If the members of the council had at first believed Kutuzov to be shamming sleep, the nasal sounds to which he gave vent during the reading that followed, proved that the commander-in-chief was concerned with something of far greater consequence than the desire to show his contempt for their disposition of the troops or anything else whatever; he was concerned with the satisfaction of an irresistible human necessity—sleep. He was really asleep. Weierother, with the gesture of a man too busy to lose even a minute of his time, glanced at Kutuzov and satisfying himself that he was asleep, he took up a paper and in a loud, monotonous tone began reading the disposition of the troops in the approaching battle under a heading, which he also read.
“Disposition for the attack of the enemy’s position behind Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz, November 20, 1805.”
The disposition was very complicated and intricate.
“As the enemy’s left wing lies against the wooded hills and their right wing is advancing by way of Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the swamps that lie there, while on the other hand our left wing stretches far beyond their right, it will be advantageous to attack this last-named wing, especially if we have possession of the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, by which means we can at once fall on them in the rear and pursue them in the open between Schlapanitz and the Thuerassa-Wald, thereby avoiding the defiles of Schlapanitz and Bellowitz, which are covered by the enemy’s front. With this ultimate aim it will be necessary … The first column marches … The second column marches … The third column marches” … read Weierother.
The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the intricate account of the disposition of the troops. The tall, fair-haired general, Buxhevden, stood leaning his back against the wall, and fixing his eyes on a burning candle, he seemed not to be listening, not even to wish to be thought to be listening. Exactly opposite to Weierother, with his bright, wide-open eyes fixed upon him, was Miloradovitch, a ruddy man, with whiskers and shoulders turned upwards, sitting in a military pose with his hands on his knees and his elbows bent outwards. He sat in obstinate silence, staring into Weierother’s face, and only taking his eyes off him when the Austrian staff-commander ceased speaking. Then Miloradovitch looked round significantly at the other generals. But from that significant glance it was impossible to tell whether he agreed or disagreed, was pleased or displeased, at the arrangements. Next to Weierother sat Count Langeron, with a subtle smile that never left his Southern French face during the reading; he gazed at his delicate fingers as he twisted round a golden snuff-box with a portrait on it. In the middle of one of the lengthy paragraphs he stopped the rotatory motion of the snuff-box, lifted his head, and with hostile courtesy lurking in the corners of his thin lips, interrupted Weierother and would have said something. But the Austrian general, continuing to read, frowned angrily with a motion of the elbows that seemed to say: “Later, later, you shall give your opinion, now be so good as to look at the map and listen.” Langeron turned up his eyes with a look of bewilderment, looked round at Miloradovitch, as though seeking enlightenment, but meeting the significant gaze of Miloradovitch, that signified nothing, he dropped his eyes dejectedly, and fell to twisting his snuff-box again.
“A geography lesson,” he murmured as though to himself, but loud enough to be heard.
Przhebyshevsky, with respectful but dignified courtesy, put his hand up to his ear on the side nearest Weierother, with the air of a man absorbed in attention. Dohturov, a little man, sat opposite Weierother with a studious and modest look on his face. Bending over the map, he was conscientiously studying the arrangement of the troops and the unfamiliar locality. Several times he asked Weierother to repeat words and difficult names of villages that he had not caught. Weierother did so, and Dohturov made a note of them.
When the reading, which lasted more than an hour, was over, Langeron, stopping his twisting snuff-box, began to speak without looking at Weierother or any one in particular. He pointed out how difficult it was to carry out such a disposition, in which the enemy’s position was assumed to be known, when it might well be uncertain seeing that the enemy was in movement. Langeron’s objections were well founded, yet it was evident that their principal object was to make Weierother, who had read his plans so conceitedly, as though to a lot of schoolboys, feel that he had to deal not with fools, but with men who could teach him something in military matters.
When the monotonous sound of Weierother’s voice ceased, Kutuzov opened his eyes, as the miller wakes up at any interruption in the droning of the mill-wheels, listened to what Langeron was saying, and as though saying to himself: “Oh, you’re still at the same nonsense!” made haste to close his eyes again, and let his head sink still lower.
Langeron, trying to deal the most malignant thrusts possible at Weierother’s military vanity as author of the plan, showed that Bonaparte might easily become the attacking party instead of waiting to be attacked, and so render all this plan of the disposition of the troops utterly futile. Weierother met all objections with a confident and contemptuous smile, obviously prepared beforehand for every objection, regardless of what they might say to him.
“If he could have attacked us, he would have done so to-day,” he said.
