"Unquestionably, that must have struck him and proved to him that not everybody had left, that some of the nobility had stayed with their children."
"Precisely, precisely! He wanted to attract the boyars! 14When he cast his eagle's gaze on me, my eyes must have flashed in response to him. 'Voilà un garçon bien éveillé! Qui est ton père?'*I answered at once, almost breathless with excitement: 'A general who died on the battlefields of his fatherland.' 'Le fils d'un boyard et d'un brave par-dessus le marché! J'aime les boyards. M'aimes-tu, petit?'+ To this quick question I replied as quickly: 'The Russian heart can discern a great man even in the enemy of his fatherland!' That is, as a matter of fact, I don't remember whether I literally expressed myself that way ... I was a child . . . but that must have been the sense of it! Napoleon was struck, he pondered and said to his suite: 'I like this boy's pride! But if all Russians think as this child does, then . . .' He didn't finish and went into the palace. I at once mingled with his suite and ran after him. In the suite they already stepped back for me and looked on me as a favorite. But all that merely flashed by ... I remember only that, on going into the first hall, the emperor suddenly stopped before the portrait of the empress Catherine, looked at it thoughtfully for a long time, and finally said: 'That was a great woman!'—and walked on. Two days later everybody already knew me in the palace and in the Kremlin and called me ' le petit boyard.'I went home only to sleep. At home they nearly lost their minds. Two days after that Napoleon's chamber-page, the Baron de Bazancourt, 15died from the hardships of the campaign. Napoleon remembered about me; I was taken, brought there without any explanations, the uniform of the deceased, a boy of about twelve, was tried on me, and when they brought me before the emperor in the uniform, and he nodded his head at me, they announced to me that I had been granted a favor and made his majesty's chamber-page. I was glad. I actually felt a
* There's a sprightly lad! Who is your father?
+ The son of a boyar and of a brave man to boot! I like the boyars. Do you like me, little boy?
warm sympathy for him, and had for a long time . . . well, and besides, you'll agree, there was the splendid uniform, which means a lot for a child ... I went about in a dark green tailcoat, with long and narrow tails, gold buttons, red piping on the gold-embroidered sleeves, a high, stiff, open collar, embroidered with gold, and embroidered coattails; white, close-fitting chamois breeches, a white silk waistcoat, silk stockings, and buckled shoes . . . or, during the emperor's promenades on horseback, if I was in his suite, high top-boots. Though the situation was not brilliant, and there was already a presentiment of great calamities, etiquette was observed as far as possible, and the more punctually the stronger the presentiment of those calamities."
"Yes, of course . . ." murmured the prince, looking almost lost, "your memoirs would be . . . extremely interesting."
The general, of course, was repeating what he had told Lebedev the day before, and therefore repeating it very smoothly; but here again he mistrustfully glanced sidelong at the prince.
"My memoirs," he spoke with redoubled pride, "to write my memoirs? That doesn't tempt me, Prince! If you wish, my memoirs have already been written, but . . . but they are lying in my desk. Let them, when earth has closed my eyes, let them appear then and, undoubtedly, be translated into other languages, not for their literary merit, no, but for the importance of the tremendous facts of which I was an evident witness, though a child; but all the more so: as a child I penetrated into the very intimate, so to speak, bedroom of 'the great man'! At night I heard the groaning of this 'giant in misfortune,' he could not be ashamed of groaning and weeping before a child, though I already understood that the cause of his suffering was the silence of the emperor Alexander."
"Yes, he did write letters . . . with offers of peace . . ." the prince agreed timidly.
"As a matter of fact, we do not know precisely with what offers he wrote, but he wrote every day, every hour, letter after letter! He was terribly worried. Once, during the night, when we were alone, I rushed to him in tears (oh, yes, I loved him!): 'Ask forgiveness, ask forgiveness of the emperor Alexander!' I cried to him. That is, I ought to have said: 'Make peace with the emperor Alexander, but, being a child, I naively spoke my whole mind. 'Oh, my little one!' he answered—he was pacing up and down the room—'oh, my little one!' It was as if he didn't understand then that I was ten years old, and he even liked talking with me. 'Oh, my little one, I
am ready to kiss the feet of the emperor Alexander, but as for the Prussian king, as for the Austrian emperor, oh, they have my eternal hatred, and . . . finally . . . you don't understand anything about politics!' It was as if he suddenly remembered whom he was talking with, and he fell silent, but his eyes shot fire for a long time. Well, if I were to describe all these facts—and I was witness to greater facts—if I were to publish them now, and all these critics, all these literary vanities, all these jealousies, parties, and . . . no, sir, I humbly thank you!"
"Concerning parties, your observation is, of course, correct, and I agree with you," the prince replied quietly, after a short silence. "Quite recently I also read a book by Charras 16about the Waterloo campaign. The book is obviously a serious one, and the specialists maintain that it is written extremely knowledgeably. But a joy in Napoleon's humiliation shows through on every page, and if it were possible to dispute even any little sign of talent in Napoleon's other campaigns, it seems Charras would be extremely glad of it; and that is not a good thing in such a serious work, because it's a party spirit. Were you kept very busy then by your service to the . . . emperor?"
The general was in raptures. The prince's observation, by its seriousness and simple-heartedness, dispelled the last remnants of his mistrust.
"Charras! Oh, I was indignant myself! I wrote to him at the time, but ... as a matter of fact, I don't remember now . . . You ask whether my service kept me busy? Oh, no! They called me a chamber-page, but even then I did not regard it as serious. What's more, Napoleon very soon lost all hope of drawing any Russians to him, and, of course, would have forgotten about me as well, having drawn me to him for political reasons, had it not been . . . had it not been for his personal love for me, I say it boldly now. My heart also drew me to him. My service was not a required thing; I had to come to the palace occasionally and . . . accompany the emperor during his promenades on horseback, and that's all. I was a decent horseman. He used to go out for a ride before dinner; in his suite usually there was Davout, myself, the mameluke Rustan. . ."
"Constant," 17the prince suddenly came out with for some reason.
"N-no, Constant wasn't there then; he had gone then with a letter ... to the empress Josephine; 18but instead of him there were
two orderlies, several Polish uhlans . . . well, that was all the suite, except for the generals, naturally, and some marshals, whom Napoleon took along to examine the terrain, the disposition of the army, to discuss . . . Most often it was Davout who accompanied him, I remember it as if it were yesterday: an enormous, corpulent, cool-headed man in spectacles, with a strange gaze. The emperor most often discussed things with him. He valued his thoughts. I remember them holding a special council for several days; Davout used to come in the morning and in the evening, and often they even argued; in the end, it seemed that Napoleon began to agree. The two of them were in the study, I was the third, almost unnoticed by them. Suddenly Napoleon's gaze happens to fall on me, a strange thought flashes in his eyes. 'Child!' he suddenly says to me, 'what do you think: if I embrace Orthodoxy and free your slaves, will the Russians follow me or not?' 'Never!' I cried in indignation. Napoleon was struck. 'In this child's eyes flashing with patriotism,' he said, 'I have read the opinion of the whole Russian people. Enough, Davout! It's all fantasies! Tell me your other plan.' "