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IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE towards which the Tsar rode there stood, facing each
other, the battalion of the Preobrazhensky regiment on the right, and the
battalion of the French guards in bearskin caps on the left.
While the Emperor was riding up to one flank of the battalions, who presented
arms, another crowd of horsemen was galloping up to the opposite flank, and at
the head of them Rostov recognised Napoleon. That figure could be no one else.
He galloped up, wearing a little hat, the ribbon of St. Andrey across his
shoulder, and a blue uniform open over a white vest. He was riding a grey Arab
horse of extremely fine breed, with a crimson, gold-embroidered saddle-cloth.
Riding up to Alexander, he raised his hat, and at that moment Rostov, with his
cavalryman's eye, could not help noticing that Napoleon had a bad and uncertain
seat on horseback. The battalions shouted hurrah, and vive l'Empereur!
Napoleon said something to Alexander. Both Emperors dismounted from their horses
and took each other by the hands. Napoleon's face wore an unpleasantly
hypocritical smile. Alexander was saying something to him with a cordial
expression.
In spite of the kicking of the horses of the French gendarmes, who were
keeping back the crowd, Rostov watched every movement of the Emperor Alexander
and of Bonaparte, and never took his eyes off them. What struck him as something
unexpected and strange was that Alexander behaved as though Bonaparte were his
equal, and that Bonaparte in his manner to the Russian Tsar seemed perfectly at
ease, as though this equal and intimate relation with a monarch were something
natural and customary with him.
Alexander and Napoleon, with a long tail of suite, moved towards the right
flank of the Preobrazhensky battalion, close up to the crowd which was standing
there. The crowd found itself unexpectedly so close to the Emperors, that
Rostov, who stood in the front part of it, began to be afraid he might be
recognised.
“Sire, I ask your permission to give the Legion of Honour to the bravest of
your soldiers,” said a harsh, precise voice, fully articulating every
letter.
It was little Bonaparte speaking, looking up straight into Alexander's eyes.
Alexander listened attentively to what was said to him, and bending his head
smiled amiably.
“To him who bore himself most valiantly in this last war,” added Napoleon,
emphasising each syllable, and with an assurance and composure, revolting to
Rostov, scanning the rows of Russian soldiers drawn up before him, all
presenting arms, and all gazing immovably at the face of their own
Emperor.
“Will your majesty allow me to ask the opinion of the colonel?” said
Alexander, and he took a few hurried steps towards Prince Kozlovsky, the
commander of the battalion. Bonaparte was meanwhile taking the glove off his
little white hand, and, tearing it, he threw it away. An adjutant, rushing
hurriedly forward from behind, picked it up. “Give it to whom?” the Emperor
Alexander asked of Kozlovsky in Russian, in a low voice.
“As your majesty commands.”
The Emperor frowned, with a look of displeasure, and, looking round, said:
“Well, we must give him an answer.”
Kozlovsky scanned the ranks with a resolute air, taking in Rostov too, in
that glance.
“Won't it be me!” thought Rostov.
“Lazarev!” the colonel called with a scowling face; and Lazarev, the soldier
who was the best shot in firing at the range, stepped smartly forward.
“Where are you off to? Stand still!” voices whispered to Lazarev, who did not
know where he was to go. Lazarev stopped short, with a sidelong scared look at
his colonel, and his face quivered, as one so often sees in soldiers called up
in front of the ranks.
Napoleon gave a slight backward turn of his head, and a slight motion of his
little fat hand, as though seeking something with it. The members of his suite,
who guessed the same second what was wanted, were all in a bustle; they
whispered together, passing something from one to another, and a page—the same
one Rostov had seen the previous evening at Boris's quarters—ran forward, and
respectfully bowing over the outstretched hand and not keeping it one instant
waiting, put in it an order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without looking at it,
pressed two fingers together; the order was between them. Napoleon approached
Lazarev, who stood rolling his eyes, and still gazing obstinately at his own
Emperor only. Napoleon looked round at the Emperor Alexander, as though to show
that what he was doing now he was doing for the sake of his ally. The little
white hand, with the order in it, just touched the button of the soldier
Lazarev. It was as though Napoleon knew that it was enough for his, Napoleon's,
hand to deign to touch the soldier's breast, for that soldier to be happy,
rewarded, and distinguished from every one in the world. Napoleon merely laid
the cross on Lazarev's breast, and, dropping his hand, turned to Alexander, as
though he knew that cross would be sure to stick on Lazarev's breast. The cross
did, in fact, stick on.
Officious hands, Russian and French, were instantaneously ready to support
it, to fasten it to his uniform.
