第 七十 章 · 第70章

On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostóv was welcomed

by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their darling

Nikólenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and polite young

man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good

dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.

The Rostóvs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough

that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,

acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the

latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the

latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,

passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself

to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be

at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His

despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money from

Gavríl to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sónya on the sly—he now

recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind.

Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and

wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in

action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected racing

men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a lady on one

of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led the mazurka

at the Arkhárovs’ ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal

Kámenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate terms with a

colonel of forty to whom Denísov had introduced him.

His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But still, as

he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him, he often spoke

about him and about his love for him, letting it be understood that he

had not told all and that there was something in his feelings for the

Emperor not everyone could understand, and with his whole soul he shared

the adoration then common in Moscow for the Emperor, who was spoken of

as the “angel incarnate.”

During Rostóv’s short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army, he

did not draw closer to Sónya, but rather drifted away from her. She was

very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he was

at the period of youth when there seems so much to do that there is no

time for that sort of thing and a young man fears to bind himself and

prizes his freedom which he needs for so many other things. When he

thought of Sónya, during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself,

“Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such girls somewhere whom

I do not yet know. There will be time enough to think about love when I

want to, but now I have no time.” Besides, it seemed to him that the

society of women was rather derogatory to his manhood. He went to balls

and into ladies’ society with an affectation of doing so against his

will. The races, the English Club, sprees with Denísov, and visits to

a certain house—that was another matter and quite the thing for a

dashing young hussar!

At the beginning of March, old Count Ilyá Rostóv was very busy

arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagratión at the English Club.

The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving

orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktíst, the club’s

head cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and

fish for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee

of the club from the day it was founded. To him the club entrusted the

arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagratión, for few men knew

so well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale,

and still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of

their own resources what might be needed for the success of the fete.

The club cook and the steward listened to the count’s orders with

pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could they

so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner costing

several thousand rubles.

“Well then, mind and have cocks’ comb in the turtle soup, you

know!”

“Shall we have three cold dishes then?” asked the cook.

The count considered.

“We can’t have less—yes, three... the mayonnaise, that’s one,”

said he, bending down a finger.

“Then am I to order those large sterlets?” asked the steward.

“Yes, it can’t be helped if they won’t take less. Ah, dear me! I

was forgetting. We must have another entrée. Ah, goodness gracious!”

he clutched at his head. “Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmítri!

Eh, Dmítri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate,” he said to the factotum

who appeared at his call. “Hurry off and tell Maksím, the gardener,

to set the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must

be brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred pots

here on Friday.”

Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his “little

countess” to have a rest, but remembering something else of

importance, he returned again, called back the cook and the club

steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep and the

clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young count, handsome,

rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made sleeker by

his easy life in Moscow, entered the room.

“Ah, my boy, my head’s in a whirl!” said the old man with a smile,

as if he felt a little confused before his son. “Now, if you would

only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own orchestra,

but shouldn’t we get the gypsy singers as well? You military men like

that sort of thing.”

“Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagratión worried himself less before

the battle of Schön Grabern than you do now,” said his son with a

smile.

The old count pretended to be angry.

“Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!”

And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and respectful

expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the father and

son.

“What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktíst?” said

he. “Laughing at us old fellows!”

“That’s so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good

dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that’s not their

business!”

“That’s it, that’s it!” exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing

his son by both hands, he cried, “Now I’ve got you, so take the

sleigh and pair at once, and go to Bezúkhov’s, and tell him ‘Count

Ilyá has sent you to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.’ We

can’t get them from anyone else. He’s not there himself, so you’ll

have to go in and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the

Rasgulyáy—the coachman Ipátka knows—and look up the gypsy

Ilyúshka, the one who danced at Count Orlóv’s, you remember, in a

white Cossack coat, and bring him along to me.”

“And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?” asked Nicholas,

laughing. “Dear, dear!...”

At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the businesslike,

preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never left her face, Anna

Mikháylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon the count in his

dressing gown every day, he invariably became confused and begged her to

excuse his costume.

“No matter at all, my dear count,” she said, meekly closing her

eyes. “But I’ll go to Bezúkhov’s myself. Pierre has arrived, and

now we shall get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him

in any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Borís. Thank God, Borís

is now on the staff.”

The count was delighted at Anna Mikháylovna’s taking upon herself one

of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.

“Tell Bezúkhov to come. I’ll put his name down. Is his wife with

him?” he asked.

Anna Mikháylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was depicted

on her face.

“Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate,” she said. “If what

we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing

when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul

as young Bezúkhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to give

him what consolation I can.”

“Wh-what is the matter?” asked both the young and old Rostóv.

Anna Mikháylovna sighed deeply.

“Dólokhov, Mary Ivánovna’s son,” she said in a mysterious

whisper, “has compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him

up, invited him to his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here

and that daredevil after her!” said Anna Mikháylovna, wishing to show

her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half smile

betraying her sympathy for the “daredevil,” as she called Dólokhov.

“They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune.”

“Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the club—it will all blow

over. It will be a tremendous banquet.”

Next day, the third of March, soon after one o’clock, two hundred and

fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting the

guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagratión, to

dinner.

On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow had

been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to victories

that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not believe it,

while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so strange an

event. In the English Club, where all who were distinguished, important,

and well informed foregathered when the news began to arrive in

December, nothing was said about the war and the last battle, as

though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The men who set the tone

in conversation—Count Rostopchín, Prince Yúri Dolgorúkov, Valúev,

Count Markóv, and Prince Vyázemski—did not show themselves at the

club, but met in private houses in intimate circles, and the

Moscovites who took their opinions from others—Ilyá Rostóv among

them—remained for a while without any definite opinion on the subject

of the war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt that something was

wrong and that to discuss the bad news was difficult, and so it was best

to be silent. But after a while, just as a jury comes out of its room,

the bigwigs who guided the club’s opinion reappeared, and everybody

began speaking clearly and definitely. Reasons were found for the

incredible, unheard-of, and impossible event of a Russian defeat,

everything became clear, and in all corners of Moscow the same things

began to be said. These reasons were the treachery of the Austrians, a

defective commissariat, the treachery of the Pole Przebyszéwski and of

the Frenchman Langeron, Kutúzov’s incapacity, and (it was whispered)

the youth and inexperience of the sovereign, who had trusted worthless

and insignificant people. But the army, the Russian army, everyone

declared, was extraordinary and had achieved miracles of valor. The

soldiers, officers, and generals were heroes. But the hero of heroes was

Prince Bagratión, distinguished by his Schön Grabern affair and by

the retreat from Austerlitz, where he alone had withdrawn his column

unbroken and had all day beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous

as his own. What also conduced to Bagratión’s being selected as

Moscow’s hero was the fact that he had no connections in the city

and was a stranger there. In his person, honor was shown to a simple

fighting Russian soldier without connections and intrigues, and to one

who was associated by memories of the Italian campaign with the name of

Suvórov. Moreover, paying such honor to Bagratión was the best way of

expressing disapproval and dislike of Kutúzov.

“Had there been no Bagratión, it would have been necessary to

invent him,” said the wit Shinshín, parodying the words of Voltaire.

Kutúzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers,

calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.

All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorúkov’s saying: “If you go on

modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay,” suggesting

consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and the

words of Rostopchín, that French soldiers have to be incited to battle

by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to show them

that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but that Russian

soldiers only need to be restrained and held back! On all sides, new and

fresh anecdotes were heard of individual examples of heroism shown by

our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a standard, another

had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five cannon singlehanded.

Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know him, as having, when

wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the left, and gone

forward. Of Bolkónski, nothing was said, and only those who knew him

intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a pregnant wife

with his eccentric father.