Chapter 7

ON THE 12TH of November, Kutuzov’s army, encamped near Olmütz, was preparing to be reviewed on the following day by the two Emperors—the Russian and the Austrian. The guards, who had only just arrived from Russia, spent a night fifteen versts from Olmütz, and at ten o’clock the next morning went straight to be reviewed in the Olmütz plain.

That day Nikolay Rostov had received a note from Boris informing him that the Ismailovsky regiment was quartered for the night fifteen versts from Olmütz, and that he wanted to see him to give him a letter and some money. The money Rostov particularly needed just now, when the troops after active service were stationed near Olmütz, and the camp swarmed with well-equipped canteen keepers and Austrian Jews, offering all kinds of attractions. The Pavlograd hussars had been keeping up a round of gaiety, fêtes in honour of the promotions received in the field, and excursions to Olmütz to a certain Caroline la Hongroise, who had recently opened a restaurant there with girls as waiters. Rostov had just been celebrating his commission as a cornet; he had bought Denisov’s horse Bedouin, too, and was in debt all round to his comrades and the canteen keepers. On getting the note from Boris, Rostov rode into Olmütz with a comrade, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and rode on alone to the guards’ camp to find the companion of his childhood. Rostov had not yet got his uniform. He was wearing a shabby ensign’s jacket with a private soldier’s cross, equally shabby riding-trousers lined with worn leather, and an officer’s sabre with a sword knot. The horse he was riding was of the Don breed, bought of a Cossack on the march. A crushed hussar cap was stuck jauntily back on one side of his head. As he rode up to the camp of the Ismailovsky regiment, he was thinking of how he would impress Boris and all his comrades in the guards by looking so thoroughly a hussar who has been under fire and roughed it at the front.

The guards had made their march as though it were a pleasure excursion, priding themselves on their smartness and discipline. They moved by short stages, their knapsacks were carried in the transport waggons, and at every halt the Austrian government provided the officers with excellent dinners. The regiments made their entry into towns and their exit from them with bands playing, and, according to the grand duke’s order, the whole march had (a point on which the guards prided themselves) been performed by the soldiers in step, the officers too walking in their proper places. Boris had throughout the march walked and stayed with Berg, who was by this time a captain. Berg, who had received his company on the march, had succeeded in gaining the confidence of his superior officers by his conscientiousness and accuracy, and had established his financial position on a very satisfactory basis. Boris had during the same period made the acquaintance of many persons likely to be of use to him, and by means of a letter of recommendation brought from Pierre, had made the acquaintance of Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, through whom he had hopes of obtaining a post on the staff of the commander-in-chief. Berg and Boris, who had rested well after the previous day’s march, were sitting smartly and neatly dressed, in the clean quarters assigned them, playing draughts at a round table. Berg was holding between his knees a smoking pipe. Boris, with his characteristic nicety, was building the draughts into a pyramid with his delicate, white fingers, while he waited for Berg to play. He was watching his partner’s face, obviously thinking of the game, his attention concentrated, as it always was, on what he was engaged in.

“Well, how are you going to get out of that?” he said.

“What are you crying about, mamma?” said Vera. “From all he writes, we ought to rejoice instead of crying.”

“What are you crying about, mamma?” said Vera. “From all he writes, we ought to rejoice instead of crying.”

This was perfectly true, but the count and the countess and Natasha all looked at her reproachfully. “And who is it that she takes after!” thought the countess.

Nikolushka’s letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were considered worthy of hearing it had to come in to the countess, who did not let it go out of her hands. The tutors went in, the nurses, Mitenka, and several acquaintances, and the countess read the letter every time with fresh enjoyment and every time she discovered from it new virtues in her Nikolushka. How strange, extraordinary, and joyful it was to her to think that her son—the little son, whose tiny limbs had faintly stirred within her twenty years ago, for whose sake she had so often quarrelled with the count, who would spoil him, the little son, who had first learnt to say grusha, and then had learnt to say baba—that that son was now in a foreign land, in strange surroundings, a manly warrior, alone without help or guidance, doing there his proper manly work. All the world-wide experience of ages, proving that children do imperceptibly from the cradle grow up into men, did not exist for the countess. The growth of her son had been for her at every stage of his growth just as extraordinary as though millions of millions of men had not grown up in the same way. Just as, twenty years before, she could not believe that the little creature that was lying somewhere under her heart, would one day cry and suck her breast and learn to talk, now she could not believe that the same little creature could be that strong, brave man, that paragon of sons and of men that, judging by this letter, he was now.

