“Your Excellency, it’s Dolokhov, who was reduced…” the captain said softly.
“What, he’s been reduced to a field marshal, is it, or to a common soldier? If it’s a common soldier, then he should be dressed in the proper uniform like everybody else.”
“Your Excellency, you yourself gave him permission for the march.”
“Permission? Permission? You young people are always that way,” said the regimental commander, cooling down a little. “Permission? Say something to you, and you…” The regimental commander paused. “Say something to you, and you…What?” he said, getting irritated again. “Kindly dress your men properly…”
And, having glanced at the adjutant, the regimental commander walked with his bouncing gait towards the regiment. It was clear that he liked his own irritation and that he wanted to walk the length of the regiment and find more pretexts for his wrath. Having snapped at one officer for an unpolished insignia, and another for an unevenness in one rank, he came to the third company.
“Ho-o-ow’s that you’re standing? Where’s your leg? Where’s your leg?” the regimental commander shouted with an expression of suffering in his voice, still five men away from Dolokhov, who was wearing a bluish greatcoat.
Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent leg and looked the general directly in the face with his light and insolent gaze.
“Why a blue greatcoat? Away!…Sergeant major! Have him changed…the dir…” He did not have time to finish.
“General, I am duty-bound to obey orders, but I am not duty-bound to put up with…” Dolokhov said hastily.
“No talking at attention!…No talking, no talking!…”
“Not duty-bound to put up with insults,” Dolokhov finished loudly and resoundingly.
The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general said nothing, angrily pulling down on his tight sash.
“Kindly change, I ask you,” he said, walking away.
II
“He’s coming!” the signalman shouted just then.
The regimental commander, turning red, ran to his horse, took the stirrup in his trembling hands, threw his body over, straightened up, drew his sword, and, with a happy, resolute face, opening his mouth askew, prepared to shout. The regiment fluttered up briefly, like a bird preening itself, and grew still.
“Te-n-n-n-HUT!” shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shattering voice, overjoyed for himself, strict in regard to the regiment, and welcoming in regard to his approaching superior.
Down the wide, tree-lined, unpaved main road, rumbling slightly on its springs, a high, light-blue Viennese coach-and-six came driving at a quick canter. Behind the coach galloped the suite and a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian general in a white uniform, strange amidst the black Russian ones. The coach drew up by the regiment. Kutuzov and the Austrian general conversed quietly about something, and Kutuzov smiled slightly, at the same time stepping down heavily from the footboard, as if these two thousand men staring at him and at the regimental commander with bated breath did not exist.
A shout of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, jingling, as it presented arms. In the dead silence, the weak voice of the commander in chief was heard. The regiment barked: “Long live Your Excellen-cellen-cellency!” And again everything grew still. At first Kutuzov stood in place while the regiment moved; then Kutuzov, with the white general beside him, on foot, followed by his suite, started walking along the ranks.
By the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief, fastening his eyes on him, stretching and drawing himself up; by the way he walked along the ranks behind the generals, his body leaning forward, barely controlling his bouncing movement; by the way he jumped at each word and movement of the commander in chief—one could see that he fulfilled his duties as a subordinate with still greater pleasure than his duties as a superior. Owing to the regimental commander’s strictness and zeal, the regiment was in excellent condition compared with others that had come to Braunau at the same time. The stragglers and sick amounted to only two hundred and seventeen men. And everything was in order, except the footgear.
Kutuzov walked along the ranks, stopping every once in a while and saying a few affectionate words to the officers he knew from the Turkish war, and sometimes to soldiers as well. Looking at the footgear, he several times shook his head sadly and pointed it out to the Austrian general with such an expression as though, while not blaming anyone for it, he could not help seeing how bad it was. The regimental commander ran ahead each time, afraid to miss a word of what the commander in chief said about the regiment. Behind Kutuzov, at a distance from which every faintly uttered word could be heard, walked some twenty men of his suite. The gentlemen of the suite talked among themselves and occasionally laughed. Closest behind the commander in chief walked a handsome officer. This was Prince Bolkonsky. Beside him walked his comrade Nesvitsky, a tall staff officer, extremely fat, with a kind, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes. Nesvitsky could barely hold back his laughter, provoked by a swarthy hussar officer who was walking near him. The hussar officer, without smiling, without changing the expression of his fixed gaze, was staring with a serious face at the regimental commander’s back and mimicking his every movement. Each time the regimental commander bounced and leaned forward, the hussar officer bounced and leaned forward in the same, in exactly the same way. Nesvitsky laughed and nudged the others, urging them to look at the funnyman.
Kutuzov walked slowly and indolently past the thousands of eyes that were popping from their sockets, following the superior. Coming up to the third company, he suddenly stopped. His suite, not foreseeing this stop, inadvertently ran into him.
“Ah, Timokhin!” said the commander in chief, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had suffered on account of the blue greatcoat.
It would seem impossible to draw oneself up more than Timokhin had drawn himself up when the regimental commander reprimanded him. But the moment the commander in chief addressed him, the captain drew himself up so much that it seemed, if the commander in chief were to look at him a little longer, the captain would be unable to stand it; and therefore Kutuzov, evidently understanding his situation, and wishing the captain, on the contrary, nothing but good, hastened to turn away. A barely noticeable smile passed over Kutuzov’s puffy face, disfigured by a wound.
“Another Izmail comrade,”2 he said. “A brave officer! Are you pleased with him?” Kutuzov asked the regimental commander.
And the regimental commander, reflected as in a mirror, invisibly to himself, in the hussar officer, bounced, came forward, and replied:
“Very pleased, Your Excellency.”
“We all have our weaknesses,” said Kutuzov, smiling and moving away from him. “His was a devotion to Bacchus.”
The regimental commander was afraid that he might be blamed for that and made no reply. Just then the officer noticed the face of the captain with the red nose and drawn-in stomach and mimicked his face and pose so perfectly that Nesvitsky could not keep from laughing. Kutuzov turned around. It was clear that the officer could control his face at wilclass="underline" the moment Kutuzov turned around, the officer managed to make a scowl and then assume a most serious, deferential, and innocent expression.
The third company was the last, and Kutuzov fell to thinking, evidently recalling something. Prince Andrei stepped from among the suite and said quietly in French:
“You asked me to remind you about the demoted officer Dolokhov in this regiment.”
“Where’s this Dolokhov?” asked Kutuzov.
Dolokhov, now changed into a gray soldier’s greatcoat, did not wait to be called out. The trim figure of the fair-haired soldier with clear blue eyes stepped from the line. He went up to the commander in chief and presented arms.