"Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident I said
them.... I need not have said them," he thought. "And then nothing
would have happened." He saw the frightened and then infuriated face
of the dragoon who dealt the blow, the look of silent, timid
reproach that boy in the fur-lined coat had turned upon him. "But I
did not do it for my own sake. I was bound to act that way.... The
mob, the traitor... the public welfare," thought he.
Troops were still crowding at the Yauza bridge. It was hot. Kutuzov,
dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with his
whip in the sand when a caleche dashed up noisily. A man in a
general's uniform with plumes in his hat went up to Kutuzov and said
something in French. It was Count Rostopchin. He told Kutuzov that
he had come because Moscow, the capital, was no more and only the army
remained.
"Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had not
told me that you would not abandon Moscow without another battle;
all this would not have happened," he said.
Kutuzov looked at Rostopchin as if, not grasping what was said to
him, he was trying to read something peculiar written at that moment
on the face of the man addressing him. Rostopchin grew confused and
became silent. Kutuzov slightly shook his head and not taking his
penetrating gaze from Rostopchin's face muttered softly:
"No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!"
Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something entirely different when he
spoke those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to be
meaningless, at any rate Rostopchin made no reply and hastily left
him. And strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count
Rostopchin, took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where he
began with shouts to drive on the carts that blocked the way.
CHAPTER XXVI
Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Murat's troops were entering
Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behind
them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.
About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of the
Miraculous Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from the
advanced detachment as to the condition in which they had found the
citadel, le Kremlin.
Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow.
They all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-haired
commander dressed up in feathers and gold.
"Is that their Tsar himself? He's not bad!" low voices could be
heard saying.
An interpreter rode up to the group.
"Take off your cap... your caps!" These words went from one to
another in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter and
asked if it was far to the Kremlin. The porter, listening in
perplexity to the unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing that
the interpreter was speaking Russian, did not understand what was
being said to him and slipped behind the others.
Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the
Russian army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and
several voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French
officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat
and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and
that there was probably an ambuscade there.
"Good!" said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in his
suite, ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at the
gates.
The guns emerged at a trot from the column following Murat and
advanced up the Arbat. When they reached the end of the Vozdvizhenka
Street they halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers
superintended the placing of the guns and looked at the Kremlin
through field glasses.
The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and this sound
troubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A few
infantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens had
been put there, and two musket shots rang out from under the gate as
soon as an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was
standing by the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, and
the latter ran back again with his men.
The sound of three more shots came from the gate.
One shot struck a French soldier's foot, and from behind the screens
came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a
word of command the expression of cheerful serenity on the faces of
the French general, officers, and men changed to one of determined
concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them from
the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka,
Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar
in Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove
sanguinary. And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the
gates ceased. The guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ash
off their linstocks, and an officer gave the word "Fire!" This was
followed by two whistling sounds of canister shot, one after
another. The shot rattled against the stone of the gate and upon the
wooden beams and screens, and two wavering clouds of smoke rose over
the Square.
A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over the
stone-built Kremlin had died away the French heard a strange sound
above their head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls and
circled in the air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings.
Together with that sound came a solitary human cry from the gateway
and amid the smoke appeared the figure of a bareheaded man in a
peasant's coat. He grasped a musket and took aim at the French.
"Fire!" repeated the officer once more, and the reports of a musket
and of two cannon shots were heard simultaneously. The gate again
hidden by smoke.
Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantry
soldiers and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay three
wounded and four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the foot
of the wall, toward the Znamenka.
"Clear that away!" said the officer, pointing to the beams and the
corpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threw
the corpses over the parapet.
Who these men were nobody knew. "Clear that away!" was all that
was said of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed
later on that they might not stink. Thiers alone dedicates a few
eloquent lines to their memory: "These wretches had occupied the
sacred citadel, having supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal,
and fired" (the wretches) "at the French. Some of them were sabered
and the Kremlin was purged of their presence."
Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The French entered
the gates and began pitching their camp in the Senate Square. Out of
the windows of the Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into the
Square for fuel and kindled fires there.
Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and encamped along
the Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and Pokrovka Streets. Others quartered
themselves along the Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the Tverskoy
Streets. No masters of the houses being found anywhere, the French
were not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived in
it as in a camp.
Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their
original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order.
It was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army.
