《War And Peace》Book2 CHAPTER II

《War And Peace》　Book2 　CHAPTER II
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

“COMING!” the sentinel shouted at that moment. The general, turning
red, ran to his horse, with trembling hands caught at the stirrup, swung
himself up, settled himself in the saddle, drew out his sword, and with
a pleased and resolute face opened his mouth on one side, in readiness
to shout. The regiment fluttered all over, like a bird preening its
wings, and subsided into stillness.

“Silence!” roared the general, in a soul-quaking voice, expressing at once
gladness on his own account, severity as regards the regiment, and welcome as
regards the approaching commander-in-chief.

A high, blue Vienna coach with several horses was driving at a smart trot,
rumbling on its springs, along the broad unpaved high-road, with trees planted
on each side of it. The general's suite and an escort of Croats galloped after
the coach. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian general in a white uniform, that
looked strange among the black Russian ones. The coach drew up on reaching the
regiment. Kutuzov and the Austrian general were talking of something in low
voices, and Kutuzov smiled slightly as, treading heavily, he put his foot on the
carriage step, exactly as though those two thousand men gazing breathlessly at
him and at their general, did not exist at all.

The word of command rang out, again the regiment quivered with a clanking
sound as it presented arms. In the deathly silence the weak voice of the
commander-in-chief was audible. The regiment roared: “Good health to your Ex ..
lency .. lency .. lency!” And again all was still. At first Kutuzov stood in one
spot, while the regiment moved; then Kutuzov began walking on foot among the
ranks, the white general beside him, followed by his suite.

From the way that the general in command of the regiment saluted the
commander-in-chief, fixing his eyes intently on him, rigidly respectful and
obsequious, from the way in which, craning forward, he followed the generals
through the ranks, with an effort restraining his quivering strut, and darted up
at every word and every gesture of the commander-in-chief,—it was evident that
he performed his duties as a subordinate with even GREater zest than his duties
as a commanding officer. Thanks to the strictness and assiduity of its
commander, the regiment was in excellent form as compared with the others that
had arrived at Braunau at the same time. The sick and the stragglers left behind
only numbered two hundred and seventeen, and everything was in good order except
the soldiers' boots.

Kutuzov walked through the ranks, stopping now and then, and saying a few
friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war, and sometimes to the
soldiers. Looking at their boots, he several times shook his head dejectedly,
and pointed them out to the Austrian general with an expression as much as to
say that he blamed no one for it, but he could not help seeing what a bad state
of things it was. The general in command of the regiment, on every occasion such
as this, ran forward, afraid of missing a single word the commander-in-chief
might utter regarding the regiment. Behind Kutuzov, at such a distance that
every word, even feebly articulated, could be heard, followed his suite,
consisting of some twenty persons. These gentlemen were talking among
themselves, and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the commander-in-chief
walked a handsome adjutant. It was Prince Bolkonsky. Beside him was his comrade
Nesvitsky, a tall staff-officer, excessively stout, with a good-natured,
smiling, handsome face, and moist eyes. Nesvitsky could hardly suppress his
mirth, which was excited by a swarthy officer of hussars walking near him. This
officer, without a smile or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes, was
staring with a serious face at the commanding officer's back, and mimicking
every movement he made. Every time the commanding officer quivered and darted
forward, the officer of hussars quivered and darted forward in precisely the
same way. Nesvitsky laughed, and poked the others to make them look at the
mimic.

Kutuzov walked slowly and listlessly by the thousands of eyes which were
almost rolling out of their sockets in the effort to watch him. On reaching the
third company, he suddenly stopped. The suite, not foreseeing this halt, could
not help pressing up closer to him.

“Ah, Timohin!” said the commander-in-chief, recognising the captain with the
red nose who had got into trouble over the blue overcoat.

One would have thought it impossible to stand more rigidly erect than Timohin
had done when the general in command of the regiment had made his remarks to
him; but at the instant when the commander-in-chief addressed him, the captain
stood with such erect rigidity that it seemed that, were the commander-in-chief
to remain for some time looking at him, the captain could hardly sustain the
ordeal, and for that reason Kutuzov, realising his position, and wishing him
nothing but good, hurriedly turned away. A scarcely perceptible smile passed
over Kutuzov's podgy face, disfigured by the scar of a wound.

“Another old comrade at Ismail!” he said. “A gallant officer! Are you
satisfied with him?” Kutuzov asked of the general in command.

