“To arms! Board them! You shan’t get it!” he was shouting.
“Give over, please, give over. Do me the favour, sir, please be quiet. There now, if you please, sir, …” Gerasim was saying, cautiously trying to steer Makar Alexyevitch by his elbows towards the door.
“Who are you? Bonaparte!…” yelled Makar Alexyevitch.
“That’s not the thing, sir. You come into your room and rest a little. Let me have the pistol now.”
“Away, base slave! Don’t touch me! Do you see?” screamed Makar Alexyevitch, brandishing the pistol. “Run them down!”
“Take hold!” Gerasim whispered to the porter.
They seized Makar Alexyevitch by the arms and dragged him towards the door.
The vestibule was filled with the unseemly sounds of scuffling and drunken, husky gasping.
Suddenly a new sound, a shrill, feminine shriek, was heard from the porch, and the cook ran into the vestibule.
“They! Merciful heavens! … My goodness, here they are! Four of them, horsemen!” she screamed.
Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexyevitch go, and in the hush that followed in the corridor they could distinctly hear several hands knocking at the front door.
Chapter 28
HAVING INWARDLY RESOLVED that until the execution of his design, he ought to disguise his station and his knowledge of French, Pierre stood at the half-open door into the corridor, intending to conceal himself at once as soon as the French entered. But the French entered, and Pierre did not leave the door; and irresistible curiosity kept him there.
There were two of them. One—an officer, a tall, handsome man of gallant bearing; the other, obviously a soldier or officer’s servant, a squat, thin, sunburnt man, with hollow cheeks and a dull expression. The officer walked first, limping and leaning on a stick. After advancing a few steps, the officer apparently making up his mind that these would be good quarters, stopped, turned round and shouted in a loud, peremptory voice to the soldiers standing in the doorway to put up the horses. Having done this the officer, with a jaunty gesture, crooking his elbow high in the air, stroked his moustaches and put his hand to his hat.
“Bonjour, la compagnie!” he said gaily, smiling and looking about him.
No one made any reply.
“Vous êtes le bourgeois?” the officer asked, addressing Gerasim.
Gerasim looked back with scared inquiry at the officer.
“Quartire, quartire, logement,” said the officer, looking down with a condescending and good-humoured smile at the little man. “The French are good lads. Don’t let us be cross, old fellow,” he went on in French, clapping the scared and mute Gerasim on the shoulder. “I say, does no one speak French in this establishment?” he added, looking round and meeting Pierre’s eyes. Pierre withdrew from the door.
The officer turned again to Gerasim. He asked him to show him over the house.
“Master not here—no understand … me you …” said Gerasim, trying to make his words more comprehensible by saying them in reverse order.
The French officer, smiling, waved his hands in front of Gerasim’s nose, to give him to understand that he too failed to understand him, and walked with a limp towards the door where Pierre was standing. Pierre was about to retreat to conceal himself from him, but at that very second he caught sight of Makar Alexyevitch peeping out of the open kitchen door with a pistol in his hand. With a madman’s cunning, Makar Alexyevitch eyed the Frenchmen, and lifting the pistol, took aim. “Run them down!!!” yelled the drunkard, pressing the trigger. The French officer turned round at the scream, and at the same instant Pierre dashed at the drunken man. Just as Pierre snatched at the pistol and jerked it up, Makar Alexyevitch succeeded at last in pressing the trigger, and a deafening shot rang out, wrapping every one in a cloud of smoke. The Frenchman turned pale and rushed back to the door.
Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of French, Pierre pulled away the pistol, and throwing it on the ground, ran to the officer and addressed him in French. “You are not wounded?” he said.
“I think not,” answered the officer, feeling himself; “but I have had a narrow escape this time,” he added, pointing to the broken plaster in the wall.
“Who is this man?” he asked, looking sternly at Pierre.
“Oh, I am really in despair at what has happened,” said Pierre quickly, quite forgetting his part. “It is a madman, an unhappy creature, who did not know what he was doing.”
The officer went up to Makar Alexyevitch and took him by the collar.
Makar Alexyevitch pouting out his lips, nodded, as he leaned against the wall, as though dropping asleep.
“Brigand, you shall pay for it,” said the Frenchman, letting go of him. “We are clement after victory, but we do not pardon traitors,” he added, with gloomy dignity in his face, and a fine, vigorous gesture.