“What style, how charmingly he describes everything!” she said, reading over the descriptions in the letter. “And what soul! Of himself not a word … not a word! A great deal about a man called Denisov, though he was himself, I dare say, braver than any one. He doesn’t write a word about his sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! How he thinks of every one! No one forgotten. I always, always said, when he was no more than that high, I always used to say …”

For over a week they were hard at work preparing a letter to Nikolushka from all the household, writing out rough copies, copying out fair copies. With the watchful care of the countess, and the fussy solicitude of the count, all sorts of necessary things were got together, and money, too, for the equipment and the uniform of the young officer. Anna Mihalovna, practical woman, had succeeded in obtaining special patronage for herself and her son in the army, that even extended to their correspondence. She had opportunities of sending her letters to the Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovitch, who was in command of the guards. The Rostovs assumed that “The Russian Guards Abroad,” was quite a sufficiently definite address, and that if a letter reached the grand duke in command of the guards, there was no reason why it should not reach the Pavlograd regiment, who were presumably somewhere in the same vicinity. And so it was decided to send off their letters and money by the special messenger of the grand duke to Boris, and Boris would have to forward them to Nikolushka. There were letters from the count, the countess, Petya, Vera, Natasha, and Sonya, a sum of six thousand roubles for his equipment, and various other things which the count was sending to his son.

“And you won’t be ashamed to write to him?”

“And you won’t be ashamed to write to him?”

Sonya smiled.

“No.”

“And I should be ashamed to write to Boris, and I’m not going to write.”

“But why should you be ashamed?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I feel awkward, ashamed.”

“I know why she’d be ashamed,” said Petya, offended at Natasha’s previous remark, “because she fell in love with that fat fellow in spectacles” (this was how Petya used to describe his namesake, the new Count Bezuhov); “and now she’s in love with that singing fellow” (Petya meant Natasha’s Italian singing-master), “that’s why she’s ashamed.”

“Petya, you’re a stupid,” said Natasha.

“No stupider than you, ma’am,” said nine-year-old Petya, exactly as though he had been an elderly brigadier.

The countess had been prepared by Anna Mihalovna’s hints during dinner. On returning to her room she had sat down in a low chair with her eyes fixed on the miniature of her son, painted on the lid of her snuff-box, and the tears started into her eyes. Anna Mihalovna, with the letter, approached the countess’s room on tiptoe, and stood still at the door.

“Don’t come in,” she said to the old count, who was following her; “later,” and she closed the door after her. The count put his ear to the keyhole, and listened.

At first he heard the sound of indifferent talk, then Anna Mihalovna’s voice alone, uttering a long speech, then a shriek, then silence, then both voices talking at once with joyful intonations, then there were steps, and Anna Mihalovna opened the door. Her face wore the look of pride of an operator who has performed a difficult amputation, and invites the public in to appreciate his skill.

“It is done,” she said to the count triumphantly, motioning him to the countess, who was holding in one hand the snuff-box with the portrait, in the other the letter, and pressing her lips first to one and then to the other. On seeing the count, she held out her arms to him, embraced his bald head, and looked again over the bald head at the letter and the portrait, and in order again to press them to her lips, slightly repelled the bald head from her. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya came into the room, and the reading of the letter began. The letter briefly described the march and the two battles in which Nikolushka had taken part, and the receiving of his commission, and said that he kissed the hands of his mamma and papa, begging their blessing, and sent kisses to Vera, Natasha, and Petya. He sent greetings, too, to Monsieur Schelling and Madame Schoss, and his old nurse, and begged them to kiss for him his darling Sonya, whom he still loved and thought of the same as ever. On hearing this, Sonya blushed till the tears came into her eyes. And unable to stand the eyes fixed upon her, she ran into the big hall, ran about with a flushed and smiling face, whirled round and round and ducked down, making her skirts into a balloon. The countess was crying.

