War And Peace: Book 12 - CHAPTER IV

作者: Leo Tolstoy

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Author: Leo Tolstoy

WHILE HALF of Russia was conquered, and the inhabitants of Moscow were

fleeing to remote provinces, and one levy of militia after another was being

raised for the defence of the country, we, not living at the time, cannot help

imagining that all the people in Russia, great and small alike, were engaged in

doing nothing else but making sacrifices, saving their country, or weeping over

its downfall. The tales and descriptions of that period without exception tell

us of nothing but the self-sacrifice, the patriotism, the despair, the grief,

and the heroism of the Russians. In reality, it was not at all like that. It

seems so to us, because we see out of the past only the general historical

interest of that period, and we do not see all the personal human interests of

the men of that time. And yet in reality these personal interests of the

immediate present are of so much greater importance than public interests, that

they prevent the public interest from ever being felt—from being noticed at all,

indeed. The majority of the people of that period took no heed of the general

progress of public affairs, and were only influenced by their immediate personal

interests. And those very people played the most useful part in the work of the

time.

Those who were striving to grasp the general course of events, and trying by

self-sacrifice and heroism to take a hand in it, were the most useless members

of society; they saw everything upside down, and all that they did with the best

intentions turned out to be useless folly, like Pierre's regiment, and

Mamonov's, that spent their time pillaging the Russian villages, like the lint

scraped by the ladies, that never reached the wounded, and so on. Even those

who, being fond of talking on intellectual subjects and expressing their

feelings, discussed the position of Russia, unconsciously imported into their

talk a shade of hypocrisy or falsity or else of useless fault-finding and

bitterness against persons, whom they blamed for what could be nobody's

fault.

In historical events we see more plainly than ever the law that forbids us to

taste of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It is only unselfconscious activity

that bears fruit, and the man who plays a part in an historical drama never

understands its significance. If he strives to comprehend it, he is stricken

with barrenness

The significance of the drama taking place in Russia at that time was the

less easy to grasp, the closer the share a man was taking in it. In Petersburg,

and in the provinces remote from Moscow, ladies and gentlemen in volunteer

uniforms bewailed the fate of Russia and the ancient capital, and talked of

self-sacrifice, and so on. But in the army, which had retreated behind Moscow,

men scarcely talked or thought at all about Moscow, and, gazing at the burning

city, no one swore to be avenged on the French, but every one was thinking of

the next quarter's pay due to him, of the next halting-place, of Matryoshka the

canteen-woman, and so on.

Nikolay Rostov, without any idea of self-sacrifice, simply because the war

had happened to break out before he left the service, took an immediate and

continuous part in the defence of his country, and consequently he looked upon

what was happening in Russia without despair or gloomy prognostications. If he

had been asked what he thought of the present position of Russia, he would have

said that it was not his business to think about it, that that was what Kutuzov

and the rest of them were for, but that he had heard that the regiments were

being filled up to their full complements, and that they must therefore be going

to fight for a good time longer, and that under the present circumstances he

might pretty easily obtain the command of a regiment within a couple of

years.

Since this was his point of view, it was with no regret at taking no part in

the approaching battle, but with the greatest satisfaction—which he did not

conceal, and his comrades fully understood—that he received the news of his

appointment to go to Voronezh to purchase remounts for his division.

A few days before the battle of Borodino, Nikolay received the sums of money

and official warrants required, and, sending some hussars on before him, he

drove with posting-horses to Voronezh.

Only one who has had the same experience—that is, has spent several months

continuously in the atmosphere of an army in the field—can imagine the delight

Nikolay felt when he got out of the region overspread by the troops with their

foraging parties, trains of provisions, and hospitals; when he saw no more

soldiers, army waggons, and filthy traces of the camp, but villages of peasants

and peasant women, gentlemen's country houses, fields with grazing oxen, and

station-houses and sleepy overseers, he rejoiced as though he were seeing it all

for the first time. What in particular remained for a long while a wonder and a

joy to him was the sight of women, young and healthy, without dozens of officers

hanging about every one of them; and women, too, who were pleased and flattered

at an officer's cracking jokes with them.

In the happiest frame of mind, Nikolay reached the hotel at Voronezh at

night, ordered everything of which he had so long been deprived in the army, and

next day, after shaving with special care and putting on the full-dress uniform

he had not worn for so long past, he drove off to present himself to the

authorities.

The commander of the militia of the district was a civilian general, an old

gentleman, who evidently found amusement in his military duties and rank. He

gave Nikolay a brusque reception (supposing that this was the military manner),

and cross-examining him with an important air, as though he had a right to do

so, he expressed his approval and disapproval, as though called upon to give his

verdict on the management of the war. Nikolay was in such high spirits that this

only amused him.