Lazarev looked darkly at the little man with white hands who was doing
something to him, and still standing rigidly, presenting arms, he looked again
straight into Alexander's face, as though he were asking him: “Was he to go on
standing there, or was it his pleasure for him to go now, or perhaps to do
something else?” But no order was given him, and he remained for a good while
still in the same rigid position.
The Emperors mounted their horses and rode away. The Preobrazhensky battalion
broke up, and, mingling with the French guards, sat down to the tables prepared
for them.
Lazarev was put in the place of honour. French and Russian officers embraced
him, congratulated him, and shook hands with him. Crowds of officers and common
people flocked up simply to look at Lazarev. There was a continual hum of
laughter and French and Russian chatter round the tables in the square. Two
officers with flushed faces passed by Rostov, looking cheerful and happy.
“What do you say to the banquet, my boy? All served on silver,” one was
saying. “Seen Lazarev?”
“Yes.”
“They say the Preobrazhenskies are to give them a dinner tomorrow.”
“I say, what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs pension for life.”
“Here's a cap, lads!” cried a Preobrazhensky soldier, putting on a French
soldier's fur cap.
“It's awfully nice, first-rate!”
“Have you heard the watchword?” said an officer of the guards to another.
“The day before yesterday it was ‘Napoléon, France, bravoure'; to-day
it's ‘Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.” One day our Emperor gives it, and
next day Napoleon. To-morrow the Emperor is to send the St. George to the
bravest of the French guards. Can't be helped! Must respond in the same
way.”
Boris, with his comrade Zhilinsky, had come too to look at the banquet. On
his way back Boris noticed Rostov, who was standing at the corner of a house.
“Rostov! good day; we haven't seen each other,” he said, and could not refrain
from asking him what was the matter, so strangely gloomy and troubled was the
face of Rostov.
“Nothing, nothing,” answered Rostov.
“Are you coming in?”
“Yes.”
Rostov stood a long while in the corner, looking at the fête from a distance.
His brain was seething in an agonising confusion, which he could not work out to
any conclusion. Horrible doubts were stirring in his soul. He thought of Denisov
with his changed expression, his submission, and all the hospital with torn-off
legs and arms, with the filth and disease. So vividly he recalled that hospital
smell of corpse that he looked round to ascertain where the stench came from.
Then he thought of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his white hands—treated
now with cordiality and respect by the Emperor Alexander. For what, then, had
those legs and arms been torn off, those men been killed? Then he thought of
Lazarev rewarded, and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He caught himself in such
strange reflections that he was terrified at them.
Hunger and the savoury smell of the Preobrazhensky dinner roused him from
this mood; he must get something to eat before going away. He went to an hotel
which he had seen in the morning. In the hotel he found such a crowd of people,
and of officers who had come, as he had, in civilian dress, that he had
difficulty in getting dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him at
table. The conversation naturally turned on the peace. The two officers,
Rostov's comrades, like the greater part of the army, were not satisfied with
the peace concluded after Friedland. They said that had they kept on a little
longer it would have meant Napoleon's downfall; that his troops had neither
provisions nor ammunition. Nikolay ate in silence and drank heavily. He finished
two bottles of wine by himself. The inward ferment working within him still
fretted him, and found no solution. He dreaded giving himself up to his
thoughts, and could not get away from them. All of a sudden, on one of the
officers saying that it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov began
shouting with a violence that was quite unprovoked, and consequently greatly
astounded the officers.
“And how can you judge what would be best!” he shouted, with his face
suddenly suffused with a rush of blood. “How can you judge of the action of the
Emperor? What right have we to criticise him? We cannot comprehend the aims or
the actions of the Emperor!”
“But I didn't say a word about the Emperor,” the officer said in
justification of himself, unable to put any other interpretation on Rostov's
violence than that he was drunk.
But Rostov did not heed him.
“We are not diplomatic clerks, we are soldiers, and nothing more,” he went
on. “Command us to die—then we die. And if we are punished, it follows we're in
fault; it's not for us to judge. If it's his majesty the Emperor's pleasure to
recognise Bonaparte as emperor, and to conclude an alliance with him, then it
must be the right thing. If we were once to begin criticising and reasoning
about everything, nothing would be left holy to us. In that way we shall be
saying there is no God, nothing,” cried Nikolay, bringing his fist down on the
table. His remarks seemed utterly irrelevant to his companions, but followed
quite consistently from the train of his own ideas. “It's our business to do our
duty, to hack them to pieces, and not to think; that's all about it,” he
shouted.
“And to drink,” put in one of the officers, who had no desire to
quarrel.
“Yes, and to drink,” assented Nikolay. “Hi, you there! Another bottle!” he
roared.
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