Pierre tried in French to persuade the officer not to be severe with this drunken imbecile. The Frenchman listened in silence, with the same gloomy air, and then suddenly turned with a smile to Pierre. For several seconds he gazed at him mutely. His handsome face assumed an expression of melodramatic feeling, and he held out his hand.
“You have saved my life. You are French,” he said. For a Frenchman, the deduction followed indubitably. An heroic action could only be performed by a Frenchman, and to save the life of him, M. Ramballe, captain of the 13th Light Brigade, was undoubtedly a most heroic action.
But however indubitable this logic, and well grounded the conviction the officer based on it, Pierre thought well to disillusion him on the subject.
“I am Russian,” he said quickly.
“Tell that to others,” said the Frenchman, smiling and waving his finger before his nose. “You shall tell me all about it directly,” he said. “Charmed to meet a compatriot. Well, what are we to do with this man?” he added, applying to Pierre now as though to a comrade. If Pierre were indeed not a Frenchman, he would hardly on receiving that appellation—the most honourable in the world—care to disavow it, was what the expression and tone of the French officer suggested. To his last question Pierre explained once more who Makar Alexyevitch was. He explained that just before his arrival the drunken imbecile had carried off a loaded pistol, which they had not succeeded in getting from him, and he begged him to let his action go unpunished. The Frenchman arched his chest, and made a majestic gesture with his hand.
“You have saved my life! You are a Frenchman. You ask me to pardon him. I grant you his pardon. Let this man be released,” the French officer pronounced with rapidity and energy, and taking the arm of Pierre— promoted to be a Frenchman for saving his life—he was walking with him into the room.
The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, had come into the vestibule to ask what had happened, and to offer their services in punishing the offender; but the officer sternly checked them.
“You will be sent for when you are wanted,” he said. The soldiers withdrew. The orderly, who had meanwhile been in the kitchen, came in to the officer.
“Captain, they have soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen,” he said. “Shall I bring it up?”
“Yes, and the wine,” said the captain.
Chapter 29
AS THE FRENCH OFFICER drew Pierre with him into the room, the latter thought it his duty to assure the captain again that he was not a Frenchman, and would have withdrawn, but the French officer would not hear of it. He was so courteous, polite, good-humoured, and genuinely grateful to him for saving his life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse, and sat down with him in the dining-room, the first room they entered. To Pierre’s asseveration that he was not a Frenchman, the captain, plainly unable to comprehend how any one could refuse so flattering a title, shrugged his shoulders, and said that if he insisted in passing for a Russian, so be it, but that in spite of that he should yet feel bound to him for ever by sentiments of gratitude for the defence of his life.
If this man had been endowed with even the slightest faculty of perceiving the feelings of others, and had had the faintest inkling of Pierre’s sentiments, the latter would probably have left him. But his lively impenetrability to everything not himself vanquished Pierre.
“Frenchman or Russian prince incognito,” said the Frenchman, looking at Pierre’s fine, though dirty linen, and the ring on his finger; “I owe my life to you, and I offer you my friendship. A Frenchman never forgets an insult or a service. I offer you my friendship. That’s all I say.”
In the tones of the voice, the expression of the face, and the gestures of the officer, there was so much na?ve good nature and good breeding (in the French sense) that Pierre unconsciously responded with a smile to his smile, as he took his outstretched hand.
“Captain Ramballe of the 13th Light Brigade, decorated for the affair of the 7th September,” he introduced himself, an irrepressible smile of complacency lurking under his moustache. “Will you tell me now to whom I have the honour of speaking so agreeably, instead of remaining in the ambulance with that madman’s ball in my body?”
Pierre answered that he would not tell him his name, and was beginning with a blush, while trying to invent a name, to speak of the reasons for which he was unable to do so, but the Frenchman hurriedly interrupted him.
“Enough!” he said. “I understand your reasons; you are an officer … a staff officer, perhaps. You have borne arms against us. That’s not my business. I owe you my life. That’s enough for me. I am at your disposal. You are a nobleman?” he added, with an intonation of inquiry. Pierre bowed.
“Your baptismal name, if you please? I ask nothing more. M. Pierre, you say? Perfect! That’s all I want to know.”