But it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into
their different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various
regiments began to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the
army was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript,
neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When
five weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed
an army. They were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of
articles which seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man
when he left Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but
merely to keep what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts its
paw into the narrow neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nuts
will not open its fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore
perishes, the French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perish
because they carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what they
had stolen was as impossible for them as it is for the monkey to
open its paw and let go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment
had entered a Moscow district, not a soldier or officer was left.
Men in military uniforms and Hessian boots could be seen through the
windows, laughing and walking through the rooms. In cellars and
storerooms similar men were busy among the provisions, and in the
yards unlocking or breaking open coach house and stable doors,
lighting fires in kitchens and kneading and baking bread with
rolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening, amusing, or
caressing women and children. There were many such men both in the
shops and houses - but there was no army.
Order after order was issued by the French commanders that day
forbidding the men to disperse about the town, sternly forbidding
any violence to the inhabitants or any looting, and announcing a
roll call for that very evening. But despite all these measures the
men, who had till then constituted an army, flowed all over the
wealthy, deserted city with its comforts and plentiful supplies. As
a hungry herd of cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren
field, but gets out of hand and at once disperses uncontrollably as
soon as it reaches rich pastures, so did the army disperse all over
the wealthy city.
No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers - like water
percolating through sand - spread irresistibly through the city in
all directions from the Kremlin into which they had first marched. The
cavalry, on entering a merchant's house that had been abandoned and
finding there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went on,
all the same, to the next house which seemed to them better. Many of
them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, and
quarreled and even fought with other companies for them. Before they
had had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into the
streets to see the city and, hearing that everything had been
abandoned, rushed to places where valuables were to be had for the
taking. The officers followed to check the soldiers and were
involuntarily drawn into doing the same. In Carriage Row carriages had
been left in the shops, and generals flocked there to select
caleches and coaches for themselves. The few inhabitants who had
remained invited commanding officers to their houses, hoping thereby
to secure themselves from being plundered. There were masses of wealth
and there seemed no end to it. All around the quarters occupied by the
French were other regions still unexplored and unoccupied where,
they thought, yet greater riches might be found. And Moscow engulfed
the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is spilled on dry ground
both the dry ground and the water disappear and mud results; and in
the same way the entry of the famished army into the rich and deserted
city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction of both the
army and the wealthy city.
The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme feroce de
Rostopchine,* the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality,
however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning
of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people,
responsible for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a
position in which any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite
apart from whether it had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior
fire engines. Deserted Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of
shavings has to burn on which sparks continually fall for several
days. A town built of wood, where scarcely a day passes without
conflagrations when the house owners are in residence and a police
force is present, cannot help burning when its inhabitants have left
it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke pipes, make campfires of
the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and cook themselves meals
twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to billet troops in the
villages of any district and the number of fires in that district
immediately increases. How much then must the probability of fire be
increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops are
quartered. "Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine" and the barbarity of
the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire
by the soldiers' pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the
carelessness of enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even
if there was any arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any
reason to burn the houses - in any case a troublesome and dangerous
thing to do), arson cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same
thing would have happened without any incendiarism.
*To Rostopchin's ferocious patriotism.
However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchin's
ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later
on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is
impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of
the fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house
must burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers are
allowed to live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by its
inhabitants, it is true, but by those who had abandoned it and not
by those who remained in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not
remain intact like Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its
inhabitants abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and
salt, nor bring them the keys of the city.
CHAPTER XXVII
The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating starwise as it
did, only reached the quarter where Pierre was staying by the
evening of the second of September.
After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances,
Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely
obsessed by one persistent thought. He did not know how or when this
thought had taken such possession of him, but he remembered nothing of
the past, understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and
heard appeared to him like a dream.
He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of life's
demands that enmeshed him, and which in his present condition he was
unable to unravel. He had gone to Joseph Alexeevich's house, on the
plea of sorting the deceased's books and papers, only in search of
rest from life's turmoil, for in his mind the memory of Joseph
Alexeevich was connected with a world of eternal, solemn, and calm
thoughts, quite contrary to the restless confusion into which he
felt himself being drawn. He sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph
Alexeevich's study he really found it. When he sat with his elbows
on the dusty writing table in the deathlike stillness of the study,
calm and significant memories of the last few days rose one after
another in his imagination, particularly of the battle of Borodino and
of that vague sense of his own insignificance and insincerity compared
with the truth, simplicity, and strength of the class of men he
mentally classed as they. When Gerasim roused him from his reverie the
idea occurred to him of taking part in the popular defense of Moscow
which he knew was projected. And with that object he had asked Gerasim
to get him a peasant's coat and a pistol, confiding to him his
intentions of remaining in Joseph Alexeevich's house and keeping his
name secret. Then during the first day spent in inaction and
solitude (he tried several times to fix his attention on the Masonic
manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea that had previously
occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of his name in
connection with Bonaparte's more than once vaguely presented itself.