From the commander of militia, he went to the governor's. The governor was a

brisk little man, very affable and unpretentious. He mentioned to Nikolay the

stud-farms, where he might obtain horses, recommended him to a horse-dealer in

the town, and a gentleman living twenty versts from the town, who had the best

horses, and promised him every assistance.

“You are Count Ilya Andreitch's son? My wife was a great friend of your

mamma's. We receive on Thursdays: to-day is Thursday, pray come in, quite

without ceremony,” said the governor, as he took leave of him.

Nikolay took a posting carriage, and making his quartermaster get in beside

him, galloped straight off from the governor's to the gentleman with the stud of

fine horses twenty versts away.

During the early days of his stay in Voronezh, everything seemed easy and

pleasant to Nikolay, and, as is always the case, when a man is himself in a

happy frame of mind, everything went well and prospered with him.

The country gentleman turned out to be an old cavalry officer, a bachelor, a

great horse-fancier, a sportsman, and the owner of a smoking-room, of

hundred-year-old herb-brandy, of some old Hungarian wine, and of superb

horses.

In a couple of words, Nikolay had bought for six thousand roubles seventeen

stallions, all perfect examples of their several breeds (as he said), as show

specimens of his remounts. After dining and drinking a glass or so too much of

the Hungarian wine, Rostov, exchanging kisses with the country gentleman, with

whom he was already on the friendliest terms, galloped back over the most

atrociously bad road in the happiest frame of mind, continually urging the

driver on, so that he might be in time for the soirée at the

governor's.

After dressing, scenting himself, and douching his head with cold water,

Nikolay made his appearance at the governor's, a little late, but with the

phrase, “Better late than never,” ready on the tip of his tongue.

It was not a ball, and nothing had been said about dancing; but every one

knew that Katerina Petrovna would play waltzes and écossaises on the clavichord,

and that there would be dancing, and every one reckoning on it, had come dressed

for a ball.

Provincial life in the year 1812 went on exactly the same as always, the only

difference being that the provincial towns were livelier owing to the presence

of many wealthy families from Moscow, that, as in everything going on at that

time in Russia, there was perceptible in the gaiety a certain devil-may-care,

desperate recklessness, and also that the small talk indispensable between

people was now not about the weather and common acquaintances, but about Moscow

and the army and Napoleon.

The gathering at the governor's consisted of the best society in

Voronezh.

There were a great many ladies, among them several Moscow acquaintances of

Nikolay's; but among the men there was no one who could be compared with the

cavalier of St. George, the gallant hussar, the good-natured, well-bred Count

Rostov. Among the men there was an Italian prisoner—an officer of the French

army; and Nikolay felt that the presence of this prisoner gave an added lustre

to him—the Russian hero. He was, as it were, a trophy of victory. Nikolay felt

this, and it seemed to him as though every one looked at the Italian in the same

light, and he treated the foreign officer with gracious dignity and

reserve.

As soon as Nikolay came in in his full-dress uniform of an officer of

hussars, diffusing a fragrance of scent and wine about him, and said himself and

heard several times said to him, the words, “Better late than never,” people

clustered round him. All eyes were turned on him, and he felt at once that he

had stepped into a position that just suited him in a provincial town—a position

always agreeable, but now after his long privation of such gratifications,

intoxicatingly delightful—that of a universal favourite. Not only at the

posting-stations, at the taverns, and in the smoking-room of the horse-breeding

gentleman, had he found servant-girls flattered by his attention, but here, at

the governor's assembly, there were (so it seemed to Nikolay) an inexhaustible

multitude of young married ladies and pretty girls, who were only waiting with

impatience for him to notice them. The ladies and the young girls flirted with

him, and the old people began even from this first evening bestirring themselves

to try and get this gallant young rake of an hussar married and settled down.

Among the latter was the governor's wife herself, who received Rostov as though

he were a near kinsman, and called him “Nikolay.”

Katerina Petrovna did in fact proceed to play waltzes and écossaises, and

dancing began, in which Nikolay fascinated the company more than ever by his

elegance. He surprised every one indeed by his peculiarly free and easy style in

dancing. Nikolay was a little surprised himself at his own style of dancing at

that soirée. He had never danced in that manner at Moscow, and would

indeed have regarded such an extremely free and easy manner of dancing as not

correct, as bad style; but here he felt it incumbent on him to astonish them all

by something extraordinary, something that they would be sure to take for the

usual thing in the capital, though new to them in the provinces.

All the evening Nikolay paid the most marked attention to a blue-eyed, plump,

and pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials. With

the na

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