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Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian acquaintance
of his in the diplomatic service.
"Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome
visitor," said Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew.
"Franz, put the prince's things in my bedroom," said
he to the servant who was ushering Bolkonski in. "So you're
a messenger of victory, eh? Splendid! And I am sitting here ill,
as you see."
After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat's
luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilibin
settled down comfortably beside the fire.
After his journey and the campaign during which he had been
deprived of all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements
of life, Prince Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious
surroundings such as he had been accustomed to from childhood.
Besides it was pleasant, after his reception by the Austrians,
to speak if not in Russian (for they were speaking French) at
least with a Russian who would, he supposed, share the general
Russian antipathy to the Austrians which was then particularly
strong.
Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same
circle as Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously
in Petersburg, but had become more intimate when Prince Andrew
was in Vienna with Kutuzov. Just as Prince Andrew was a young
man who gave promise of rising high in the military profession,
so to an even greater extent Bilibin gave promise of rising in
his diplomatic career. He still a young man but no longer a young
diplomat, as he had entered the service at the age of sixteen,
had been in Paris and Copenhagen, and now held a rather important
post in Vienna. Both the foreign minister and our ambassador in
Vienna knew him and valued him. He was not one of those many diplomats
who are esteemed because they have certain negative qualities,
avoid doing certain things, and speak French. He was one of those,
who, liking work, knew how to do it, and despite his indolence
would sometimes spend a whole night at his writing table. He worked
well whatever the import of his work. It was not the question
"What for?" but the question "How?" that interested
him. What the diplomatic matter might be he did not care, but
it gave him great pleasure to prepare a circular, memorandum,
or report, skillfully, pointedly, and elegantly. Bilibin's services
were valued not only for what he wrote, but also for his skill
in dealing and conversing with those in the highest spheres.
Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it
could be made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an
opportunity to say something striking and took part in a conversation
only when that was possible. His conversation was always sprinkled
with wittily original, finished phrases of general interest. These
sayings were prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind in a
portable form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society
people might carry them from drawing room to drawing room. And,
in fact, Bilibin's witticisms were hawked about in the Viennese
drawing rooms and often had an influence on matters considered
important.
His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles,
which always looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one's
fingers after a Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed
the principal play of expression on his face. Now his forehead
would pucker into deep folds and his eyebrows were lifted, then
his eyebrows would descend and deep wrinkles would crease his
cheeks. His small, deep-set eyes always twinkled and looked out
straight.
"Well, now tell me about your exploits," said he.
Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning himself,
described the engagement and his reception by the Minister of
War.
"They received me and my news as one receives a dog in
a game of skittles," said he in conclusion.
Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.
"Cependant, mon cher," he remarked, examining his
nails from a distance and puckering the skin above his left eye,
"malgre la haute estime que je professe pour the Orthodox
Russian army, j'avoue que votre victoire n'est pas des plus victorieuses."*
*"But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox
Russian army, I must say that your victory was not particularly
victorious."
He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those
words in Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.
"Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate
Mortier and his one division, and even then Mortier slips through
your fingers! Where's the victory?"
"But seriously," said Prince Andrew, "we can
at any rate say without boasting that it was a little better than
at Ulm..."
"Why didn't you capture one, just one, marshal for us?"
"Because not everything happens as one expects or with
the smoothness of a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to
get at their rear by seven in the morning but had not reached
it by five in the afternoon."
"And why didn't you do it at seven in the morning? You
ought to have been there at seven in the morning," returned
Bilibin with a smile. "You ought to have been there at seven
in the morning."
"Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by
diplomatic methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?"
retorted Prince Andrew in the same tone.
"I know," interrupted Bilibin, "you're thinking
it's very easy to take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire!
That is true, but still why didn't you capture him? So don't be
surprised if not only the Minister of War but also his Most August
Majesty the Emperor and King Francis is not much delighted by
your victory. Even I, a poor secretary of the Russian Embassy,
do not feel any need in token of my joy to give my Franz a thaler,
or let him go with his Liebchen to the Prater... True, we have
no Prater here..."
He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled
his forehead.
"It is now my turn to ask you 'why?' mon cher,"
said Bolkonski. "I confess I do not understand: perhaps there
are diplomatic subtleties here beyond my feeble intelligence,
but I can't make it out. Mack loses a whole army, the Archduke
Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl give no signs of life and make
blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at last gains a real victory,
destroying the spell of the invincibility of the French, and the
Minister of War does not even care to hear the details."
