“ ‘Graciously discharge from his duty an old man who is sufficiently disgraced by his inability to perform the great and glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await here in the hospital your most gracious acceptance of my retirement, that I may not have to act the part of a secretary rather than a commander. My removal is not producing the slightest sensation—a blind man is leaving the army, that is all. More like me can be found in Russia by thousands!’
“The marshal is angry with the Emperor and punishes all of us; isn’t it logical!
“That is the first act. In the next the interest and the absurdity rise, as they ought. After the marshal has departed it appears that we are within sight of the enemy and shall have to give battle. Buxhevden is commanding officer by right of seniority, but General Bennigsen is not of that opinion, the rather that it is he and his corps who face the enemy, and he wants to seize the opportunity to fight a battle ‘on his own hand,’ as the Germans say. He fights it. It is the battle of Pultusk, which is counted a great victory, but which in my opinion is nothing of the kind. We civilians, you know, have a very ugly way of deciding whether battles are lost or won. The side that retreats after the battle has lost, that is what we say, and according to that we lost the battle of Pultusk. In short, we retreat after the battle, but we send a message to Petersburg with news of a victory, and the general does not give up the command to Buxhevden, hoping to receive from Petersburg the title of commander-in-chief in return for his victory. During this interregnum we begin an excessively interesting and original scheme of man?uvres. The aim does not, as it should, consist in avoiding or attacking the enemy, but solely in avoiding General Buxhevden, who by right of seniority should be our commanding officer. We pursue this object with so much energy that even when we cross a river which is not fordable we burn the bridges in order to separate ourselves from our enemy, who, at the moment, is not Bonaparte but Buxhevden. General Buxhevden was nearly attacked and taken by a superior force of the enemy, in consequence of one of our fine man?uvres which saved us from him. Buxhevden pursues us; we scuttle. No sooner does he cross to our side of the river than we cross back to the other. At last our enemy Buxhevden catches us and attacks us. The two generals quarrel. There is even a challenge on Buxhevden’s part and an epileptic fit on Bennigsen’s. But at the critical moment the messenger who carried the news of our Pultusk victory brings us from Petersburg our appointment as commander-in-chief, and the first enemy, Buxhevden, being overthrown, we are able to think of the second, Bonaparte. But what should happen at that very moment but the rising against us of a third enemy, which is the ‘holy armament’ fiercely crying out for bread, meat, biscuits, hay, and I don’t know what else! The storehouses are empty, the roads impassable. The ‘holy armament’ sets itself to pillage, and that in a way of which the last campaign can give you no notion. Half the regiments have turned themselves into free companies, and are overrunning the country with fire and sword. The inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals are overflowing with sick, and famine is everywhere. Twice over the headquarters have been attacked by bands of marauders, and the commander-in-chief himself has had to ask for a battalion to drive them off. In one of these attacks my empty trunk and my dressing-gown were carried off. The Emperor proposes to give authority to all the commanders of divisions to shoot marauders, but I greatly fear this will oblige one half of the army to shoot the other.”
Prince Andrey at first read only with his eyes, but unconsciously what he read (though he knew how much faith to put in Bilibin) began to interest him more and more. When he reached this passage, he crumpled up the letter and threw it away. It was not what he read that angered him; he was angry that the far-away life out there—in which he had no part—could trouble him. He closed his eyes, rubbed his forehead with his hand, as though to drive out all interest in what he had been reading, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly he fancied a strange sound through the door. A panic seized him; he was afraid something might have happened to the baby while he was reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the door of the nursery and opened it.
At the instant that he went in, he saw that the nurse was hiding something from him with a scared face, and Princess Marya was no longer beside the crib.
“My dear,” he heard behind him Princess Marya whisper—in a tone of despair it seemed to him. As so often happens after prolonged sleeplessness and anxiety, he was seized by a groundless panic; the idea came into his mind that the baby was dead. All he saw and heard seemed a confirmation of his terror.
