Like a wind passing over the leaves, the excited whisper fluttered over the plain: “They are coming! they are coming!” There was a sound of frightened voices, and the hurried men’s fuss over the last finishing touches ran like a wave over the troops.
A group came into sight moving towards them from Olmütz in front of them. And at the same moment, though there had been no wind, a faint breeze fluttered over the army, and stirred the streamers on the lances, and sent the unfurled flags flapping against their flagstaffs. It looked as though in this slight movement the army itself were expressing its joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was heard saying: “Steady!” Then like cocks at sunrise, voices caught up and repeated the sound in different parts of the plain. And all sank into silence.
In the deathlike stillness, the only sound was the tramp of hoofs. It was the Emperors’ suite. The Emperors rode towards the flank, and the trumpets of the first cavalry regiment began playing a march. It seemed as though the sound did not come from the trumpeters, but that the army itself was naturally giving forth this music in its delight at the Emperors’ approach. Through the music could be distinctly heard one voice, the genial, youthful voice of the Emperor Alexander. He uttered some words of greeting, and the first regiment boomed out: “Hurrah!” with a shout so deafening, so prolonged, so joyful, that the men themselves felt awestruck at the multitude and force of the mass they made up.
Rostov, standing in the foremost ranks of Kutuzov’s army, which the Tsar approached first of all, was possessed by the feeling, common to every man in that army—a feeling of self-oblivion, of proud consciousness of their might and passionate devotion to the man who was the centre of that solemn ceremony.
He felt that at one word from that man all that vast mass (and he, an insignificant atom bound up with it) would rush through fire and water, to crime, to death, or to the grandest heroism, and so he could not but thrill and tremble at the sight of the man who was the embodiment of that word.
“Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” thundered on all sides, and one regiment after another greeted the Tsar with the strains of the march, then hurrah!…then the march, and again hurrah! and hurrah! which growing stronger and fuller, blended into a deafening roar.
Before the Tsar had reached it, each regiment in its speechless immobility seemed like a lifeless body. But as soon as the Tsar was on a level with it, each regiment broke into life and noise, which joined with the roar of all the line, by which the Tsar had passed already. In the terrific, deafening uproar of those voices, between the square masses of troops, immobile as though turned to stone, moved carelessly, but symmetrically and freely, some hundreds of men on horseback, the suite, and in front of them two figures—the Emperors. Upon these was entirely concentrated the repressed, passionate attention of all that mass of men.
The handsome, youthful Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse Guards, in a triangular hat with the base in front, attracted the greater share of attention with his pleasant face and sonorous, low voice.
Rostov was standing near the trumpeters, and with his keen eyes he recognised the Tsar from a distance and watched him approaching. When the Tsar was only twenty paces away, and Nikolay saw clearly in every detail the handsome, young, and happy face of the Emperor, he experienced a feeling of tenderness and ecstasy such as he had never known before. Everything in the Tsar—every feature, every movement—seemed to him full of charm.
Halting before the Pavlograd regiment, the Tsar said something in French to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.
Seeing that smile, Rostov unconsciously began to smile himself and felt an even stronger rush of love for his Emperor. He longed to express his love for the Tsar in some way. He knew it was impossible, and he wanted to cry. The Tsar called up the colonel of the regiment and said a few words to him.
“By God! what would happen to me if the Emperor were to address me!” thought Rostov; “I should die of happiness.”
The Tsar addressed the officers, too.
“All of you, gentlemen” (every word sounded to Rostov like heavenly music), “I thank you with all my heart.”
How happy Rostov would have been if he could have died on the spot for his Emperor.
“You have won the flags of St. George and will be worthy of them.”
“Only to die, to die for him!” thought Rostov.
The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not catch, and the soldiers, straining their lungs, roared “hurrah!”
Rostov, too, bending over in his saddle, shouted with all his might, feeling he would like to do himself some injury by this shout, if only he could give full expression to his enthusiasm for the Tsar.
The Tsar stood for several seconds facing the hussars, as though he were hesitating.
“How could the Emperor hesitate?” Rostov wondered; but then, even that hesitation seemed to him majestic and enchanting, like all the Tsar did.
