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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 naïve conviction of young men who are enjoying themselves, that other men's
wives are created for their special benefit, Rostov never left this lady's side,
and treated her husband in a friendly way, almost as though there were a private
understanding between them, as though they knew without speaking of it how
capitally they, that is, how Nikolay and the wife, would get on. The husband did
not, however, appear to share this conviction, and tried to take a gloomy tone
with Rostov. But Nikolay's good-humoured naïveté was so limitless that at times
the husband could not help being drawn into his gay humour. Towards the end of
the evening, however, as the wife's face grew more flushed and animated, the
husband's grew steadily more melancholy and stolid, as though they had a given
allowance of liveliness between them, and as the wife's increased, the husband's
dwindled.
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