� ( r m y� � � ne society, on the appearance of Anatole on the scene, all the three women in Prince Nikolay Andreivitch’s house felt alike that their life had not been real life till then. Their powers of thought, of feeling, of observation, were instantly redoubled. It seemed as though their life had till then been passed in darkness, and was all at once lighted up by a new brightness that was full of significance.

“Nothing, my dear.”

Anna Mihalovna sat down by his side, with her own handkerchief wiped the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then dried her own tears, read the letter, soothed the count, and decided that before dinner and before tea she would prepare the countess; and after tea, with God’s help, tell her all. During dinner Anna Mihalovna talked of the rumours from the war, of dear Nikolay, inquired twice when his last letter had been received, though she knew perfectly well, and observed that they might well be getting a letter from him to-day. Every time that the countess began to be uneasy under these hints and looked in trepidation from the count to Anna Mihalovna, the latter turned the conversation in the most unnoticeable way to insignificant subjects. Natasha, who was of all the family the one most gifted with the faculty of catching the shades of intonations, of glances, and expressions, had been on the alert from the beginning of dinner, and was certain that there was some secret between her father and Anna Mihalovna, and that it had something to do with her brother, and that Anna Mihalovna was paving the way for it. Natasha knew how easily upset her mother was by any references to news from Nikolushka, and in spite of all her recklessness she did not venture at dinner to ask a question. But she was too much excited to eat any dinner and kept wriggling about on her chair, regardless of the protests of her governess. After dinner she rushed headlong to overtake Anna Mihalovna, and in the divan-room dashed at her and flung herself on her neck: “Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is.”

“Nothing, my dear.”

“No, darling, sweet, precious peach, I won’t leave off; I know you know something.”

Anna Mihalovna shook her head. “You are sharp, my child!” she said.

“A letter from Nikolinka? I’m sure of it!” cried Natasha, reading an affirmative answer on the face of Anna Mihalovna.

“But, for God’s sake, be more careful; you know what a shock it may be to your mamma.”

“I will be, I will, but tell me about it. You won’t? Well, then, I’ll run and tell her this minute.”

Anna Mihalovna gave Natasha a brief account of what was in the letter, on condition that she would not tell a soul.

“On my word of honour,” said Natasha, crossing herself, “I won’t tell any one,” and she ran at once to Sonya. “Nikolinka … wounded … a letter …” she proclaimed in gleeful triumph

“Nikolinka!” was all Sonya could articulate, instantly turning white. Natasha seeing the effect of the news of her brother’s wound on Sonya, for the first time felt the painful aspect of the news.

She rushed at Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry. “A little wounded, but promoted to be an officer; he’s all right now, he writes himself,” she said through her tears.

Chapter 6

“Prince, what I have said is all that is in my heart. I thank you for the honour you do me, but I shall never be your son’s wife.”

“Well, then it’s all over, my dear fellow. Very glad to have seen you, very glad to have seen you. Go to your room, princess; go along now,” said the old prince. “Very, very glad to have seen you,” he repeated, embracing Prince Vassily.

“My vocation is a different one,” Princess Marya was thinking to herself; “my vocation is to be happy in the happiness of others, in the happiness of love and self-sacrifice. And at any cost I will make poor Amélie happy. She loves him so passionately. She is so passionately penitent. I will do everything to bring about their marriage. If he is not rich I will give her means, I will beg my father, I will beg Andrey. I shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so unhappy, a stranger, solitary and helpless! And, my God, how passionately she must love him to be able to forget herself so. Perhaps I might have done the same!…” thought Princess Marya.