The Tsar’s hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar’s foot, in the narrow-pointed boot of the day, touched the belly of the bay English thoroughbred he was riding. The Tsar’s hand in its white glove gathered up the reins and he moved off, accompanied by the irregularly heaving sea of adjutants. Further and further he rode away, stopping at the other regiments, and at last the white plume of his hat was all that Rostov could see above the suite that encircled the Emperors.
Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed Bolkonsky, sitting his horse in a slack, indolent pose. Rostov remembered his quarrel with him on the previous day and his doubt whether he ought or ought not to challenge him. “Of course, I ought not,” Rostov reflected now.…”And is it worth thinking and speaking of it at such a moment as the present? At the moment of such a feeling of love, enthusiasm, and self-sacrifice, what are all our slights and squabbles? I love every one, I forgive every one at this moment,” thought Rostov.
When the Tsar had made the round of almost all the regiments, the troops began to file by him in a parade march, and Rostov on Bedouin, which he had lately bought from Denisov, was the officer at the rear, that is, had to pass last, alone, and directly in view of the Tsar.
Before he reached the Tsar, Rostov, who was a capital horseman, set spurs twice to his Bedouin, and succeeded in forcing him into that frantic form of gallop into which Bedouin always dropped when he was excited. Bending his foaming nose to his chest, arching his tail, and seeming to skim through the air without touching the earth, Bedouin, as though he, too, were conscious of the Tsar’s eye upon him, flew by in superb style, with a graceful high action of his legs.
Rostov himself drew back his legs and drew in his stomach, and feeling himself all of a piece with his horse, rode by the Tsar with a frowning but blissful face, looking a regular devil, as Denisov used to say.
“Bravo, Pavlograds!” said the Tsar.
“My God! shouldn’t I be happy if he bade me fling myself into fire this instant,” thought Rostov.
When the review was over, the officers, both of the reinforcements and of Kutuzov’s army, began to gather together in groups. Conversations sprang up about the honours that had been conferred, about the Austrians and their uniforms, and their front line, about Bonaparte and the bad time in store for him now, especially when Essen’s corps, too, should arrive, and Prussia should take our side. But the chief subject of conversation in every circle was the Emperor Alexander; every word he had uttered, every gesture was described and expatiated upon with enthusiasm.
There was but one desire in all: under the Emperor’s leadership to face the enemy as soon as possible. Under the command of the Emperor himself they would not fail to conquer any one whatever: so thought Rostov and most of the officers after the review.
After the review they all felt more certain of victory than they could have been after two decisive victories.
Chapter 9
THE DAY AFTER THE REVIEW Boris Drubetskoy put on his best uniform, and accompanied by his comrade Berg’s good wishes for his success, rode to Olmütz to see Bolkonsky, in the hope of profiting by his friendliness to obtain a better position, especially the position of an adjutant in attendance on some personage of importance, a post which seemed to him particularly alluring.
“It’s all very well for Rostov, whose father sends him ten thousand at a time, to talk about not caring to cringe to any one, and not being a lackey to any man. But I, with nothing of my own but my brains, have my career to make, and mustn’t let opportunities slip, but must make the most of them.”
He did not find Prince Andrey at Olmütz that day. But the sight of Olmütz—where were the headquarters and the diplomatic corps, and where both Emperors with their suites, their households, and their court, were staying—only strengthened his desire to belong to this upper world.
He knew no one; and in spite of his smart guardsman’s uniform, all these exalted persons, racing to and fro about the streets in their elegant carriages, plumes, ribbons, and orders, courtiers and military alike, all seemed to be so immeasurably above him, a little officer in the Guards, as to be not simply unwilling, but positively unable to recognise his existence. At the quarters of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov, where he asked for Bolkonsky, all the adjutants and even the orderlies looked at him as though they wished to impress on him that a great many officers of his sort came hanging about here, and that they were all heartily sick of seeing them. In spite of this, or rather in consequence of it, he went again the following day, the 15th, after dinner, to Olmütz, and going into the house occupied by Kutuzov, asked for Bolkonsky. Prince Andrey was at home, and Boris was ushered into a large room, probably at some time used for dancing. Now there were five bedsteads in it and furniture of various kinds: a table, chairs, a clavichord. One adjutant was sitting in a Persian dressing-gown writing at a table near the door. Another, the stout, red-faced Nesvitsky, was lying on a bed, his arms under his head, laughing with an officer sitting by the bedside. A third was playing a Vienna waltz on the clavichord, while a fourth lay on the clavichord, humming to the tune. Bolkonsky was not in the room. Not one of these gentlemen changed his position on observing Boris. The one who was writing, on being applied to by Boris, turned round with an air of annoyance, and told him that Bolkonsky was the adjutant on duty, and that he should go to the door to the left, into the reception-room, if he wanted to see him. Boris thanked him, and went to the reception-room. There he found some ten officers and generals.
