Chương Chương 67 · 第67章

Rostóv had been ordered to look for Kutúzov and the Emperor near the

village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer

were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He

urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but

the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on

which he had come out was thronged with calèches, carriages of all

sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and

some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the

dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries

stationed on the Pratzen Heights.

“Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutúzov?” Rostóv kept asking

everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.

At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.

“Eh, brother! They’ve all bolted long ago!” said the soldier,

laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.

Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostóv stopped the

horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to

question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a

carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and

that he was dangerously wounded.

“It can’t be!” said Rostóv. “It must have been someone else.”

“I saw him myself,” replied the man with a self-confident smile of

derision. “I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I’ve

seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat in

the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black horses

fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It’s time I knew the Imperial

horses and Ilyá Iványch. I don’t think Ilyá drives anyone except

the Tsar!”

Rostóv let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a wounded

officer passing by addressed him:

“Who is it you want?” he asked. “The commander in chief? He was

killed by a cannon ball—struck in the breast before our regiment.”

“Not killed—wounded!” another officer corrected him.

“Who? Kutúzov?” asked Rostóv.

“Not Kutúzov, but what’s his name—well, never mind... there are

not many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders

are there,” said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek,

and he walked on.

Rostóv rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now

going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible to

doubt it now. Rostóv rode in the direction pointed out to him, in which

he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now to say

to the Tsar or to Kutúzov, even if they were alive and unwounded?

“Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!” a

soldier shouted to him. “They’d kill you there!”

“Oh, what are you talking about?” said another. “Where is he to

go? That way is nearer.”

Rostóv considered, and then went in the direction where they said he

would be killed.

“It’s all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to

save myself?” he thought. He rode on to the region where the greatest

number of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The French had not

yet occupied that region, and the Russians—the uninjured and slightly

wounded—had left it long ago. All about the field, like heaps of

manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to fifteen dead and wounded

to each couple of acres. The wounded crept together in twos and threes

and one could hear their distressing screams and groans, sometimes

feigned—or so it seemed to Rostóv. He put his horse to a trot to

avoid seeing all these suffering men, and he felt afraid—afraid not

for his life, but for the courage he needed and which he knew would not

stand the sight of these unfortunates.

The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and

wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an adjutant

riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several shots. The

sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the corpses around

him merged in Rostóv’s mind into a single feeling of terror and pity

for himself. He remembered his mother’s last letter. “What would she

feel,” thought he, “if she saw me here now on this field with the

cannon aimed at me?”

In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from

the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less

disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry fire

sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the battle

was lost. No one whom Rostóv asked could tell him where the Emperor

or Kutúzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was wounded was

correct, others that it was not, and explained the false rumor that had

spread by the fact that the Emperor’s carriage had really galloped

from the field of battle with the pale and terrified Ober-Hofmarschal

Count Tolstóy, who had ridden out to the battlefield with others in

the Emperor’s suite. One officer told Rostóv that he had seen someone

from headquarters behind the village to the left, and thither Rostóv

rode, not hoping to find anyone but merely to ease his conscience. When

he had ridden about two miles and had passed the last of the Russian

troops, he saw, near a kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men

on horseback facing the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed

familiar to Rostóv; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which

Rostóv fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his

horse with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only

a little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse’s hind hoofs.

Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and deferentially

addressed the horseman with the white plumes, evidently suggesting

that he should do the same. The rider, whose figure seemed familiar

to Rostóv and involuntarily riveted his attention, made a gesture of

refusal with his head and hand and by that gesture Rostóv instantly

recognized his lamented and adored monarch.

“But it can’t be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!”

thought Rostóv. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostóv

saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory. The

Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the charm,

the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostóv was happy

in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded were

false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and even

ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorúkov had ordered

him to deliver.

But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter the

thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help or a

chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and he is

alone with her, so Rostóv, now that he had attained what he had longed

for more than anything else in the world, did not know how to approach

the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him why it would be

inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.

“What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of

his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant or

painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to him

now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere sight

of him?” Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the Emperor

that he had composed in his imagination could he now recall. Those

speeches were intended for quite other conditions, they were for the

most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph, generally

when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked him for heroic

deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.

“Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the right

flank now that it is nearly four o’clock and the battle is lost?

No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his

reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind

look or bad opinion from him,” Rostóv decided; and sorrowfully and

with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at the

Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.

While Rostóv was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,

Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the

Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him

to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling

unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.

Rostóv from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke

long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,

covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll’s hand.

“And I might have been in his place!” thought Rostóv, and hardly

restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter

despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.

His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness was

the cause of his grief.

He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the sovereign. It

was a unique chance to show his devotion to the Emperor and he had not

made use of it.... “What have I done?” thought he. And he turned

round and galloped back to the place where he had seen the Emperor, but

there was no one beyond the ditch now. Only some carts and carriages

were passing by. From one of the drivers he learned that Kutúzov’s

staff were not far off, in the village the vehicles were going to.

Rostóv followed them. In front of him walked Kutúzov’s groom leading

horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and behind that walked an old,

bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.

“Tit! I say, Tit!” said the groom.

“What?” answered the old man absent-mindedly.

“Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!”

“Oh, you fool!” said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed

in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.

Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points. More

than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.

Przebyszéwski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other columns

after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly confused

masses.

The remains of Langeron’s and Dokhtúrov’s mingled forces were

crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of

Augesd.

After five o’clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot cannonade

(delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from numerous

batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights, directed at our

retreating forces.

In the rearguard, Dokhtúrov and others rallying some battalions kept up

a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. It

was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many years the

old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap peacefully

angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled up, handled the

floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on that dam over which for

so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and blue jackets had peacefully

driven their two-horse carts loaded with wheat and had returned dusty

with flour whitening their carts—on that narrow dam amid the wagons

and the cannon, under the horses’ hoofs and between the wagon wheels,

men disfigured by fear of death now crowded together, crushing one

another, dying, stepping over the dying and killing one another, only to

move on a few steps and be killed themselves in the same way.

Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around, or

a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and

splashing with blood those near them.

Dólokhov—now an officer—wounded in the arm, and on foot, with

the regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,

represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by the

crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and, jammed in

on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had fallen under a

cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon ball killed someone

behind them, another fell in front and splashed Dólokhov with blood.

The crowd, pushing forward desperately, squeezed together, moved a few

steps, and again stopped.

“Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here

another two minutes and it is certain death,” thought each one.

Dólokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the edge

of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto the

slippery ice that covered the millpool.

“Turn this way!” he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked

under him; “turn this way!” he shouted to those with the gun. “It

bears!...”

The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it

would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon even

under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to the

bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at the

entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to address

Dólokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd that

everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general fell

from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or thought of

raising him.

“Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don’t you hear? Go

on!” innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck

the general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were

shouting.

One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto the

ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen pond.

The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg slipped

into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to his waist.

The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped his horse, but

from behind still came the shouts: “Onto the ice, why do you stop? Go

on! Go on!” And cries of horror were heard in the crowd. The soldiers

near the gun waved their arms and beat the horses to make them turn and

move on. The horses moved off the bank. The ice, that had held under

those on foot, collapsed in a great mass, and some forty men who were on

it dashed, some forward and some back, drowning one another.

Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop onto the

ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd that covered

the dam, the pond, and the bank.