“All is over,” he thought, and a cold sweat came out on his forehead. He went to the crib, beside himself, believing that he would find it empty, that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He opened the curtains, and for a long while his hurrying, frightened eyes could not find the baby. At last he saw him. The red-cheeked child lay stretched across the crib, with its head lower than the pillow; and it was making a smacking sound with its lips in its sleep and breathing evenly.
Prince Andrey rejoiced at seeing the child, as though he had already lost him. He bent down and tried with his lips whether the baby was feverish, as his sister had shown him. The soft forehead was moist; he touched the head with his hand—even the hair was wet: the child was in such a thorough perspiration. He was not dead; on the contrary, it was evident that the crisis was over and he was better. Prince Andrey longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to press to his heart that little helpless creature; he did not dare to do so. He stood over him, gazing at his head and his little arms and legs that showed beneath the quilt. He heard a rustle beside him, and a shadow seemed to come under the canopy of the crib. He did not look round, and still gazing at the baby’s face, listened to his regular breathing. The dark shadow was Princess Marya, who with noiseless steps had approached the crib, lifted the canopy, and let it fall again behind her. Prince Andrey knew it was she without looking round, and held out his hand to her. She squeezed his hand.
“He is in a perspiration,” said Prince Andrey.
“I was coming to tell you so.”
The baby faintly stirred in its sleep, smiled and rubbed its forehead against the pillow.
Prince Andrey looked at his sister. In the even half light under the hanging of the crib, Princess Marya’s luminous eyes shone more than usual with the happy tears that stood in them. She bent forward to her brother and kissed him, her head catching in the canopy of the crib. They shook their fingers at one another, and still stood in the twilight of the canopy, as though unwilling to leave that seclusion where they three were alone, shut off from all the world. Prince Andrey, ruffling his hair against the muslin hangings, was the first to move away. “Yes, that is the one thing left me now,” he said with a sigh.
Chapter 10
SHORTLY after his reception into the brotherhood of the freemasons, Pierre set off to the Kiev province, where were the greater number of his peasants, with full instructions written for his guidance in doing his duty on his estates.
On reaching Kiev, Pierre sent for all his stewards to his head counting-house, and explained to them his intentions and his desires. He told them that steps would very shortly be taken for the complete liberation of his peasants from serfdom, that till that time his peasants were not to be overburdened with labour, that the women with children were not to be sent out to work, that assistance was to be given to the peasants, that wrong-doing was to be met with admonishment, and not with corporal punishment; and that on every estate there must be founded hospitals, almshouses, and schools. Several of the stewards (among them were some bailiffs barely able to read and write) listened in dismay, supposing the upshot of the young count’s remarks to be that he was dissatisfied with their management and embezzlement of his money. Others, after the first shock of alarm, derived amusement from Pierre’s lisp and the new words he used that they had not heard before. Others again found a simple satisfaction in hearing the sound of their master’s voice. But some, among them the head steward, divined from this speech how to deal with their master for the attainment of their own ends.
The head steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre’s projects; but observed that, apart from these innovations, matters were in a bad way and needed thoroughly going into.
In spite of Count Bezuhov’s enormous wealth, Pierre ever since he had inherited it, and had been, as people said, in receipt of an annual income of five hundred thousand, had felt much less rich than when he had been receiving an allowance of ten thousand from his father. In general outlines he was vaguely aware of the following budget. About eighty thousand was being paid into the Land Bank as interest on mortgages on his estates. About thirty thousand went to the maintenance of his estate in the suburbs of Moscow, his Moscow house, and his cousins the princesses. About fifteen thousand were given in pensions, and as much more to benevolent institutions. One hundred and fifty thousand were sent to his countess, for her maintenance. Some seventy thousand were paid away as interest on debts. The building of a new church had for the last two years been costing about ten thousand. The remainder—some one hundred thousand—was spent—he hardly knew how—and almost every year he was forced to borrow. Moreover every year the head steward wrote to him of conflagrations, or failures of crops, or of the necessity of rebuilding factories or workshops. And so the first duty with which Pierre was confronted was the one for which he had the least capacity and inclination—attention to practical business.