“You suppose him, then, to be powerless?” said Langeron.
“I doubt if he has as much as forty thousand troops,” answered Weierother with the smile of a doctor to whom the sick-nurse is trying to expound her own method of treatment.
“In that case, he is going to meet his ruin in awaiting our attack,” said Langeron with a subtle, ironical smile, looking round again for support to Miloradovitch near him. But Miloradovitch was obviously thinking at that instant of anything in the world rather than the matter in dispute between the generals.
“Ma foi,” he said, “to-morrow we shall see all that on the field of battle.”
Weierother smiled again, a smile that said that it was comic and queer for him to meet with objections from Russian generals and to have to give proofs to confirm what he was not simply himself convinced of, but had thoroughly convinced their majesties the Emperors of too.
“The enemy have extinguished their fires and a continual noise has been heard in their camp,” he said. “What does that mean? Either they are retreating—the only thing we have to fear, or changing their position” (he smiled ironically). “But even if they were to take up their position at Turas, it would only be saving us a great deal of trouble, and all our arrangements will remain unchanged in the smallest detail.”
“How can that be?…” said Prince Andrey, who had a long while been looking out for an opportunity of expressing his doubts. Kutuzov waked up, cleared his throat huskily, and looked round at the generals.
“Gentlemen, the disposition for to-morrow, for to-day indeed (for it’s going on for one o’clock), can’t be altered now,” he said. “You have heard it, and we will all do our duty. And before a battle nothing is of so much importance…” (he paused) “as a good night’s rest.”
He made a show of rising from his chair. The generals bowed themselves out. It was past midnight. Prince Andrey went out.
The council of war at which Prince Andrey had not succeeded in expressing his opinion, as he had hoped to do, had left on him an impression of uncertainty and uneasiness. Which was right—Dolgorukov and Weierother? or Kutuzov and Langeron and the others, who did not approve of the plan of attack—he did not know. But had it really been impossible for Kutuzov to tell the Tsar his views directly? Could it not have been managed differently? On account of personal and court considerations were tens of thousands of lives to be risked—“and my life, mine?” he thought.
“Yes, it may well be that I shall be killed to-morrow,” he thought.
And all at once, at that thought of death, a whole chain of memories, the most remote and closest to his heart, rose up in his imagination. He recalled his last farewell to his father and his wife; he recalled the early days of his love for her, thought of her approaching motherhood; and he felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously overwrought and softened mood he went out of the cottage at which he and Nesvitsky were putting up, and began to walk to and fro before it. The night was foggy, and the moonlight glimmered mysteriously through the mist. “Yes, to-morrow, to-morrow!” he thought. “To-morrow, maybe, all will be over for me, all these memories will be no more, all these memories will have no more meaning for me. To-morrow, perhaps—for certain, indeed—to-morrow, I have a presentiment, I shall have for the first time to show all I can do.” And he pictured the engagement, the loss of it, the concentration of the fighting at one point, and the hesitation of all the commanding officers. And then the happy moment—that Toulon he had been waiting for so long—at last comes to him. Resolutely and clearly he speaks his opinion to Kutuzov and Weierother, and the Emperors. All are struck by the justness of his view, but no one undertakes to carry it into execution, and behold, he leads the regiment, only making it a condition that no one is to interfere with his plans, and he leads his division to the critical point and wins the victory alone. “And death and agony!” said another voice. But Prince Andrey did not answer that voice, and went on with his triumphs. The disposition of the battle that ensues is all his work alone. Nominally, he is an adjutant on the staff of Kutuzov, but he does everything alone. The battle is gained by him alone. Kutuzov is replaced, he is appointed.… “Well, and then?” said the other voice again, “what then, if you do a dozen times over escape being wounded, killed, or deceived before that; well, what then?” “Why, then…” Prince Andrey answered himself, “I don’t know what will come then, I can’t know, and don’t want to; but if I want that, if I want glory, want to be known to men, want to be loved by them, it’s not my fault that I want it, that it’s the only thing I care for, the only thing I live for. Yes, the only thing! I shall never say to any one, but, my God! what am I to do, if I care for nothing but glory, but men’s love? Death, wounds, the loss of my family—nothing has terrors for me. And dear and precious as many people are to me: father, sister, wife—the people dearest to me; yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would give them all up for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of love from men whom I don’t know, and shall never know, for the love of those people there,” he thought, listening to the talk in the courtyard of Kutuzov’s house. He could hear the voices of the officers’ servants packing up; one of them, probably a coachman, was teasing Kutuzov’s old cook, a man called Tit, whom Prince Andrey knew. He kept calling him and making a joke on his name.
