“A grievance?” Kutuzov asked, frowning slightly.
“This is Dolokhov,” said Prince Andrei.
“Ah!” said Kutuzov. “I hope this lesson will set you straight. Serve well. Our sovereign is merciful. And I won’t forget you, if you prove worthy.”
The blue, clear eyes looked at the commander in chief just as boldly as at the regimental commander, as if tearing by their expression the curtain of convention that had so widely separated the commander in chief from the soldier.
“I ask only one thing, Your Excellency,” he said in his firm, sonorous, unhurried voice. “I ask to be given a chance to wipe out my guilt and prove my devotion to the sovereign and to Russia.”
Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes flashed over his face as when he had turned away from Captain Timokhin. He turned away and winced, as if wishing to express thereby that all that Dolokhov had said to him and all that he could say had long, long been known to him, that it all bored him, and that it was all by no means what was needed. He turned away and made for the coach.
The regiment broke up into companies and dispersed to their assigned quarters not far from Braunau, where they hoped to find footgear, mend their clothes, and get some rest after their hard marching.
“Don’t hold it against me, Prokhor Ignatych!” said the regimental commander, circling around the third company, which was moving to its quarters, and riding up to Captain Timokhin, who was walking at the head of it. The face of the regimental commander, after the happily passed-off review, expressed irrepressible joy. “The tsar’s service…impossible…sometimes one gets snappish on parade…I’m the first to apologize, you know me…He was very grateful!” And he held out his hand to the company commander.
“Mercy, General, I wouldn’t be so bold!” replied the captain, his nose reddening, smiling and revealing with his smile the absence of his two front teeth, knocked out by a rifle butt at Izmail.
“And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won’t forget him, he should rest easy. And tell me, please, I keep forgetting to ask, how is he, how does he behave? And all…”
“He’s very correct in his service, Your Excellency…but his charickter…” said Timokhin.
“What, what about his character?” asked the regimental commander.
“It comes over him, Your Excellency, some days,” said the captain. “He’s clever, and learned, and kind. And then he’s a beast. In Poland he all but killed a Jew, if you want to know…”
“Well, yes, yes,” said the regimental commander, “still one must pity the young fellow in his misfortune. Big connections…So you just…”
“Right, Your Excellency,” said Timokhin, his smile letting it be felt that he understood his superior’s wishes.
“Well, yes, yes.”
The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the ranks and reined in his horse.
“With the first action—epaulettes,” he said to him.
Dolokhov looked, said nothing, and did not change the expression of his mockingly smiling mouth.
“Well, that’s fine,” the regimental commander went on. “The men get a glass of vodka each from me,” he added loudly, so that the soldiers could hear. “I’m grateful to you all! Thank God!” And, going ahead of the company, he rode to the next one.
“Why, he’s really a good man, you can serve with him,” Timokhin said to a subaltern officer who was walking beside him.
“All heart, in a word!…” the subaltern officer said, laughing (the regimental commander’s nickname was “the King of Hearts”).
The happy state of mind of the officers after the review passed itself on to the soldiers. The company walked along merrily. On all sides soldiers’ voices exchanged remarks.
“How come they said Kutuzov was blind in one eye?”
“Hell he’s not! Stone blind…”
“Naw…brother, he’s sharper-eyed than you—the boots and the foot cloths, he took it all in…”
“The way he looked my feet over, dear brother mine…Well! I think…”
“And that other one, the Austriak with him, it’s like he’s all smeared with chalk. White as flour! I s’pose they clean him like ammunition!”
“What about it, Fedeshou!…Did he say when the fighting would begin? You were standing closer. They all said Boonapart himself was stationed in Brunovo.”
“Boonapart stationed there! Lies, you fool! What do you know! It’s the Prussky’s up in arms now. The Austriak’s pacifying him. Soon as they make peace, the war with Boonapart will open up. And he says Boonapart’s in Brunovo! It’s plain you’re a fool, no point listening to you.”
“Devilish billeters! The fifth company’s already tucked into the village, see, they’ll have their kasha boiled, and we’ve still got no place.”
“Give us a biscuit, you devil.”
“And did you give me tobacco yesterday? So there, brother. Well, here, take it, God help you.”
“They could at least call a halt, or else we’ll slog on for three more miles unfed.”
“It was a pretty thing the way the Germans sent us carriages.3 You go riding along, you know: it’s grand!”
“But here, brother, the folk have gone clean wild. There it was all some kind of Poles, all under the Russian crown, but now, brother, it’s gone solid German.”
“Singers, up front!” the captain’s shout was heard.
And some twenty men from various ranks ran to the front of the company. The drummer and lead singer turned to face the singers, waved his arm, and struck up a drawn-out soldiers’ song that began: “It was dawn, the sun was rising…” and ended with the words: “And that, brothers, will our glory be with old man Kamensky…” The song had been composed in Turkey, and was now being sung in Austria, only with one change, that instead of “old man Kamensky,” they put in “old man Kutuzov.”
Having snapped out these last words in soldierly fashion and waved his arms as if throwing something on the ground, the drummer, a lean and handsome soldier of about forty, sternly looked the soldier-singers over and narrowed his eyes. Then, making sure that all eyes were aimed at him, he raised his arms as if carefully lifting some invisible precious object over his head, held it there for a few seconds, and all at once desperately threw it down:
Ah, my porch, my new porch!
“Ah, my new porch…” twenty voices picked up, and a spoon player, despite the weight of his ammunition, nimbly leaped out in front and walked backwards facing the company, moving his shoulders and threatening someone with his spoons. The soldiers swung their arms in time with the song, striding freely along and involuntarily keeping in step. From behind the company came the sound of wheels, the creaking springs, and the tramping of horses. Kutuzov and his suite were returning to town. The commander in chief gave a sign for the men to go on marching freely, and his face and all the faces of his suite expressed pleasure at the sounds of the song, at the sight of the dancing soldier and the merrily and briskly marching soldiers. In the second row of the right flank, where the coach overtook the company, the eye was involuntarily struck by the blue-eyed soldier Dolokhov, who marched especially briskly and gracefully in time with the song and looked at the faces of people passing by with such an expression as if he pitied all those who were not then marching with the company. The hussar cornet from Kutuzov’s suite, who had been mimicking the regimental commander, dropped behind the coach and rode over to Dolokhov.
The hussar cornet Zherkov had belonged for some time to the rowdy company headed by Dolokhov in Petersburg. Abroad, Zherkov had encountered Dolokhov as a soldier, but had found it unnecessary to recognize him. Now, after Kutuzov had talked with the demoted man, he addressed him with the joy of an old friend.
“Friend of my heart, how are you?” he said to the sounds of the song, adjusting the pace of his horse to the pace of the company.