When they had brought in the mutton, an omelette, a samovar, vodka, and wine from a Russian cellar brought with them by the French, Ramballe begged Pierre to share his dinner; and at once with the haste and greediness of a healthy, hungry man, set to work on the viands himself, munching vigorously with his strong teeth, and continually smacking his lips and exclaiming, “Excellent! exquis!” His face became flushed and perspiring. Pierre was hungry, and pleased to share the repast. Morel, the orderly, brought in a pot of hot water, and put a bottle of red wine to warm in it. He brought in too a bottle of kvass from the kitchen for them to taste. This beverage was already known to the French, and had received a nickname. They called it limonade de cochon, and Morel praised this “pigs’ lemonade,” which he had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they had picked up as they crossed Moscow, he left the kvass for Morel, and attacked the bottle of bordeaux. He wrapped a napkin round the bottle, and poured out wine for himself and Pierre. The wine, and the satisfaction of his hunger, made the captain even more lively, and he chatted away without a pause all dinner-time.
“Yes, my dear M. Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for saving me from that maniac. I have bullets enough in my body, you know. Here is one from Wagram” (he pointed to his side), “and two from Smolensk” (he showed the scar on his cheek). “And this leg which won’t walk, as you see. It was at the great battle of la Moskowa on the 7th that I got that. Sacré Dieu, it was fine! You ought to have seen that; it was a deluge of fire. You cut us out a tough job; you can boast of that, my word on it! And on my word, in spite of the cough I caught, I should be ready to begin again. I pity those who did not see it.”
“I was there,” said Pierre.
“Really!” pursued the Frenchman. “Well, so much the better. You are fine enemies, though. The great redoubt was well held, by my pipe. And you made us pay heavily for it too. I was at it three times, as I’m sitting here. Three times we were upon the cannons, and three times we were driven back like cardboard figures. Oh, it was fine, M. Pierre. Your grenadiers were superb, God’s thunder. I saw them six times in succession close the ranks and march as though on parade. Fine fellows. Our king of Naples, who knows all about it, cried, Bravo! Ah, ah, soldiers like ourselves,” he said after a moment’s silence. “So much the better, so much the better, M. Pierre. Terrible in war … gallant, with the fair” (he winked with a smile)—“there you have the French, M. Pierre, eh?”
The captain was so na?vely and good-humouredly gay and obtuse and self-satisfied that Pierre almost winked in response, as he looked good-humouredly at him. Probably the word “gallant” brought the captain to reflect on the state of things in Moscow.
“By the way, tell me, is it true that all the women have left Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to fear?”
“Would not the French ladies quit Paris, if the Russians were to enter it?” said Pierre.
“Ha—ha—ha!…” The Frenchman gave vent to a gay, sanguine chuckle, slapping Pierre on the shoulder. “That’s a good one, that is,” he went on. “Paris … But Paris…”
“Paris is the capital of the world,” said Pierre, finishing the sentence for him.
The captain looked at Pierre. He had the habit of stopping short in the middle of conversation, and staring intently with his laughing genial eyes.
“Well, if you had not told me you are a Russian, I would have wagered you were a Parisian. You have that indescribable something …” and uttering this compliment, he again gazed at him mutely.
“I have been in Paris. I spent years there,” said Pierre.
“One can see that! Paris! A man who does not know Paris is a savage … A Parisian can be told two leagues off. Paris—it is Talma, la Duschénois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards.” Perceiving that the conclusion of his phrase was somewhat of an anticlimax, he added hurriedly, “There is only one Paris in the world.… You have been in Paris, and you remain Russian. Well, I don’t think the less of you for that.”
After the days he had spent alone with his gloomy thoughts, Pierre, under the influence of the wine he had drunk, could not help taking pleasure in conversing with this good-humoured and na?ve person.
“To return to your ladies, they are said to be beautiful. What a silly idea to go and bury themselves in the steppes, when the French army is in Moscow. What a chance they have lost. Your peasants are different; but you civilised people ought to know better than that. We have taken Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome, Warsaw—all the capitals in the world. We are feared, but we are loved. We are worth knowing. And then the Emperor…” he was beginning, but Pierre interrupted him.
“The Emperor,” repeated Pierre, and his face suddenly wore a mournful and embarrassed look. “What of the Emperor?”
“The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius—that is the Emperor. It is I, Ramballe, who tell you that. I was his enemy eight years ago. My father was an emigrant count. But he has conquered me, that man. He has taken hold of me. I could not resist the spectacle of the greatness and glory with which he was covering France. When I understood what he wanted, when I saw he was preparing a bed of laurels for us, I said to myself: ‘That is a monarch.’ And I gave myself up to him. Oh yes, he is the greatest man of the centuries, past and to come.”
