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LIKE ALL OLD PEOPLE, Kutuzov slept little at night. He often dropped into
sudden naps during the daytime, but at night he lay on his bed without
undressing, and generally not asleep but thinking.
He was lying like that now on his bedstead, his huge, heavy, misshapen head
leaning on his fat hand. He was thinking with his one eye wide open, gazing into
the darkness.
Since Bennigsen, who was in correspondence with the Tsar and had more weight
than all the rest of the staff, had avoided him, Kutuzov was more at ease so far
as not being compelled to lead his soldiers into useless offensive operations.
The lesson of Tarutino and the day before the battle, a memory that rankled in
Kutuzov's mind, must, he thought, have its effect on them too.
“They ought to understand that we can but lose by taking the offensive. Time
and patience, these are my champions!” thought Kutuzov. He knew the apple must
not be picked while it was green. It will fall of itself when ripe, but if you
pick it green, you spoil the apple and the tree and set your teeth on edge. Like
an experienced hunter, he knew the beast was wounded, wounded as only the whole
force of Russia could wound it; but whether to death or not, was a question not
yet solved. Now from the sending of Lauriston and Bertemy, and from the reports
brought by the irregulars, Kutuzov was almost sure that the wound was a deadly
one. But more proof was wanted; he must wait.
“They want to run and look how they have wounded him. Wait a bit, you will
see. Always manœuvres, attacks,” he thought. “What for? Anything to distinguish
themselves. As though there were any fun in fighting. They are like children
from whom you can never get a sensible view of things because they all want to
show how well they can fight. But that's not the point now. And what skilful
manœuvres all these fellows propose! They think that when they have thought of
two or three contingencies (he recalled the general plan from Petersburg) that
they have thought of all of them. And there is no limit to them!”
The unanswered question, whether the wound dealt at Borodino were mortal or
not, had been for a whole month hanging over Kutuzov's head. On one side, the
French had taken possession of Moscow. On the other side, in all his being,
Kutuzov felt beyond all doubt that the terrible blow for which, together with
all the Russians, he had strained all his strength must have been mortal. But in
any case proofs were wanted, and he had been waiting for them now a month, and
as time went on he grew more impatient. As he lay on his bed through sleepless
nights, he did the very thing these younger generals did, the very thing he
found fault with in them. He imagined all possible contingencies, just like the
younger generation, but with this difference that he based no conclusion on the
suppositions, and that he saw these contingencies not as two or three, but as
thousands. The more he pondered, the more of them he saw. He imagined all sorts
of movements of Napoleon's army, acting as a whole or in part, on Petersburg,
against him, to out-flank him (that was what he was most afraid of), and also
the possibility that Napoleon would fight against him with his own weapon, that
he would stay on in Moscow waiting for him to move. Kutuzov even imagined
Napoleon's army marching back to Medyn and Yuhnov. But the one thing he could
not foresee was what happened—the mad, convulsive stampede of Napoleon's army
during the first eleven days of its march from Moscow—the stampede that made
possible what Kutuzov did not yet dare to think about, the complete annihilation
of the French. Dorohov's report of Broussier's division, the news brought by the
irregulars of the miseries of Napoleon's army, rumours of preparations for
leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that the French army was beaten
and preparing to take flight. But all this was merely supposition, that seemed
of weight to the younger men, but not to Kutuzov. With his sixty years'
experience he knew how much weight to attach to rumours; he knew how ready men
are when they desire anything to manipulate all evidence so as to confirm what
they desire; and he knew how readily in that case they let everything of an
opposite significance pass unheeded. And the more Kutuzov desired this
supposition to be correct, the less he permitted himself to believe it. This
question absorbed all his spiritual energies. All the rest was for him the mere
customary performance of the routine of life. Such a customary performance and
observance of routine were his conversations with the staff-officers, his
letters to Madame de Staël that he wrote from Tarutino, his French novels,
distribution of rewards, correspondence with Petersburg, and so on. But the
destruction of the French, which he alone foresaw, was the one absorbing desire
of his heart.
On the night of the 11th of October he lay leaning on his arm and thinking of
that.
There was a stir in the next room, and he heard the steps of Toll,
Konovnitsyn and Bolhovitinov.
“Hey, who is there? Come in, come in! Anything new?” the commander-in-chief
called to them.
While a footman lighted a candle, Toll told the drift of the news.
“Who brought it?” asked Kutuzov, with a face that impressed Toll when the
candle was lighted by its frigid sternness.
“There can be no doubt of it, your highness.”
“Call him, call him here!”
Kutuzov sat with one leg out of bed and his unwieldy, corpulent body propped
on the other leg bent under him. He screwed up his one seeing eye to get a
better view of the messenger, as though he hoped in his face to read what he
cared to know.
“Tell me, tell me, my dear fellow,” he said to Bolhovitinov, in his low, aged
voice, pulling the shirt together that had come open over his chest. “Come here,
come closer. What news is this you have brought me? Eh? Napoleon has marched out
of Moscow? Is it truly so? Eh?”
Bolhovitinov began repeating in detail the message that had been given
him.
“Tell me, make haste, don't torture me,” Kutuzov interrupted him.
Bolhovitinov told him all and paused, awaiting instructions. Toll was
beginning to speak, but Kutuzov checked him. He tried to say something, but all
at once his face began to work, to pucker; waving his hand at Toll, he turned
the other way to the corner of the hut, which looked black with the holy
pictures. “Lord, my Creator! Thou hast heard our prayer …” he said in a
trembling voice, clasping his hands. “Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O Lord.”
And he burst into tears.
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