But the idea that he, L'russe Besuhof, was destined to set a limit
to the power of the Beast was as yet only one of the fancies that
often passed through his mind and left no trace behind.
When, having bought the coat merely with the object of taking part
among the people in the defense of Moscow, Pierre had met the
Rostovs and Natasha had said to him: "Are you remaining in
Moscow?... How splendid!" the thought flashed into his mind that it
really would be a good thing, even if Moscow were taken, for him to
remain there and do what he was predestined to do.
Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and not
lagging in any way behind them, Pierre went to the Three Hills gate.
But when he returned to the house convinced that Moscow would not be
defended, he suddenly felt that what before had seemed to him merely a
possibility had now become absolutely necessary and inevitable. He
must remain in Moscow, concealing his name, and must meet Napoleon and
kill him, and either perish or put an end to the misery of all Europe-
which it seemed to him was solely due to Napoleon.
Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on Bonaparte's life in
1809 by a German student in Vienna, and knew that the student had been
shot. And the risk to which he would expose his life by carrying out
his design excited him still more.
Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to this
purpose. The first was a feeling of the necessity of sacrifice and
suffering in view of the common calamity, the same feeling that had
caused him to go to Mozhaysk on the twenty-fifth and to make his way
to the very thick of the battle and had now caused him to run away
from his home and, in place of the luxury and comfort to which he
was accustomed, to sleep on a hard sofa without undressing and eat the
same food as Gerasim. The other was that vague and quite Russian
feeling of contempt for everything conventional, artificial, and
human - for everything the majority of men regard as the greatest
good in the world. Pierre had first experienced this strange and
fascinating feeling at the Sloboda Palace, when he had suddenly felt
that wealth, power, and life - all that men so painstakingly acquire
and guard - if it has any worth has so only by reason the joy with
which it can all be renounced.
It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to spend his
last penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for
no apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money
he possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions
which from an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it
were, his personal power and strength, affirming the existence of a
higher, nonhuman criterion of life.
From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling for the
first time at the Sloboda Palace he had been continuously under its
influence, but only now found full satisfaction for it. Moreover, at
this moment Pierre was supported in his design and prevented from
renouncing it by what he had already done in that direction. If he
were now to leave Moscow like everyone else, his flight from home, the
peasant coat, the pistol, and his announcement to the Rostovs that
he would remain in Moscow would all become not merely meaningless
but contemptible and ridiculous, and to this Pierre was very
sensitive.
Pierre's physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded
to his mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food, the vodka he
drank during those days, the absence of wine and cigars, his dirty
unchanged linen, two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa
without bedding - all this kept him in a state of excitement
bordering on insanity.
It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The French had already
entered Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of acting he only
thought about his undertaking, going over its minutest details in
his mind. In his fancy he did not clearly picture to himself either
the striking of the blow or the death of Napoleon, but with
extraordinary vividness and melancholy enjoyment imagined his own
destruction and heroic endurance.
"Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!" he
thought. "Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly... with pistol
or dagger? But that is all the same! 'It is not I but the hand of
Providence that punishes thee,' I shall say," thought he, imagining
what he would say when killing Napoleon. "Well then, take me and
execute me!" he went on, speaking to himself and bowing his head
with a sad but firm expression.
While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was talking to
himself in this way, the study door opened and on the threshold
appeared the figure of Makar Alexeevich, always so timid before but
now quite transformed.
His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and distorted. He was
obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he grew confused at first, but
noticing embarrassment on Pierre's face immediately grew bold and,
staggering on his thin legs, advanced into the middle of the room.
"They're frightened," he said confidentially in a hoarse voice. "I
say I won't surrender, I say... Am I not right, sir?"
He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the table seized it
with unexpected rapidity and ran out into the corridor.