And the general, all unconscious that he was being reflected as in a mirror
in the officer of hussars behind him, quivered, pressed forward, and answered:
“Fully, your most high excellency.”

“We all have our weaknesses,” said Kutuzov, smiling and walking away from
him. “He had a predilection for Bacchus.”

The general in command was afraid that he might be to blame for this, and
made no answer. The officer of hussars at that instant noticed the face of the
captain with the red nose, and the rigidly drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his
face and attitude in such a life-like manner that Nesvitsky could not restrain
his laughter. Kutuzov turned round. The officer could apparently do anything he
liked with his face; at the instant Kutuzov turned round, the officer had time
to get in a grimace before assuming the most serious, respectful, and innocent
expression.

The third company was the last, and Kutuzov seemed pondering, as though
trying to recall something. Prince Andrey stepped forward and said softly in
French: “You told me to remind you of the degraded officer, Dolohov, serving in
the ranks in this regiment.”

“Where is Dolohov?” asked Kutuzov.

Dolohov, attired by now in the GREy overcoat of a private soldier, did not
wait to be called up. The slender figure of the fair-haired soldier, with his
bright blue eyes, stepped out of the line. He went up to the commander-in-chief
and presented arms.

“A complaint to make?” Kutuzov asked with a slight frown.

“This is Dolohov,” said Prince Andrey.

“Ah!” said Kutuzov. “I hope this will be a lesson to you, do your duty
thoroughly. The Emperor is gracious. And I shall not forget you, if you deserve
it.”

The bright blue eyes looked at the commander-in-chief just as impudently as
at the general of his regiment, as though by his expression tearing down the
veil of convention that removed the commander-in-chief so far from the
soldier.

“The only favour I beg of your most high excellency,” he said in his firm,
ringing, deliberate voice, “is to give me a chance to atone for my offence, and
to prove my devotion to his majesty the Emperor, and to Russia.”

Kutuzov turned away. There was a gleam in his eyes of the same smile with
which he had turned away from Captain Timohin. He turned away and frowned, as
though to express that all Dolohov had said to him and all he could say, he had
known long, long ago, that he was sick to death long ago of it, and that it was
not at all what was wanted. He turned away and went towards the coach.

The regiment broke into companies and went towards the quarters assigned them
at no GREat distance from Braunau, where they hoped to find boots and clothes,
and to rest after their hard marches.

“You won't bear me a grudge, Proho Ignatitch?” said the commanding general,
overtaking the third company and riding up to Captain Timohin, who was walking
in front of it. The general's face beamed with a delight he could not suppress
after the successful inspection. “It's in the Tsar's service … can't be helped …
sometimes one has to be a little sharp at inspection. I'm the first to
apologise; you know me.… He was very much pleased.” And he held out his hand to
the captain.

“Upon my word, general, as if I'd make so bold,” answered the captain, his
nose flushing redder. He smiled, and his smile revealed the loss of two front
teeth, knocked out by the butt-end of a gun at Ismail.

“And tell Dolohov that I won't forget him; he can be easy about that. And
tell me, please, what about him, how's he behaving himself … I've been meaning
to inquire…”

“He's very exact in the discharge of his duties, your excellency … but he's a
character …” said Timohin.

“Why, what sort of a character?” asked the general.

“It's different on different days, your excellency,” said the captain; “at
one time he's sensible and well-educated and good-natured. And then he'll be
like a wild beast. In Poland, he all but killed a Jew, if you please.…”

“Well, well,” said the general, “still one must feel for a young man in
trouble. He has GREat connections, you know.… So you …”

“Oh, yes, your excellency,” said Timohin, with a smile that showed he
understood his superior officer's wish in the matter.

“Very well, then, very well.”

The general sought out Dolohov in the ranks and pulled up his horse.

“In the first action you may win your epaulettes,” he said to him.

Dolohov looked round and said nothing. There was no change in the lines of
his ironically-smiling mouth.

“Well, that's all right then,” the general went on. “A glass of brandy to
every man from me,” he added, so that the soldiers could hear. “I thank you all.
God be praised!” And riding round the company, he galloped off to another.

“Well, he's really a good fellow, one can get on very well under him,” said
Timohin to the subaltern officer walking beside him.

“The king of hearts, that's the only word for him,” the subaltern said,
laughing. (The general was nicknamed the king of hearts.)

The cheerful state of mind of the officers after the inspection was shared by
the soldiers. The companies went along merrily. Soldiers' voices could be heard
on all sides chatting away.

