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On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov was
welcomed by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their
darling Nikolenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive,
and polite young man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant
of hussars, a good dancer, and one of the best matches in the
city.
The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money
enough that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and
so Nicholas, acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding
breeches of the latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow,
and boots of the latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and
small silver spurs, passed his time very gaily. After a short
period of adapting himself to the old conditions of life, Nicholas
found it very pleasant to be at home again. He felt that he had
grown up and matured very much. His despair at failing in a Scripture
examination, his borrowing money from Gavril to pay a sleigh driver,
his kissing Sonya on the sly- he now recalled all this as childishness
he had left immeasurably behind. Now he was a lieutenant of hussars,
in a jacket laced with silver, and wearing the Cross of St. George,
awarded to soldiers for bravery in action, and in the company
of well-known, elderly, and respected racing men was training
a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a lady on one of the
boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led the mazurka at
the Arkharovs' ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal Kamenski,
visited the English Club, and was on intimate terms with a colonel
of forty to whom Denisov had introduced
His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow.
But still, as he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing
him, he often spoke about him and about his love for him, letting
it be understood that he had not told all and that there was something
in his feelings for the Emperor not everyone could understand,
and with his whole soul he shared the adoration then common in
Moscow for the Emperor, who was spoken of as the "angel incarnate."
During Rostov's short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the
army, he did not draw closer to Sonya, but rather drifted away
from her. She was very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply
in love with him, but he was at the period of youth when there
seems so much to do that there is no time for that sort of thing
and a young man fears to bind himself and prizes his freedom which
he needs for so many other things. When he thought of Sonya, during
this stay in Moscow, he said to himself, "Ah, there will
be, and there are, many more such girls somewhere whom I do not
yet know. There will be time enough to think about love when I
want to, but now I have no time." Besides, it seemed to him
that the society of women was rather derogatory to his manhood.
He went to balls and into ladies' society with an affectation
of doing so against his will. The races, the English Club, sprees
with Denisov, and visits to a certain house- that was another
matter and quite the thing for a dashing young hussar!
At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was very
busy arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration at the English
Club.
The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown,
giving orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktist,
the Club's head cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries,
veal, and fish for this dinner. The count had been a member and
on the committee of the Club from the day it was founded. To him
the Club entrusted the arrangement of the festival in honor of
Bagration, for few men knew so well how to arrange a feast on
an open-handed, hospitable scale, and still fewer men would be
so well able and willing to make up out of their own resources
what might be needed for the success of the fete. The club cook
and the steward listened to the count's orders with pleased faces,
for they knew that under no other management could they so easily
extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner costing several
thousand rubles.
"Well then, mind and have cocks' comb in the turtle soup,
you know!"
"Shall we have three cold dishes then?" asked the
cook.
The count considered.
"We can't have less- yes, three... the mayonnaise, that's
one," said he, bending down a finger.
"Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked
the steward.
"Yes, it can't be helped if they won't take less. Ah,
dear me! I was forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah, goodness
gracious!" he clutched at his head. "Who is going to
get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh, Dmitri! Gallop off to our Moscow
estate," he said to the factotum who appeared at his call.
"Hurry off and tell Maksim, the gardener, to set the serfs
to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must be brought
here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred pots here
on Friday."
Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his
"little countess" to have a rest, but remembering something
else of importance, he returned again, called back the cook and
the club steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep
and the clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young
count, handsome, rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently
rested and made sleeker by his easy life in Moscow, entered the
room.
"Ah, my boy, my head's in a whirl!" said the old
man with a smile, as if he felt a little confused before his son.
"Now, if you would only help a bit! I must have singers too.
I shall have my own orchestra, but shouldn't we get the gypsy
singers as well? You military men like that sort of thing."
"Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself
less before the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now,"
said his son with a smile.
The old count pretended to be angry.
"Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!"
And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and respectful
expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the father
and son.
"What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?"
said he. "Laughing at us old fellows!"
"That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to
eat a good dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's
not their business!
"That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and
gaily seizing his son by both hands, he cried, "Now I've
got you, so take the sleigh and pair at once, and go to Bezukhob's,
and tell him 'Count Ilya has sent you to ask for strawberries
and fresh pineapples.' We can't get them from anyone else. He's
not there himself, so you'll have to go in and ask the princesses;
and from there go on to the Rasgulyay- the coachman Ipatka knows-
and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who danced at Count Orlov's,
you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and bring him along to
me."