Gerasim and the porter, who had followed Makar Alexeevich, stopped
him in the vestibule and tried to take the pistol from him. Pierre,
coming out into the corridor, looked with pity and repulsion at the
half-crazy old man. Makar Alexeevich, frowning with exertion, held
on to the pistol and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic
fancy in his head.
"To arms! Board them! No, you shan't get it," he yelled.
"That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodness - please, sir,
to let go! Please, sir..." pleaded Gerasim, trying carefully to
steer Makar Alexeevich by the elbows back to the door.
"Who are you? Bonaparte!..." shouted Makar Alexeevich.
"That's not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and rest. Allow
me to have the pistol."
"Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?" shouted Makar
Alexeevich, brandishing the pistol. "Board them!"
"Catch hold!" whispered Gerasim to the porter.
They seized Makar Alexeevich by the arms and dragged him to the
door.
The vestibule was filled with the discordant sounds of a struggle
and of a tipsy, hoarse voice.
Suddenly a fresh sound, a piercing feminine scream, reverberated
from the porch and the cook came running into the vestibule.
"It's them! Gracious heavens! O Lord, four of them, horsemen!" she
cried.
Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexeevich go, and in the now
silent corridor the sound of several hands knocking at the front
door could be heard.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Pierre, having decided that until he had carried out his design he
would disclose neither his identity nor his knowledge of French, stood
at the half-open door of the corridor, intending to conceal himself as
soon as the French entered. But the French entered and still Pierre
did not retire - an irresistible curiosity kept him there.
There were two of them. One was an officer - a tall, soldierly,
handsome man - the other evidently a private or an orderly,
sunburned, short, and thin, with sunken cheeks and a dull
expression. The officer walked in front, leaning on a stick and
slightly limping. When he had advanced a few steps he stopped,
having apparently decided that these were good quarters, turned
round to the soldiers standing at the entrance, and in a loud voice of
command ordered them to put up the horses. Having done that, the
officer, lifting his elbow with a smart gesture, stroked his
mustache and lightly touched his hat.
"Bonjour, la compagnie!"* said he gaily, smiling and looking about
him.
*"Good day, everybody!"
No one gave any reply.
"Vous etes le bourgeois?"* the officer asked Gerasim.
*"Are you the master here?"
Gerasim gazed at the officer with an alarmed and inquiring look.
"Quartier, quartier, logement!" said the officer, looking down at
the little man with a condescending and good-natured smile. "Les
francais sont de bons enfants. Que diable! Voyons! Ne nous fachons
pas, mon vieux!"* added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerasim
on the shoulder. "Well, does no one speak French in this
establishment?" he asked again in French, looking around and meeting
Pierre's eyes. Pierre moved away from the door.
*"Quarters, quarters, lodgings! The French are good fellows. What
the devil! There, don't let us be cross, old fellow!"
Again the officer turned to Gerasim and asked him to show him the
rooms in the house.
"Master, not here - don't understand... me, you..." said Gerasim,
trying to render his words more comprehensible by contorting them.
Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before
Gerasim's nose, intimating that he did not understand him either,
and moved, limping, to the door at which Pierre was standing. Pierre
wished to go away and conceal himself, but at that moment he saw Makar
Alexeevich appearing at the open kitchen door with the pistol in his
hand. With a madman's cunning, Makar Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman,
raised his pistol, and took aim.
"Board them!" yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger.
Hearing the yell the officer turned round, and at the same moment
Pierre threw himself on the drunkard. Just when Pierre snatched at and
struck up the pistol Makar Alexeevich at last got his fingers on the
trigger, there was a deafening report, and all were enveloped in a
cloud of smoke. The Frenchman turned pale and rushed to the door.
Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of French,
Pierre, snatching away the pistol and throwing it down, ran up to
the officer and addressed him in French.
"You are not wounded?" he asked.
"I think not," answered the Frenchman, feeling himself over. "But
I have had a lucky escape this time," he added, pointing to the
damaged plaster of the wall. "Who is that man?" said he, looking
sternly at Pierre.
"Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred," said Pierre
rapidly, quite forgetting the part he had intended to play. "He is
an unfortunate madman who did not know what he was doing."
The officer went up to Makar Alexeevich and took him by the collar.
Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about
to fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall.
"Brigand! You shall pay for this," said the Frenchman, letting go of
him. "We French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon
traitors," he added, with a look of gloomy dignity and a fine
energetic gesture.
Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not to hold
that drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence
with the same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with
a smile. For a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome
face assumed a melodramatically gentle expression and he held out
his hand.