“Tit, hey, Tit?” he said.
“Well?” answered the old man.
“Tit, stupay molotit” (“Tit, go a-thrashing”), said the jester.
“Pooh, go to the devil, do,” he heard the cook’s voice, smothered in the laughter of the servants.
“And yet, the only thing I love and prize is triumph over all of them, that mysterious power and glory which seems hovering over me in this mist!”
Chapter 13
ROSTOV had been sent that night with a platoon on picket duty to the line of outposts in the foremost part of Bagration’s detachment. His hussars were scattered in couples about the outposts; he himself rode about the line of the outposts trying to struggle against the sleepiness which kept overcoming him. Behind him could be seen the immense expanse of the dimly burning fires of our army; before him was the misty darkness. However intently Rostov gazed into this misty distance, he could see nothing; at one moment there seemed something greyish, at the next something blackish, then something like the glimmer of a fire over there where the enemy must be, then he fancied the glimmer had been only in his own eyes. His eyes kept closing, and there floated before his mind the image of the Emperor, then of Denisov, and Moscow memories, and again he opened his eyes and saw close before him the head and ears of the horse he was riding, and sometimes black figures of hussars, when he rode within six paces of them, but in the distance still the same misty darkness. “Why? it may well happen,” mused Rostov, “that the Emperor will meet me and give me some commission, as he might to any officer; he’ll say, “Go and find out what’s there.” There are a lot of stories of how quite by chance he has made the acquaintance of officers and given them some place close to him too. Oh, if he were to give me a place in attendance on him! Oh, what care I would take of him, how I would tell him the whole truth, how I would unmask all who deceive him!” And to picture his love and devotion to the Tsar more vividly, Rostov imagined some enemy or treacherous German, whom he would with great zest not simply kill, but slap in the face before the Tsar’s eyes. All at once a shout in the distance roused Rostov. He started and opened his eyes. “Where am I? Yes, in the picket line; the pass and watchword—shaft, Olmütz. How annoying that our squadron will be in reserve …” he thought. “I’ll ask to go to the front. It may be my only chance of seeing the Emperor. And now it’s not long before I’m off duty. I’ll ride round once more, and as I come back, I’ll go to the general and ask him.” He sat up straight in the saddle and set off to ride once more round his hussars. It seemed to him that it was lighter. On the left side he could see a sloping descent that looked lighted up and a black knoll facing it that seemed steep as a wall. On this knoll was a white patch which Rostov could not understand; was it a clearing in the wood, lighted up by the moon, or the remains of snow, or white horses? It seemed to him indeed that something was moving over that white spot. “It must be snow—that spot: a spot—une tache,” Rostov mused dreamily. “But that’s not a tache … Na … tasha, my sister, her black eyes. Na … tasha (won’t she be surprised when I tell her how I’ve seen the Emperor!) Natasha … tasha … sabretache.…” “Keep to the right, your honour, there are bushes here,” said the voice of an hussar, by whom Rostov was riding as he fell asleep. Rostov lifted his head, which had dropped on to his horse’s mane, and pulled up beside the hussar. He could not shake off the youthful, childish drowsiness that overcame him. “But, I say, what was I thinking? I mustn’t forget. How I am going to speak to the Emperor? No, not that—that’s to-morrow. Yes, yes! Natasha, attacks, tacks us,—whom? The hussars. Ah, the hussars with their moustaches … Along the Tversky boulevard rode that hussar with the moustaches, I was thinking of him too just opposite Guryev’s house.… Old Guryev.… Ah, a fine fellow, Denisov! But that’s all nonsense. The great thing is that the Emperor’s here now. How he looked at me and longed to say something, but he did not dare.… No, it was I did not dare. But that’s nonsense, and the great thing is not to forget something important I was thinking of, yes. Natasha, attacks us, yes, yes, yes. That’s right.” And again he dropped with his head on his horse’s neck. All at once it seemed to him that he was being fired at. “What? what?… Cut them down! What?” Rostov was saying, as he wakened up. At the instant that he opened his eyes, Rostov heard in front, over where the enemy were, the prolonged shouting of thousands of voices. His horse and the horse of the hussar near him pricked up their ears at these shouts. Over where the shouts came from, a light was lighted and put out, then another, and all along the line of the French troops on the hillside fires were lighted and the shouts grew louder and louder. Rostov heard the sound of French words though he could not distinguish them. He could only hear: aaaa! and rrrr!