"And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?"
asked Nicholas, laughing. "Dear, dear!..."
At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the businesslike,
preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never left her face,
Anna Mikhaylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon the count
in his dressing gown every day, he invariably became confused
and begged her to excuse his costume.
"No matter at all, my dear count," she said, meekly
closing her eyes. "But I'll go to Bezukhov's myself. Pierre
has arrived, and now we shall get anything we want from his hothouses.
I have to see him in any case. He has forwarded me a letter from
Boris. Thank God, Boris is now on the staff."
The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna's taking upon
herself one of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage
for her.
"Tell Bezukhov to come. I'll put his name down. Is his
wife with him?" he asked.
Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness
was depicted on her face.
"Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate," she
said. "If what we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little
we dreamed of such a thing when we were rejoicing at his happiness!
And such a lofty angelic soul as young Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him
from my heart, and shall try to give him what consolation I can."
"Wh-what is the matter?" asked both the young and
old Rostov.
Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.
"Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna's son," she said in a mysterious
whisper, "has compromised her completely, they say. Pierre
took him up, invited him to his house in Petersburg, and now...
she has come here and that daredevil after her!" said Anna
Mikhaylovna, wishing to show her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary
intonations and a half smile betraying her sympathy for the "daredevil,"
as she called Dolokhov. "They say Pierre is quite broken
by his misfortune."
"Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the Club-
it will all blow over. It will be a tremendous banquet."
Next day, the third of March, soon after one o'clock, two
hundred and fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests
were awaiting the guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign,
Prince Bagration, to dinner.
On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz,
Moscow had been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so
used to victories that on receiving news of the defeat some would
simply not believe it, while others sought some extraordinary
explanation of so strange an event. In the English Club, where
all who were distinguished, important, and well informed forgathered
when the news began to arrive in December, nothing was said about
the war and the last battle, as though all were in a conspiracy
of silence. The men who set the tone in conversation- Count Rostopchin,
Prince Yuri Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemski-
did not show themselves at the Club, but met in private houses
in intimate circles, and the Moscovites who took their opinions
from others- Ilya Rostov among them- remained for a while without
any definite opinion on the subject of the war and without leaders.
The Moscovites felt that something was wrong and that to discuss
the bad news was difficult, and so it was best to be silent. But
after a while, just as a jury comes out of its room, the bigwigs
who guided the Club's opinion reappeared, and everybody began
speaking clearly and definitely. Reasons were found for the incredible,
unheard-of, and impossible event of a Russian defeat, everything
became clear, and in all corners of Moscow the same things began
to be said. These reasons were the treachery of the Austrians,
a defective commissariat, the treachery of the Pole Przebyszewski
and of the Frenchman Langeron, Kutuzov's incapacity, and (it was
whispered) the youth and inexperience of the sovereign, who had
trusted worthless and insignificant people. But the army, the
Russian army, everyone declared, was extraordinary and had achieved
miracles of valor.The soldiers, officers, and generals were heroes.
But the hero of heroes was Prince Bagration, distinguished by
his Schon Grabern affair and by the retreat from Austerlitz, where
he alone had withdrawn his column unbroken and had all day beaten
back an enemy force twice as numerous as his own. What also conduced
to Bagration's being selected as Moscow's hero was the fact that
he had no connections in the city and was a stranger there. In
his person, honor was shown to a simple fighting Russian soldier
without connections and intrigues, and to one who was associated
by memories of the Italian campaign with the name of Suvorov.
Moreover, paying such honor to Bagration was the best way of expressing
disapproval and dislike of Kutuzov.
"Had there been no Bagration, it would have been necessary
to invent him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words
of Voltaire. Kutuzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him
in whispers, calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.
All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov's saying: "If you
go on modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay,"
suggesting consolation for our defeat by the memory of former
victories; and the words of Rostopchin, that French soldiers have
to be incited to battle by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical
arguments to show them that it is more dangerous to run away than
to advance, but that Russian soldiers only need to be restrained
and held back! On all sides, new and fresh anecdotes were heard
of individual examples of heroism shown by our officers and men
at Austerlitz. One had saved a standard, another had killed five
Frenchmen, a third had loaded five cannon singlehanded. Berg was
mentioned, by those who did not know him, as having, when wounded
in the right hand, taken his sword in the left, and gone forward.
Of Bolkonski, nothing was said, and only those who knew him intimately
regretted that he had died so young, leaving a pregnant wife with
his eccentric father.
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