Kabanata Kabanata 208 · 第208章

When Pierre returned home he was handed two of Rostopchín’s broadsheets

that had been brought that day.

The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchín had forbidden

people to leave Moscow was false; on the contrary he was glad that

ladies and tradesmen’s wives were leaving the city. “There will be less

panic and less gossip,” ran the broadsheet “but I will stake my life on

it that that scoundrel will not enter Moscow.” These words showed Pierre

clearly for the first time that the French would enter Moscow. The

second broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at Vyázma, that

Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that as many of the

inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed, weapons were ready for them

at the arsenal: sabers, pistols, and muskets which could be had at a low

price. The tone of the proclamation was not as jocose as in the former

Chigírin talks. Pierre pondered over these broadsheets. Evidently the

terrible stormcloud he had desired with the whole strength of his soul

but which yet aroused involuntary horror in him was drawing near.

“Shall I join the army and enter the service, or wait?” he asked himself

for the hundredth time. He took a pack of cards that lay on the table

and began to lay them out for a game of patience.

“If this patience comes out,” he said to himself after shuffling the

cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting his head, “if it comes out,

it means... what does it mean?”

He had not decided what it should mean when he heard the voice of the

eldest princess at the door asking whether she might come in.

“Then it will mean that I must go to the army,” said Pierre to himself.

“Come in, come in!” he added to the princess.

Only the eldest princess, the one with the stony face and long waist,

was still living in Pierre’s house. The two younger ones had both

married.

“Excuse my coming to you, cousin,” she said in a reproachful and

agitated voice. “You know some decision must be come to. What is going

to happen? Everyone has left Moscow and the people are rioting. How is

it that we are staying on?”

“On the contrary, things seem satisfactory, ma cousine,” said Pierre

in the bantering tone he habitually adopted toward her, always feeling

uncomfortable in the role of her benefactor.

“Satisfactory, indeed! Very satisfactory! Barbara Ivánovna told me today

how our troops are distinguishing themselves. It certainly does them

credit! And the people too are quite mutinous—they no longer obey,

even my maid has taken to being rude. At this rate they will soon begin

beating us. One can’t walk in the streets. But, above all, the French

will be here any day now, so what are we waiting for? I ask just one

thing of you, cousin,” she went on, “arrange for me to be taken to

Petersburg. Whatever I may be, I can’t live under Bonaparte’s rule.”

“Oh, come, ma cousine! Where do you get your information from? On the

contrary...”

“I won’t submit to your Napoleon! Others may if they please.... If you

don’t want to do this...”

“But I will, I’ll give the order at once.”

The princess was apparently vexed at not having anyone to be angry with.

Muttering to herself, she sat down on a chair.

“But you have been misinformed,” said Pierre. “Everything is quiet in

the city and there is not the slightest danger. See! I’ve just been

reading...” He showed her the broadsheet. “Count Rostopchín writes that

he will stake his life on it that the enemy will not enter Moscow.”

“Oh, that count of yours!” said the princess malevolently. “He is a

hypocrite, a rascal who has himself roused the people to riot. Didn’t

he write in those idiotic broadsheets that anyone, ‘whoever it might be,

should be dragged to the lockup by his hair’? (How silly!) ‘And honor

and glory to whoever captures him,’ he says. This is what his cajolery

has brought us to! Barbara Ivánovna told me the mob near killed her

because she said something in French.”

“Oh, but it’s so... You take everything so to heart,” said Pierre, and

began laying out his cards for patience.

Although that patience did come out, Pierre did not join the army,

but remained in deserted Moscow ever in the same state of agitation,

irresolution, and alarm, yet at the same time joyfully expecting

something terrible.

Next day toward evening the princess set off, and Pierre’s head steward

came to inform him that the money needed for the equipment of his

regiment could not be found without selling one of the estates. In

general the head steward made out to Pierre that his project of raising

a regiment would ruin him. Pierre listened to him, scarcely able to

repress a smile.

“Well then, sell it,” said he. “What’s to be done? I can’t draw back

now!”