"That's just it, my dear fellow. You see it's hurrah
for the Tsar, for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that
is beautiful, but what do we, I mean the Austrian court, care
for your victories? Bring us nice news of a victory by the Archduke
Karl or Ferdinand (one archduke's as good as another, as you know)
and even if it is only over a fire brigade of Bonaparte's, that
will be another story and we'll fire off some cannon! But this
sort of thing seems done on purpose to vex us. The Archduke Karl
does nothing, the Archduke Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon
Vienna, give up its defense- as much as to say: 'Heaven is with
us, but heaven help you and your capital!' The one general whom
we all loved, Schmidt, you expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate
us on the victory! Admit that more irritating news than yours
could not have been conceived. It's as if it had been done on
purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose you did gain a brilliant
victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a victory, what effect
would that have on the general course of events? It's too late
now when Vienna is occupied by the French army!"
"What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?"
"Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and
the count, our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders."
After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception,
and especially after having dined, Bolkonski felt that he could
not take in the full significance of the words he heard.
"Count Lichtenfels was here this morning," Bilibin
continued, "and showed me a letter in which the parade of
the French in Vienna was fully described: Prince Murat et tout
le tremblement... You see that your victory is not a matter for
great rejoicing and that you can't be received as a savior."
"Really I don't care about that, I don't care at all,"
said Prince Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the
battle before Krems was really of small importance in view of
such events as the fall of Austria's capital. "How is it
Vienna was taken? What of the bridge and its celebrated bridgehead
and Prince Auersperg? We heard reports that Prince Auersperg was
defending Vienna?" he said.
"Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river,
and is defending us- doing it very badly, I think, but still he
is defending us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge
has not yet been taken and I hope it will not be, for it is mined
and orders have been given to blow it up. Otherwise we should
long ago have been in the mountains of Bohemia, and you and your
army would have spent a bad quarter of an hour between two fires."
"But still this does not mean that the campaign is over,"
said Prince Andrew.
"Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too,
but they daren't say so. It will be as I said at the beginning
of the campaign, it won't be your skirmishing at Durrenstein,
or gunpowder at all, that will decide the matter, but those who
devised it," said Bilibin quoting one of his own mots, releasing
the wrinkles on his forehead, and pausing. "The only question
is what will come of the meeting between the Emperor Alexander
and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia joins the Allies,
Austria's hand will be forced and there will be war. If not it
is merely a question of settling where the preliminaries of the
new Campo Formio are to be drawn up."
"What an extraordinary genius!" Prince Andrew suddenly
exclaimed, clenching his small hand and striking the table with
it, "and what luck the man has!"
"Buonaparte?" said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering
up his forehead to indicate that he was about to say something
witty. "Buonaparte?" he repeated, accentuating the u:
"I think, however, now that he lays down laws for Austria
at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l'u!* I shall certainly
adopt an innovation and call him simply Bonaparte!"
*"We must let him off the u!"
"But joking apart," said Prince Andrew, "do
you really think the campaign is over?"
"This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of,
and she is not used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been
fooled in the first place because her provinces have been pillaged-
they say the Holy Russian army loots terribly- her army is destroyed,
her capital taken, and all this for the beaux yeux* of His Sardinian
Majesty. And therefore- this is between ourselves- I instinctively
feel that we are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations
with France and projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately."
*Fine eyes.
"Impossible!" cried Prince Andrew. "That would
be too base."
"If we live we shall see," replied Bilibin, his
face again becoming smooth as a sign that the conversation was
at an end.
When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay
down in a clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant
pillows, he felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings
was far, far away from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria's
treachery, Bonaparte's new triumph, tomorrow's levee and parade,
and the audience with the Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.
He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading,
of musketry and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill
his ears, and now again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers
were descending the hill, the French were firing, and he felt
his heart palpitating as he rode forward beside Schmidt with the
bullets merrily whistling all around, and he experienced tenfold
the joy of living, as he had not done since childhood.
He woke up...
"Yes, that all happened!" he said, and, smiling
happily to himself like a child, he fell into a deep, youthful
slumber.
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