Chapter Chapter 197 · 第197章

While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already passed

Smolénsk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow. Napoleon’s

historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to justify his

hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against his will. He

is as right as other historians who look for the explanation of historic

events in the will of one man; he is as right as the Russian historians

who maintain that Napoleon was drawn to Moscow by the skill of the

Russian commanders. Here besides the law of retrospection, which regards

all the past as a preparation for events that subsequently occur,

the law of reciprocity comes in, confusing the whole matter. A good

chessplayer having lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss

resulted from a mistake he made and looks for that mistake in the

opening, but forgets that at each stage of the game there were similar

mistakes and that none of his moves were perfect. He only notices the

mistake to which he pays attention, because his opponent took advantage

of it. How much more complex than this is the game of war, which

occurs under certain limits of time, and where it is not one will that

manipulates lifeless objects, but everything results from innumerable

conflicts of various wills!

After Smolénsk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobúzh at Vyázma, and

then at Tsárevo-Zaymíshche, but it happened that owing to a conjunction

of innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give battle till

they reached Borodinó, seventy miles from Moscow. From Vyázma Napoleon

ordered a direct advance on Moscow.

Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacrée des

peuples d’Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables églises en forme de

pagodes chinoises, * this Moscow gave Napoleon’s imagination no rest.

On the march from Vyázma to Tsárevo-Zaymíshche he rode his light bay

bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his pages,

and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of staff, dropped behind to

question a Russian prisoner captured by the cavalry. Followed by

Lelorgne d’Ideville, an interpreter, he overtook Napoleon at a gallop

and reined in his horse with an amused expression.

* “Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the

sacred city of Alexander’s people, Moscow with its

innumerable churches shaped like Chinese pagodas.”

“Well?” asked Napoleon.

“One of Plátov’s Cossacks says that Plátov’s corps is joining up with

the main army and that Kutúzov has been appointed commander in chief. He

is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow.”

Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and bring the

man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several adjutants galloped

off, and an hour later, Lavrúshka, the serf Denísov had handed over

to Rostóv, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly’s jacket and on a French

cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face. Napoleon told him to ride

by his side and began questioning him.

“You are a Cossack?”

“Yes, a Cossack, your Honor.”

“The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon’s plain

appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental mind

the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the

incidents of the war,” says Thiers, narrating this episode. In

reality Lavrúshka, having got drunk the day before and left his master

dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the village in quest of

chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him prisoner.

Lavrúshka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who have seen all

sorts of things, consider it necessary to do everything in a mean and

cunning way, are ready to render any sort of service to their master,

and are keen at guessing their master’s baser impulses, especially those

prompted by vanity and pettiness.

Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had easily

and surely recognized, Lavrúshka was not in the least abashed but merely

did his utmost to gain his new master’s favor.

He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon’s presence could

no more intimidate him than Rostóv’s, or a sergeant major’s with the

rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant major

or Napoleon could deprive him of.

So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the

orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the

Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrúshka screwed up

his eyes and considered.

In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see cunning

in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.

“It’s like this,” he said thoughtfully, “if there’s a battle soon, yours

will win. That’s right. But if three days pass, then after that, well,

then that same battle will not soon be over.”

Lelorgne d’Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon thus:

“If a battle takes place within the next three days the French will

win, but if later, God knows what will happen.” Napoleon did not smile,

though he was evidently in high good humor, and he ordered these words

to be repeated.

Lavrúshka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending not to

know who Napoleon was, added:

“We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in the

world, but we are a different matter...”—without knowing why or how this

bit of boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.

The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase, and

Bonaparte smiled. “The young Cossack made his mighty interlocutor

smile,” says Thiers. After riding a few paces in silence, Napoleon

turned to Berthier and said he wished to see how the news that he was

talking to the Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who had written his

immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would affect this enfant du

Don. *

* “Child of the Don.”

The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrúshka.

Lavrúshka, understanding that this was done to perplex him and that

Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his new masters

promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his eyes

wide, and assumed the expression he usually put on when taken to be

whipped. “As soon as Napoleon’s interpreter had spoken,” says Thiers,

“the Cossack, seized by amazement, did not utter another word, but rode

on, his eyes fixed on the conqueror whose fame had reached him across

the steppes of the East. All his loquacity was suddenly arrested and

replaced by a naïve and silent feeling of admiration. Napoleon, after

making the Cossack a present, had him set free like a bird restored to

its native fields.”

Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed to his

imagination, and “the bird restored to its native fields” galloped to

our outposts, inventing on the way all that had not taken place but that

he meant to relate to his comrades. What had really taken place he did

not wish to relate because it seemed to him not worth telling. He

found the Cossacks, inquired for the regiment operating with Plátov’s

detachment and by evening found his master, Nicholas Rostóv, quartered

at Yankóvo. Rostóv was just mounting to go for a ride round the

neighboring villages with Ilyín; he let Lavrúshka have another horse and

took him along with him.