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That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War,
Bolkonski set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would
find it and fearing to be captured by the French on the way to
Krems.
In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and
the heavy baggage was already being dispatched to Olmutz. Near
Hetzelsdorf Prince Andrew struck the high road along which the
Russian army was moving with great haste and in the greatest disorder.
The road was so obstructed with carts that it was impossible to
get by in a carriage. Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack
from a Cossack commander, and hungry and weary, making his way
past the baggage wagons, rode in search of the commander in chief
and of his own luggage. Very sinister reports of the position
of the army reached him as he went along, and the appearance of
the troops in their disorderly flight confirmed these rumors.
"Cette armee russe que l'or de l'Angleterre a transportee
des extremites de l'univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver le
meme sort- (le sort de l'armee d'Ulm)."* He remembered these
words in Bonaparte's address to his army at the beginning of the
campaign, and they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of
his hero, a feeling of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. "And
should there be nothing left but to die?" he thought. "Well,
if need be, I shall do it no worse than others."
*"That Russian army which has been brought from the ends
of the earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same
fate- (the fate of the army at Ulm)."
He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of detachments,
carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and vehicles
of all kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy road,
three and sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and before,
as far as ear could reach, there were the rattle of wheels, the
creaking of carts and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the
crack of whips, shouts, the urging of horses, and the swearing
of soldiers, orderlies, and officers. All along the sides of the
road fallen horses were to be seen, some flayed, some not, and
broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers sat waiting for
something, and again soldiers straggling from their companies,
crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or returned
from them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At each
ascent or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the
din of shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep
in mud pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs
slipped, traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting.
The officers directing the march rode backward and forward between
the carts. Their voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar
and one saw by their faces that they despaired of the possibility
of checking this disorder.
"Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army," thought
Bolkonski, recalling Bilibin's words.
Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode
up to a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse
vehicle, evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available
materials and looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet,
and a caleche. A soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in
shawls sat behind the apron under the leather hood of the vehicle.
Prince Andrew rode up and was just putting his question to a soldier
when his attention was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the
woman in the vehicle. An officer in charge of transport was beating
the soldier who was driving the woman's vehicle for trying to
get ahead of others, and the strokes of his whip fell on the apron
of the equipage. The woman screamed piercingly. Seeing Prince
Andrew she leaned out from behind the apron and, waving her thin
arms from under the woolen shawl, cried:
"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven's
sake... Protect me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the
doctor of the Seventh Chasseurs.... They won't let us pass, we
are left behind and have lost our people..."
"I'll flatten you into a pancake!" shouted the angry
officer to the soldier. "Turn back with your slut!"
"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?"
screamed the doctor's wife.
"Kindly let this cart pass. Don't you see it's a woman?"
said Prince Andrew riding up to the officer.
The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again
to the soldier. "I'll teach you to push on!... Back!"
"Let them pass, I tell you!" repeated Prince Andrew,
compressing his lips.
"And who are you?" cried the officer, turning on
him with tipsy rage, "who are you? Are you in command here?
Eh? I am commander here, not you! Go back or I'll flatten you
into a pancake," repeated he. This expression evidently pleased
him.
"That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp,"
came a voice from behind.
Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless,
tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw
that his championship of the doctor's wife in her queer trap might
expose him to what he dreaded more than anything in the world-
to ridicule; but his instinct urged him on. Before the officer
finished his sentence Prince Andrew, his face distorted with fury,
rode up to him and raised his riding whip.
"Kind...ly let- them- pass!"
The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.
"It's all the fault of these fellows on the staff that
there's this disorder," he muttered. "Do as you like."
Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from
the doctor's wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling
with a sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating
scene he galloped on to the village where he was told that the
commander in chief was.
On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest
house, intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and
try to sort out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused
his mind. "This is a mob of scoundrels and not an army,"
he was thinking as he went up to the window of the first house,
when a familiar voice called him by name.
He turned round. Nesvitski's handsome face looked out of the
little window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he chewed something,
and flourishing his arm, called him to enter.
"Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don't you hear? Eh? Come quick..."
he shouted.
Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and another
adjutant having something to eat. They hastily turned round to
him asking if he had any news. On their familiar faces he read
agitation and alarm. This was particularly noticeable on Nesvitski's
usually laughing countenance.
"Where is the commander in chief?" asked Bolkonski.
"Here, in that house," answered the adjutant.
"Well, is it true that it's peace and capitulation?"
asked Nesvitski.
"I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it
was all I could do to get here."
"And we, my dear boy! It's terrible! I was wrong to laugh
at Mack, we're getting it still worse," said Nesvitski. "But
sit down and have something to eat."
"You won't be able to find either your baggage or anything
else now, Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is,"
said the other adjutant.
"Where are headquarters?"
"We are to spend the night in Znaim."
"Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses,"
said Nesvitski. "They've made up splendid packs for me- fit
to cross the Bohemian mountains with. It's a bad lookout, old
fellow! But what's the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver
like that," he added, noticing that Prince Andrew winced
as at an electric shock.
"It's nothing," replied Prince Andrew.
He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor's
wife and the convoy officer.
"What is the commander in chief doing here?" he
asked.
"I can't make out at all," said Nesvitski.
"Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable,
abominable, quite abominable!" said Prince Andrew, and he
went off to the house where the commander in chief was.
Passing by Kutuzov's carriage and the exhausted saddle horses
of his suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together,
Prince Andrew entered the passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told,
was in the house with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother
was the Austrian general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage
little Kozlovski was squatting on his heels in front of a clerk.
The clerk, with cuffs turned up, was hastily writing at a tub
turned bottom upwards. Kozlovski's face looked worn- he too had
evidently not slept all night. He glanced at Prince Andrew and
did not even nod to him.
"Second line... have you written it?" he continued
dictating to the clerk. "The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..."
"One can't write so fast, your honor," said the
clerk, glancing angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlovski.
Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov's voice, excited
and dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice.
From the sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlovski
looked at him, the disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk,
the fact that the clerk and Kozlovski were squatting on the floor
by a tub so near to the commander in chief, and from the noisy
laughter of the Cossacks holding the horses near the window, Prince
Andrew felt that something important and disastrous was about
to happen.
He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions.
"Immediately, Prince," said Kozlovski. "Dispositions
for Bagration."
"What about capitulation?"
"Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle."
Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were
heard. Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the
door opened, and Kutuzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared
in the doorway. Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov
but the expression of the commander in chief's one sound eye showed
him to be so preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be
oblivious of his presence. He looked straight at his adjutant's
face without recognizing him.
"Well, have you finished?" said he to Kozlovski.
"One moment, your excellency."
Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a
firm, impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander
in chief.
"I have the honor to present myself," repeated Prince
Andrew rather loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope.
Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!"
Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration.
"Well, good-by, Prince," said he to Bagration. "My
blessing, and may Christ be with you in your great endeavor!"
His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With
his left hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with his right,
on which he wore a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him
with a gesture evidently habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but
Bagration kissed him on the neck instead.
"Christ be with you!" Kutuzov repeated and went
toward his carriage. "Get in with me," said he to Bolkonski.
"Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow
me to remain with Prince Bagration's detachment."
"Get in," said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski
still delayed, he added: "I need good officers myself, need
them myself!"
They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in
silence.
"There is still much, much before us," he said,
as if with an old man's penetration he understood all that was
passing in Bolkonski's mind. "If a tenth part of his detachment
returns I shall thank God," he added as if speaking to himself.
Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov's face only a foot distant
from him and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams
of the scar near his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced
his skull, and the empty eye socket. "Yes, he has a right
to speak so calmly of those men's death," thought Bolkonski.
"That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment,"
he said.
Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he
had been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later,
gently swaying on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned
to Prince Andrew. There was not a trace of agitation on his face.
With delicate irony he questioned Prince Andrew about the details
of his interview with the Emperor, about the remarks he had heard
at court concerning the Krems affair, and about some ladies they
both knew.
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