"You have saved my life. You are French," said he.
For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only a Frenchman
could perform a great deed, and to save his life - the life of M.
Ramballe, captain of the 13th Light Regiment - was undoubtedly a very
great deed.
But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer's conviction
based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him.
"I am Russian," he said quickly.
"Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others," said the officer, waving his
finger before his nose and smiling. "You shall tell me all about
that presently. I am delighted to meet a compatriot. Well, and what
are we to do with this man?" he added, addressing himself to Pierre as
to a brother.
Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that
loftiest of human appellations he could not renounce it, said the
officer's look and tone. In reply to his last question Pierre again
explained who Makar Alexeevich was and how just before their arrival
that drunken imbecile had seized the loaded pistol which they had
not had time to recover from him, and begged the officer to let the
deed go unpunished.
The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic gesture with
his arm.
"You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his pardon? I grant
it you. Lead that man away!" said he quickly and energetically, and
taking the arm of Pierre whom he had promoted to be a Frenchman for
saving his life, he went with him into the room.
The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into the passage
asking what had happened, and expressed their readiness to punish
the culprits, but the officer sternly checked them.
"You will be called in when you are wanted," he said.
The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had meanwhile
had time to visit the kitchen, came up to his officer.
"Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen," said
he. "Shall I serve them up?"
"Yes, and some wine," answered the captain.
CHAPTER XXIX
When the French officer went into the room with Pierre the latter
again thought it his duty to assure him that he was not French and
wished to go away, but the officer would not hear of it. He was so
very polite, amiable, good-natured, and genuinely grateful to Pierre
for saving his life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse, and sat
down with him in the parlor - the first room they entered. To
Pierre's assurances that he was not a Frenchman, the captain,
evidently not understanding how anyone could decline so flattering
an appellation, shrugged his shoulders and said that if Pierre
absolutely insisted on passing for a Russian let it be so, but for all
that he would be forever bound to Pierre by gratitude for saving his
life.
Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity for perceiving
the feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre's
feelings were, the latter would probably have left him, but the
man's animated obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed
Pierre.
"A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito," said the officer,
looking at Pierre's fine though dirty linen and at the ring on his
finger. "I owe my life to you and offer you my friendship. A Frenchman
never forgets either an insult or a service. I offer you my
friendship. That is all I can say."
There was so much good nature and nobility (in the French sense of
the word) in the officer's voice, in the expression of his face and in
his gestures, that Pierre, unconsciously smiling in response to the
Frenchman's smile, pressed the hand held out to him.
"Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the
Legion of Honor for the affair on the seventh of September," he
introduced himself, a self-satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his
lips under his mustache. "Will you now be so good as to tell me with
whom I have the honor of conversing so pleasantly, instead of being in
the ambulance with that maniac's bullet in my body?"
Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing,
began to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason
for concealing it, but the Frenchman hastily interrupted him.
"Oh, please!" said he. "I understand your reasons. You are an
officer... a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us.
That's not my business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am
quite at your service. You belong to the gentry?" he concluded with
a shade of inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. "Your
baptismal name, if you please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you
say.... That's all I want to know."
When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and
vodka brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a
Russian cellar and brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share
his dinner, and himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a
healthy and hungry man, munching his food rapidly with his strong
teeth, continually smacking his lips, and repeating - "Excellent!
Delicious!" His face grew red and was covered with perspiration.
Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner with pleasure. Morel, the
orderly, brought some hot water in a saucepan and placed a bottle of
claret in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass, taken from the
kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known to the French
and had been given a special name. They called it limonade de cochon
(pig's lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the limonade de cochon he
had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they had
taken while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and
applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up to
its neck in a table napkin and poured out wine for himself and for
Pierre. The satisfaction of his hunger and the wine rendered the
captain still more lively and he chatted incessantly all through
dinner.
"Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for
saving me from that maniac.... You see, I have bullets enough in my
body already. Here is one I got at Wagram" (he touched his side)
"and a second at Smolensk" - he showed a scar on his cheek - "and this
leg which as you see does not want to march, I got that on the seventh
at the great battle of la Moskowa. Sacre Dieu! It was splendid! That
deluge of fire was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us
there, my word! You may be proud of it! And on my honor, in spite of
the cough I caught there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity
those who did not see it."
"I was there," said Pierre.
"Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly brave foes.