At the moment when Boris entered, Prince Andrey dropping his eye-lids disdainfully (with that peculiar air of courteous weariness which so distinctly says, “If it were not my duty, I would not stay talking to you for a minute”), was listening to an old Russian general with many decorations, who, rigidly erect, almost on tiptoe, was laying some matter before Prince Andrey with the obsequious expression of a common soldier on his purple face.
“Very good, be so kind as to wait a moment,” he said to the general in Russian, with that French accent with which he always spoke when he meant to speak disdainfully, and noticing Boris, Prince Andrey took no further notice of the general (who ran after him with entreaties, begging him to hear something more), but nodded to Boris with a bright smile, as he turned towards him. At that moment Boris saw distinctly what he had had an inkling of before, that is, that quite apart from that subordination and discipline, which is written down in the drill-book, and recognised in the regiment and known to him, there was in the army another and more actual subordination, that which made this rigid, purple-faced general wait respectfully while Prince Andrey—of captain’s rank—found it more in accordance with his pleasure to talk to Lieutenant Drubetskoy. Boris felt more than ever determined to follow in future the guidance not of the written code laid down in the regulations, but of this unwritten code. He felt now that simply because he had been recommended to Prince Andrey, he had become at one step superior to the general, who in other circumstances, at the front, could annihilate a mere lieutenant in the guards like him. Prince Andrey went up to him and shook hands.
“Very sorry you didn’t find me in yesterday. I was busy the whole day with the Germans. We went with Weierother to survey the disposition. When Germans start being accurate, there’s no end to it!”
Boris smiled, as though he understood, as a matter of common knowledge, what Prince Andrey was referring to. But it was the first time he had heard the name of Weierother, or even the word “disposition” used in that sense.
“Well, my dear boy, you still want an adjutant’s post? I have been thinking about you since I saw you.”
“Yes,” said Boris, involuntarily flushing for some reason, “I was thinking of asking the commander-in-chief; he has had a letter about me from Prince Kuragin; and I wanted to ask him simply because,” he added, as though excusing himself, “I am afraid the guards won’t be in action.”
“Very good, very good! we will talk it over later,” said Prince Andrey, “only let me report on this gentleman’s business and I am at your disposal.” While Prince Andrey was away reporting to the commander-in-chief on the business of the purple-faced general, that general, who apparently did not share Boris’s views as to the superior advantages of the unwritten code, glared at the insolent lieutenant, who had hindered his having his say out, so that Boris began to be uncomfortable. He turned away and waited with impatience for Prince Andrey to come out of the commander-in-chief’s room.
“Well, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you,” said Prince Andrey, when they had gone into the big room with the clavichord in it. “It’s no use your going to the commander-in-chief; he will say a lot of polite things to you, will ask you to dine with him” (“that wouldn’t come amiss in the service of that unwritten code,” thought Boris), “but nothing more would come of it; we shall soon have a complete battalion of adjutants and orderly officers. But I tell you what we will do: I have a friend, a general adjutant and an excellent fellow, Prince Dolgorukov. And though you may not be aware of it, the fact is that Kutuzov and his staff and all of us are just now of no account at all. Everything now is concentrated about the Emperor, so we’ll go together to Dolgorukov. I have to go to see him, and I have already spoken of you to him. So we can see whether he may not think it possible to find a post for you on his staff, or somewhere there nearer to the sun.”
Prince Andrey was always particularly keen over guiding a young man and helping him to attain worldly success. Under cover of this help for another, which he would never have accepted for himself, he was brought into the circle which bestowed success, and which attracted him. He very readily took up Boris’s cause, and went with him to Prince Dolgorukov.