Every day Pierre went into things with the head steward. But he felt that what he was doing did not advance matters one inch. He felt that all he did was quite apart from the reality, that his efforts had no grip on the business, and would not set it in progress. On one side the head steward put matters in their worst light, proving to Pierre the necessity of paying his debts, and entering upon new undertakings with the labour of his serf peasants, to which Pierre would not agree. On the other side, Pierre urged their entering upon the work of liberation, to which the head steward objected the necessity of first paying off the loans from the Land Bank, and the consequent impossibility of haste in the matter. The head steward did not say that this was utterly impossible; he proposed as the means for attaining this object, the sale of the forests in the Kostroma province, the sale of the lands on the lower Volga, and of the Crimean estate. But all these operations were connected in the head steward’s talk with such a complexity of processes, the removal of certain prohibitory clauses, the obtaining of certain permissions, and so on, that Pierre lost the thread, and could only say: “Yes, yes, do so then.”
Pierre had none of that practical tenacity, which would have made it possible for him to undertake the business himself, and so he did not like it, and only tried to keep up a pretence of going into business before the head steward. The steward too kept up a pretence before the count of regarding his participation in it as of great use to his master, and a great inconvenience to himself.
In Kiev he had acquaintances: persons not acquaintances made haste to become so, and gave a warm welcome to the young man of fortune, the largest landowner of the province, who had come into their midst. The temptations on the side of Pierre’s besetting weakness, the one to which he had given the first place at his initiation into the lodge, were so strong that he could not resist them. Again whole days, weeks, and months of his life were busily filled up with parties, dinners, breakfasts, and balls, giving him as little time to think as at Petersburg. Instead of the new life Pierre had hoped to lead, he was living just the same old life only in different surroundings.
Of the three precepts of freemasonry, Pierre had to admit that he had not fulfilled that one which prescribes for every mason the duty of being a model of moral life; and of the seven virtues he was entirely without two—morality and love of death. He comforted himself by reflecting that, on the other hand, he was fulfilling the other precept—the improvement of the human race; and had other virtues, love for his neighbour and liberality.
In the spring of 1807, Pierre made up his mind to go back again to Petersburg. On the way back he intended to make the tour of all his estates, and to ascertain personally what had been done of what had been prescribed by him, and in what position the people now were who had been entrusted to him by God, and whom he had been striving to benefit.
The head steward, who regarded all the young count’s freaks as almost insanity—disastrous to him, to himself, and to his peasants—made concessions to his weaknesses. While continuing to represent the liberation of his serfs as impracticable, he made arrangements on all his estates for the building of schools, hospitals, and asylums on a large scale to be begun ready for the master’s visit, prepared everywhere for him to be met, not with ceremonious processions, which he knew would not be to Pierre’s taste, but with just the devotionally grateful welcomes, with holy images and bread and salt, such as would, according to his understanding of the count, impress him and delude him.
The southern spring, the easy, rapid journey in his Vienna carriage and the solitude of the road, had a gladdening influence on Pierre. The estates, which he had not before visited, were one more picturesque than the other; the peasantry seemed everywhere thriving, and touchingly grateful for the benefits conferred on them. Everywhere he was met by welcomes, which though they embarrassed Pierre, yet at the bottom of his heart rejoiced him. At one place the peasants had brought him bread and salt and the images of Peter and Paul, and begged permission in honour of his patron saints, Peter and Paul, and in token of love and gratitude for the benefits conferred on them, to erect at their own expense a new chapel in the church. At another place he was welcomed by women with babies in their arms, who came to thank him for being released from the obligation of heavy labour. In a third place he was met by a priest with a cross, surrounded by children, whom by the favour of the count he was instructing in reading and writing and religion. On all his estates Pierre saw with his own eyes stone buildings erected, or in course of erection, all on one plan, hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were in short time to be opened. Everywhere Pierre saw the steward’s reckoning of service due to him diminished in comparison with the past, and heard touching thanks for what was remitted from deputations of peasants in blue, full-skirted coats.
