have meant Napoleon’s downfall; that his troops had neither provisions nor ammunition. Nikolay ate in silence and drank heavily. He finished two bottles of wine by himself. The inward ferment working within him still fretted him, and found no solution. He dreaded giving himself up to his thoughts, and could not get away from them. All of a sudden, on one of the officers saying that it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov began shouting with a violence that was quite unprovoked, and consequently greatly astounded the officers. “And how can you judge what would be best!” he shouted, with his face suddenly suffused with a rush of blood. “How can you judge of the action of the Emperor? What right have we to criticise him? We cannot comprehend the aims or the actions of the Emperor!” “But I didn’t say a word about the Emperor,” the officer said in justification of himself, unable to put any other interpretation on Rostov’s violence than that he was drunk. But Rostov did not heed him. “We are not diplomatic clerks, we are soldiers, and nothing more,” he went on. “Command us to die—then we die. And if we are punished, it follows we’re in fault; it’s not for us to judge. If it’s his majesty the Emperor’s pleasure to recognise Bonaparte as emperor, and to conclude an alliance with him, then it must be the right thing. If we were once to begin criticising and reasoning about everything, nothing would be left holy to us. In that way we shall be saying there is no God, nothing,” cried Nikolay, bringing his fist down on the table. His remarks seemed utterly irrelevant to his companions, but followed quite consistently from the train of his own ideas. “It’s our business to do our duty, to hack them to pieces, and not to think; that’s all about it,” he shouted. “And to drink,” put in one of the officers, who had no desire to quarrel. “Yes, and to drink,” assented Nikolay. “Hi, you there! Another bottle!” he roared. |