IT was a long while since the Rostovs had had news of their Nikolushka. But in the middle of the winter a letter was handed to Count Rostov, on the envelope of which he recognised his son’s handwriting. On receiving the letter the count, in alarm and in haste, ran on tiptoe to his room, trying to escape notice, shut himself in and read the letter. Anna Mihalovna had learned (as she always did learn all that passed in the house) that he had received a letter, and treading softly, she went in to the count and found him with the letter in his hand, sobbing and laughing at once. Anna Mihalovna, though her fortunes had been looking up, was still an inmate of the Rostov household.

“My dear friend?” Anna Mihalovna brought out in a voice of melancholy inquiry, equally ready for sympathy in any direction. The count sobbed more violently

“Nikolushka … letter … wounded … he would … my dear … wounded … my darling boy … the little countess … promoted … thank God … how are we to tell the little countess?”

"Food and lodging," said the man.

This inn had for a landlord a certain Jacquin Labarre, a man of consideration in the town on account of his relationship to another Labarre, who kept the inn of the Three Dauphins in Grenoble, and had served in the Guides.

　　At the time of the Emperor's landing, many rumors had circulated throughout the country with regard to this inn of the Three Dauphins.

　　It was said that General Bertrand, disguised as a carter, had made frequent trips thither in the month of January, and that he had distributed crosses of honor to the soldiers and handfuls of gold to the citizens.

　　The truth is, that when the Emperor entered Grenoble he had refused to install himself at the hotel of the prefecture; he had thanked the mayor, saying, "I am going to the house of a brave man of my acquaintance"; and he had betaken himself to the Three Dauphins.

　　This glory of the Labarre of the Three Dauphins was reflected upon the Labarre of the Cross of Colbas, at a distance of five and twenty leagues. It was said of him in the town, "That is the cousin of the man of Grenoble."

　　The man bent his steps towards this inn, which was the best in the country-side. He entered the kitchen, which opened on a level with the street.

　　All the stoves were lighted; a huge fire blazed gayly in the fireplace.

　　The host, who was also the chief cook, was going from one stew-pan to another, very busily superintending an excellent dinner designed for the wagoners, whose loud talking, conversation, and laughter were audible from an adjoining apartment. Any one who has travelled knows that there is no one who indulges in better cheer than wagoners.

　　A fat marmot, flanked by white partridges and heather-cocks, was turning on a long spit before the fire; on the stove, two huge carps from Lake Lauzet and a trout from Lake Alloz were cooking.

　　The host, hearing the door open and seeing a newcomer enter, said, without raising his eyes from his stoves:--

　　"What do you wish, sir?"

　　"Food and lodging," said the man.

　　"Nothing easier," replied the host.

　　At that moment he turned his head, took in the traveller's appearance with a single glance, and added, "By paying for it."

　　The man drew a large leather purse from the pocket of his blouse, and answered, "I have money."

　　"In that case, we are at your service," said the host.

　　The man put his purse back in his pocket, removed his knapsack from his back, put it on the ground near the door, retained his stick in his hand, and seated himself on a low stool close to the fire. D---- is in the mountains.

　　The evenings are cold there in October.

This man must have been walking all day. He seemed very much fatigued.

THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING

　　Early in the month of October, 1815, about an hour before sunset, a man who was travelling on foot entered the little town of D---- The few inhabitants who were at their windows or on their thresholds at the moment stared at this traveller with a sort of uneasiness. It was difficult to encounter a wayfarer of more wretched appearance. He was a man of medium stature, thickset and robust, in the prime of life.

　　He might have been forty-six or forty-eight years old. A cap with a drooping leather visor partly concealed his face, burned and tanned by sun and wind, and dripping with perspiration. His shirt of coarse yellow linen, fastened at the neck by a small silver anchor, permitted a view of his hairy breast:

　　he had a cravat twisted into a string; trousers of blue drilling, worn and threadbare, white on one knee and torn on the other; an old gray, tattered blouse, patched on one of the elbows with a bit of green cloth sewed on with twine; a tightly packed soldier knapsack, well buckled and perfectly new, on his back; an enormous, knotty stick in his hand; iron-shod shoes on his stockingless feet; a shaved head and a long beard.