“Why, don't they say Kutuzov's blind in one eye?”

“To be sure he is. Quite blind of one eye.”

“Nay … lads, he's more sharp-eyed than you are. See how he looked at our
boots and things.” …

“I say, mate, when he looked at my legs … well, thinks I …”

“And the other was an Austrian with him, that looked as if he'd been chalked
all over. As white as flour. I bet they rub him up as we rub up our guns.”

“I say, Fedeshou … did he say anything as to when the battles are going to
begin? You stood nearer. They did say Bonaparte himself was in Brunovo.”

“Bonaparte! What nonsense the fellow talks! What won't you know next! Now
it's the Prussian that's revolting. The Austrian, do you see, is pacifying him.
When he's quiet, then the war will begin with Bonaparte. And he talks of
Bonaparte's being in Brunovo! It's plain the fellow's a fool. You'd better keep
your ears open.”

“Those devils of quartermasters! … The fifth company's turned into the
village by now, and they're cooking their porridge, and we're not there
yet.”

“Give us a biscuit, old man.”

“And did you give me tobacco yesterday? All right, my lad. Well, well, God be
with you.”

“They might have made a halt, or we'll have to do another four miles with
nothing to eat.”

“I say, it was fine how those Germans gave us carriages. One drove along,
something like.”

“But here, lads, the folks are regularly stripped bare. There it was all
Poles of some sort, all under the Russian crown, but now we've come to the
regular Germans, my boy.”

“Singers to the front,” the captain called. And from the different ranks
about twenty men advanced to the front. The drummer, who was their leader,
turned round facing the chorus and waving his arm, struck up a soldier's song,
beginning: “The sun was scarcely dawning,” and ending with the words: “So, lads,
we'll march to glory with Father Kamensky.” … This song had been composed in
Turkey, and now was sung in Austria, the only change being the substitution of
the words “Father Kutuzov” for “Father Kamensky.”

Here twenty voices caught up the refrain, and the castanet player, in spite
of the weight of his weapon and knapsack, bounded nimbly forward, and walked
backwards facing the company, shaking his shoulders, and seeming to menace some
one with the castanets. The soldiers stepped out in time to the song, swinging
their arms and unconsciously falling into step. Behind the company came the
sound of wheels, the rumble of springs, and the tramp of horses. Kutuzov and his
suite were going back to the town. The commander-in-chief made a sign for the
soldiers to go on freely, and he and all his suite looked as though they took
pleasure in the sound of the singing, and the spectacle of the dancing soldier
and the gaily, smartly marching men. In the second row from the right flank,
beside which the carriage passed, they could not help noticing the blue-eyed
soldier, Dolohov, who marched with a special jauntiness and grace in time to the
song, and looked at the faces of the persons driving by with an expression that
seemed to pity every one who was not at that moment marching in the ranks. The
cornet of hussars, the officer of Kutuzov's suite, who had mimicked the general,
fell back from the carriage and rode up to Dolohov.

The cornet of hussars, Zherkov, had at one time belonged to the fast set in
Petersburg, of which Dolohov had been the leader. Zherkov had met Dolohov abroad
as a common soldier, and had not seen fit to recognise him. But now, after
Kutuzov's conversation with the degraded officer, he addressed him with all the
cordiality of an old friend.

“Friend of my heart, how are you?” he said, through the singing, making his
horse keep pace with the marching soldiers.

“How am I?” Dolohov answered coldly. “As you see.” The lively song gave a
peculiar flavour to the tone of free-and-easy gaiety, with which Zherkov spoke,
and the studied coldness of Dolohov's replies.

“Well, how do you get on with your officers?” asked Zherkov.

“All right; they're good fellows. How did you manage to poke yourself on to
the staff?”

“I was attached; I'm on duty.”

“Is it true, the Austrians have been beaten?” asked Dolohov.

“Devil knows; they say so.”

“I'm glad,” Dolohov made a brief, sharp reply, as was required to fit in with
the tune.

“I say, come round to us some evening; we'll have a game of faro,” said
Zherkov.

“Is money so plentiful among you?”

“Do come.”

“I can't; I've sworn not to. I won't drink or play till I'm promoted.”

“Well, but in the first action …”

“Then we shall see.” Again they paused.

“You come, if you want anything; one can always be of use on the
staff.…”

Dolohov grinned. “Don't trouble yourself. What I want, I'm not going to ask
for; I take it for myself.”

“Oh, well, I only …”

“Well, and I only.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”