The great redoubt held out well, by my pipe!" continued the Frenchman.
"And you made us pay dear for it. I was at it three times - sure as I
sit here. Three times we reached the guns and three times we were
thrown back like cardboard figures. Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur
Pierre! Your grenadiers were splendid, by heaven! I saw them close
up their ranks six times in succession and march as if on parade. Fine
fellows! Our King of Naples, who knows what's what, cried 'Bravo!' Ha,
ha! So you are one of us soldiers!" he added, smiling, after a
momentary pause. "So much the better, so much the better, Monsieur
Pierre! Terrible in battle... gallant... with the fair" (he winked and
smiled), "that's what the French are, Monsieur Pierre, aren't they?"
The captain was so naively and good-humoredly gay, so real, and so
pleased with himself that Pierre almost winked back as he looked
merrily at him. Probably the word "gallant" turned the captain's
thoughts to the state of Moscow.
"Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have all left
Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to be afraid of?"
"Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the Russians entered
it?" asked Pierre.
"Ha, ha, ha!" The Frenchman emitted a merry, sanguine chuckle,
patting Pierre on the shoulder. "What a thing to say!" he exclaimed.
"Paris?... But Paris, Paris..."
"Paris - the capital of the world," Pierre finished his remark for
him.
The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of stopping short in
the middle of his talk and gazing intently with his laughing, kindly
eyes.
"Well, if you hadn't told me you were Russian, I should have wagered
that you were Parisian! You have that... I don't know what, that..."
and having uttered this compliment, he again gazed at him in silence.
"I have been in Paris. I spent years there," said Pierre.
"Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who doesn't know
Paris is a savage. You can tell a Parisian two leagues off. Paris is
Talma, la Duchenois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards," and
noticing that his conclusion was weaker than what had gone before,
he added quickly: "There is only one Paris in the world. You have been
to Paris and have remained Russian. Well, I don't esteem you the
less for it."
Under the influence of the wine he had drunk, and after the days
he had spent alone with his depressing thoughts, Pierre
involuntarily enjoyed talking with this cheerful and good-natured man.
"To return to your ladies - I hear they are lovely. What a wretched
idea to go and bury themselves in the steppes when the French army
is in Moscow. What a chance those girls have missed! Your peasants,
now - that's another thing; but you civilized people, you ought to know
us better than that. We took Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome,
Warsaw, all the world's capitals.... We are feared, but we are
loved. We are nice to know. And then the Emperor..." he began, but
Pierre interrupted him.
"The Emperor," Pierre repeated, and his face suddenly became sad and
embarrassed, "is the Emperor...?"
"The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius-
that's what the Emperor is! It is I, Ramballe, who tell you so.... I
assure you I was his enemy eight years ago. My father was an
emigrant count.... But that man has vanquished me. He has taken hold
of me. I could not resist the sight of the grandeur and glory with
which he has covered France. When I understood what he wanted - when
I saw that he was preparing a bed of laurels for us, you know, I
said to myself: 'That is a monarch,' and I devoted myself to him! So
there! Oh yes, mon cher, he is the greatest man of the ages past or
future."
"Is he in Moscow?" Pierre stammered with a guilty look.
The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled.
"No, he will make his entry tomorrow," he replied, and continued his
talk.
Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of several voices at
the gate and by Morel, who came to say that some Wurttemberg hussars
had come and wanted to put up their horses in the yard where the
captain's horses were. This difficulty had arisen chiefly because
the hussars did not understand what was said to them in French.
The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and in a stern
voice asked him to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding
officer, and by what right he allowed himself to claim quarters that
were already occupied. The German who knew little French, answered the
two first questions by giving the names of his regiment and of his
commanding officer, but in reply to the third question which he did
not understand said, introducing broken French into his own German,
that he was the quartermaster of the regiment and his commander had
ordered him to occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre, who
knew German, translated what the German said to the captain and gave
the captain's reply to the Wurttemberg hussar in German. When he had
understood what was said to him, the German submitted and took his men
elsewhere. The captain went out into the porch and gave some orders in
a loud voice.
When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the same place as
before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He
really was suffering at that moment. When the captain went out and
he was left alone, suddenly he came to himself and realized the
position he was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken or that
the happy conquerors were masters in it and were patronizing him.
Painful as that was it was not that which tormented Pierre at the
moment. He was tormented by the consciousness of his own weakness. The