　　The sweat, the heat, the journey on foot, the dust, added I know not what sordid quality to this dilapidated whole.

　　His hair was closely cut, yet bristling, for it had begun to grow a little, and did not seem to have been cut for some time.

　　No one knew him.

　　He was evidently only a chance passer-by. Whence came he?

　　From the south; from the seashore, perhaps, for he made his entrance into D---- by the same street which, seven months previously, had witnessed the passage of the Emperor Napoleon on his way from Cannes to Paris.

　　This man must have been walking all day. He seemed very much fatigued.

　　Some women of the ancient market town which is situated below the city had seen him pause beneath the trees of the boulevard Gassendi, and drink at the fountain which stands at the end of the promenade.

　　He must have been very thirsty: for the children who followed him saw him stop again for a drink, two hundred paces further on, at the fountain in the market-place.

　　On arriving at the corner of the Rue Poichevert, he turned to the left, and directed his steps toward the town-hall. He entered, then came out a quarter of an hour later.

　　A gendarme was seated near the door, on the stone bench which General Drouot had mounted on the 4th of March to read to the frightened throng of the inhabitants of D---- the proclamation of the Gulf Juan.

　　The man pulled off his cap and humbly saluted the gendarme.

　　The gendarme, without replying to his salute, stared attentively at him, followed him for a while with his eyes, and then entered the town-hall.

　　There then existed at D---- a fine inn at the sign of the Cross of Colbas.

Universal misery was his mine.

Human meditation has no limits.

　　At his own risk and peril, it analyzes and digs deep into its own bedazzlement.

　　One might almost say, that by a sort of splendid reaction, it with it dazzles nature; the mysterious world which surrounds us renders back what it has received; it is probable that the contemplators are contemplated.

However that may be, there are on earth men who--are they men?-- perceive distinctly at the verge of the horizons of revery the heights of the absolute, and who have the terrible vision of the infinite mountain.

　　Monseigneur Welcome was one of these men; Monseigneur Welcome was not a genius.

　　He would have feared those sublimities whence some very great men even, like Swedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into insanity.

　　Certainly, these powerful reveries have their moral utility, and by these arduous paths one approaches to ideal perfection.

　　As for him, he took the path which shortens,-- the Gospel's.

　　He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of Elijah's mantle; he projected no ray of future upon the dark groundswell of events; he did not see to condense in flame the light of things; he had nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician about him. This humble soul loved, and that was all.

　　That he carried prayer to the pitch of a superhuman aspiration is probable:

　　but one can no more pray too much than one can love too much; and if it is a heresy to pray beyond the texts, Saint Theresa and Saint Jerome would be heretics.

　　He inclined towards all that groans and all that expiates. The universe appeared to him like an immense malady; everywhere he felt fever, everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and, without seeking to solve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound. The terrible spectacle of created things developed tenderness in him; he was occupied only in finding for himself, and in inspiring others with the best way to compassionate and relieve.

　　That which exists was for this good and rare priest a permanent subject of sadness which sought consolation.

　　There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extraction of pity.

　　Universal misery was his mine.

　　The sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness.

　　Love each other; he declared this to be complete, desired nothing further, and that was the whole of his doctrine.

　　One day, that man who believed himself to be a "philosopher," the senator who has already been alluded to, said to the Bishop:

　　"Just survey the spectacle of the world: all war against all; the strongest has the most wit.

　　Your love each other is nonsense."--"Well," replied Monseigneur Welcome, without contesting the point, "if it is nonsense, the soul should shut itself up in it, as the pearl in the oyster."

　　Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics--all those profundities which converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness; destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent _I_, the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyes flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the infinite to cause stars to blaze forth there.

　　Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior of mysterious questions without scrutinizing them, and without troubling his own mind with them, and who cherished in his own soul a grave respect for darkness. 

No systems; many works.