The worse everything became, especially his own affairs, the better

was Pierre pleased and the more evident was it that the catastrophe he

expected was approaching. Hardly anyone he knew was left in town. Julie

had gone, and so had Princess Mary. Of his intimate friends only the

Rostóvs remained, but he did not go to see them.

To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of Vorontsóvo

to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to destroy the foe,

and a trial balloon that was to go up next day. The balloon was not yet

ready, but Pierre learned that it was being constructed by the Emperor’s

desire. The Emperor had written to Count Rostopchín as follows:

As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew of reliable and

intelligent men for his car and send a courier to General Kutúzov to let

him know. I have informed him of the matter.

Please impress upon Leppich to be very careful where he descends for

the first time, that he may not make a mistake and fall into the enemy’s

hands. It is essential for him to combine his movements with those of

the commander in chief.

On his way home from Vorontsóvo, as he was passing the Bolótnoe Place

Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lóbnoe Place, stopped and got out

of his trap. A French cook accused of being a spy was being flogged. The

flogging was only just over, and the executioner was releasing from the

flogging bench a stout man with red whiskers, in blue stockings and

a green jacket, who was moaning piteously. Another criminal, thin and

pale, stood near. Judging by their faces they were both Frenchmen. With

a frightened and suffering look resembling that on the thin Frenchman’s

face, Pierre pushed his way in through the crowd.

“What is it? Who is it? What is it for?” he kept asking.

But the attention of the crowd—officials, burghers, shopkeepers,

peasants, and women in cloaks and in pelisses—was so eagerly centered on

what was passing in Lóbnoe Place that no one answered him. The stout man

rose, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and evidently trying to appear

firm began to pull on his jacket without looking about him, but suddenly

his lips trembled and he began to cry, in the way full-blooded grown-up

men cry, though angry with himself for doing so. In the crowd people

began talking loudly, to stifle their feelings of pity as it seemed to

Pierre.

“He’s cook to some prince.”

“Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a Frenchman... sets his

teeth on edge!” said a wrinkled clerk who was standing behind Pierre,

when the Frenchman began to cry.

The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke would be

appreciated. Some people began to laugh, others continued to watch in

dismay the executioner who was undressing the other man.

Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily away, went back

to his trap muttering something to himself as he went, and took his

seat. As they drove along he shuddered and exclaimed several times so

audibly that the coachman asked him:

“What is your pleasure?”

“Where are you going?” shouted Pierre to the man, who was driving to

Lubyánka Street.

“To the Governor’s, as you ordered,” answered the coachman.

“Fool! Idiot!” shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman—a thing he rarely

did. “Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!” “I must get away

this very day,” he murmured to himself.

At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the

Lóbnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he could no

longer remain in Moscow and would leave for the army that very day that

it seemed to him that either he had told the coachman this or that the

man ought to have known it for himself.

On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstáfey—his head coachman who

knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow—that

he would leave that night for the army at Mozháysk, and that his saddle

horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged that day,

so on Evstáfey’s representation Pierre had to put off his departure till

next day to allow time for the relay horses to be sent on in advance.

On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell of rain, and

after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night

in Perkhúshkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that

evening. (This was the battle of Shevárdino.) He was told that there in

Perkhúshkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could answer

his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was approaching

Mozháysk.

Every house in Mozháysk had soldiers quartered in it, and at the hostel

where Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no room to be

had. It was full of officers.

Everywhere in Mozháysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on the

march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, caissons, and cannon

were everywhere. Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and the

farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into that sea

of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation and a new and

joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a feeling akin

to what he had felt at the Slobóda Palace during the Emperor’s visit—a

sense of the necessity of undertaking something and sacrificing

something. He now experienced a glad consciousness that everything that

constitutes men’s happiness—the comforts of life, wealth, even

life itself—is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away, compared with

something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did not try to

determine for whom and for what he felt such particular delight in

sacrificing everything. He was not occupied with the question of what to

sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing in itself afforded him a new and

joyous sensation.