Does not this comprehend all, in fact? and what is there left to desire beyond it? A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream. At one's feet that which can be cultivated and plucked; over head that which one can study and meditate upon:

　　some flowers on earth, and all the stars in the sky.

BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN

CHAPTER XIV

　　WHAT HE THOUGHT

　　 One last word.

　　Since this sort of details might, particularly at the present moment, and to use an expression now in fashion, give to the Bishop of D---- a certain "pantheistical" physiognomy, and induce the belief, either to his credit or discredit, that he entertained one of those personal philosophies which are peculiar to our century, which sometimes spring up in solitary spirits, and there take on a form and grow until they usurp the place of religion, we insist upon it, that not one of those persons who knew Monseigneur Welcome would have thought himself authorized to think anything of the sort. That which enlightened this man was his heart.

　　His wisdom was made of the light which comes from there.

　　No systems; many works.

　　Abstruse speculations contain vertigo; no, there is nothing to indicate that he risked his mind in apocalypses. The apostle may be daring, but the bishop must be timid.

　　He would probably have felt a scruple at sounding too far in advance certain problems which are, in a manner, reserved for terrible great minds. There is a sacred horror beneath the porches of the enigma; those gloomy openings stand yawning there, but something tells you, you, a passer-by in life, that you must not enter. Woe to him who penetrates thither!

　　Geniuses in the impenetrable depths of abstraction and pure speculation, situated, so to speak, above all dogmas, propose their ideas to God.

　　Their prayer audaciously offers discussion. Their adoration interrogates.

　　This is direct religion, which is full of anxiety and responsibility for him who attempts its steep cliffs.

That, it will be recalled,

Why not mention these almost divinely childish sayings of kindness? Puerile they may be; but these sublime puerilities were peculiar to Saint Francis d'Assisi and of Marcus Aurelius.

　　One day he sprained his ankle in his effort to avoid stepping on an ant. Thus lived this just man.

　　Sometimes he fell asleep in his garden, and then there was nothing more venerable possible.

　　Monseigneur Bienvenu had formerly been, if the stories anent his youth, and even in regard to his manhood, were to be believed, a passionate, and, possibly, a violent man.

　　His universal suavity was less an instinct of nature than the result of a grand conviction which had filtered into his heart through the medium of life, and had trickled there slowly, thought by thought; for, in a character, as in a rock, there may exist apertures made by drops of water. These hollows are uneffaceable; these formations are indestructible.

　　In 1815, as we think we have already said, he reached his seventy-fifth birthday, but he did not appear to be more than sixty.

　　He was not tall; he was rather plump; and, in order to combat this tendency, he was fond of taking long strolls on foot; his step was firm, and his form was but slightly bent, a detail from which we do not pretend to draw any conclusion.

　　Gregory XVI., at the age of eighty, held himself erect and smiling, which did not prevent him from being a bad bishop.

　　Monseigneur Welcome had what the people term a "fine head," but so amiable was he that they forgot that it was fine.

　　When he conversed with that infantile gayety which was one of his charms, and of which we have already spoken, people felt at their ease with him, and joy seemed to radiate from his whole person.

　　His fresh and ruddy complexion, his very white teeth, all of which he had preserved, and which were displayed by his smile, gave him that open and easy air which cause the remark to be made of a man, "He's a good fellow"; and of an old man, "He is a fine man."

　　That, it will be recalled, was the effect which he produced upon Napoleon.

　　On the first encounter, and to one who saw him for the first time, he was nothing, in fact, but a fine man.

　　But if one remained near him for a few hours, and beheld him in the least degree pensive, the fine man became gradually transfigured, and took on some imposing quality, I know not what; his broad and serious brow, rendered august by his white locks, became august also by virtue of meditation; majesty radiated from his goodness, though his goodness ceased not to be radiant; one experienced something of the emotion which one would feel on beholding a smiling angel slowly unfold his wings, without ceasing to smile.

　　Respect, an unutterable respect, penetrated you by degrees and mounted to your heart, and one felt that one had before him one of those strong, thoroughly tried, and indulgent souls where thought is so grand that it can no longer be anything but gentle.