“No!”
“I saw him myself.”
“What? Saw Mack alive? with all his arms and legs?”
“On the march! On the march! Give him a bottle for such news. How did you wind up here?”
“I’ve been sent back to the regiment again on account of this devil, this Mack. An Austrian general made a complaint. I congratulated him on Mack’s arrival…What’s with you, Rostov, come straight from the bathhouse?”
“We’ve had a mess brewing here, brother, for two days now.”
A regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by Zherkov. The orders were to set out the next day.
“On the march, gentlemen!”
“Well, thank God, we’ve sat enough.”
VI
Kutuzov fell back towards Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges over the rivers Inn (in Braunau) and Traun (in Linz). On the twenty-third of October, the Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday Russian transport, artillery, and troop columns were strung out through the town of Enns, on both sides of the bridge.
The day was warm, autumnal, and rainy. The vast prospect that opened out from the height where the Russian batteries stood, defending the bridge, was now suddenly covered by a muslin curtain of slanting rain, then suddenly widened out, and in the sunlight objects became visible and clear in the distance, as if freshly varnished. At one’s feet one could see the little town with its white houses and red roofs, the cathedral, and the bridge, on both sides of which streamed crowding masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube one could see boats and an island, and a castle with a park, surrounded by the waters of the Enns falling into the Danube; one could see the left bank of the Danube, rocky and covered with pine forest, with a mysterious distance of green treetops and bluish gorges. One could see the towers of a convent looming up from the pine forest with its wild and untouched look, and far away on a hilltop, on the other side of the Enns, one could see the mounted patrols of the enemy.
Amidst the cannons on the height, the general in charge of the rear guard stood out in front with an officer of the suite, examining the area through a spyglass. Slightly behind him on the trail of a cannon sat Nesvitsky, sent to the rear guard by the commander in chief. The Cossack who accompanied Nesvitsky handed him a bag and a flask, and Nesvitsky treated the officers to savory little pies and real Doppelkümmel. The officers joyfully surrounded him, some kneeling, some sitting Turkish fashion on the wet grass.
“Yes, the Austrian prince who built a castle here was no fool. A fine place. Why aren’t you eating, gentlemen?” said Nesvitsky.
“I humbly thank you, Prince,” replied one of the officers, taking pleasure in conversing with such an important staff official. “An excellent place. We passed just by the park, saw two deer, and such a wonderful house!”
“Look, Prince,” said another, who very much wanted to take one more little pie, but was embarrassed, and who therefore pretended to be surveying the area, “look, our infantrymen have already gotten in there. Over there in the little meadow beyond the village, three of them are dragging something. They’ll ransack that castle,” he said with obvious approval.
“They will, they will,” said Nesvitsky. “No, but what I’d like,” he added, chewing a little pie with his handsome, moist mouth, “is to climb in there.”
He pointed to the convent with its towers, visible on the hilltop. He smiled, his eyes narrowed and lit up.
“Wouldn’t that be nice, gentlemen?”
The officers laughed.
“At least to put a fright into those little nuns. There are some Italian girls, young ones, they say. Really, I’d give five years of my life!”
“They must be bored, too,” an officer, a bolder one, said laughing.
Meanwhile, the officer of the suite, who was standing in front, was pointing something out to the general; the general was looking through the glass.
“Well, that’s it, that’s it,” the general said angrily, taking the glass from his eye and shrugging his shoulders, “that’s it, they’re going to fire on the crossing. And what are they dawdling for?”
On the other side the naked eye could make out the enemy and his battery, from which a puff of milk-white smoke appeared. The smoke was followed by the sound of a distant shot, and it could be seen how our troops speeded up at the crossing.
Nesvitsky, huffing, got up and, smiling, went over to the general.
“Wouldn’t Your Excellency like a bite to eat?” he said.
“A bad business,” said the general, not answering him, “our men have been dawdling.”
“Shouldn’t I ride over, Your Excellency?” said Nesvitsky.
“Yes, please do,” said the general, repeating what had already been ordered in detail, “and tell the hussars that they are to cross last and set fire to the bridge as I said, and inspect the flammable material while still on the bridge.”
“Very good, sir,” replied Nesvitsky.
He called the Cossack with the horse, told him to put the bag and flask away, and lightly swung his heavy body into the saddle.
“I’ll stop by those nuns, really,” he said to the officers, who were looking at him smilingly, and rode down the hill along a winding path.
“Well, let’s give it a try, Captain, see how far it will carry!” said the general, turning to the artillerist. “Have some fun out of boredom.”
“Crew, to your pieces!” the officer commanded, and in a minute the artillery crew ran merrily from their campfires and loaded up.
“One!” came the command.
Number one leaped back briskly. A deafening metallic sound rang out, and a shell flew whistling over the heads of all our men at the foot of the hill and, falling far short of the enemy, showed by a puff of smoke the place where it hit and burst.
The faces of the soldiers and officers cheered up at this sound; everybody stood up and began watching the movements of our troops below, visible as on the palm of the hand, and further away the movements of the advancing enemy. Just then the sun came all the way out from behind the clouds, and the beautiful sound of the solitary shot and the shining of the bright sun merged into one cheerful and merry impression.
VII
Two enemy cannonballs had already gone flying over the bridge, and there was a crush on the bridge itself. In the middle of the bridge, dismounted from his horse, his fat body pressed to the railing, stood Prince Nesvitsky. He looked back laughingly at his Cossack, who stood a few paces behind him holding the two horses by the bridle. The moment Prince Nesvitsky tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed him back and pressed him to the railing again, and there was nothing left for him but to smile.
“You there, brother!” the Cossack said to a supply soldier with a cart, who was pushing through the infantrymen crowded right against his wheels and horses, “you there! As if you can’t wait: look, the general needs to pass.”
But the supply soldier, paying no heed the denomination of general, shouted at the soldiers who blocked his way:
“Hey, countrymen! keep to the left, hold up!”
But the countrymen, pressed shoulder to shoulder, catching on their bayonets and never pausing, moved across the bridge in a solid mass. Looking down over the railing, Prince Nesvitsky saw the swift, noisy, low waves of the Enns, which, merging, rippling, and swirling around the pilings of the bridge, drove on one after the other. Looking at the bridge, he saw the same monotonous living waves of soldiers, shoulder braids, shakos with dustcovers, packs, bayonets, long muskets, and under the shakos faces with wide cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and carefree, weary faces, and feet moving over the sticky mud that covered the planks of the bridge. Occasionally, amidst the monotonous waves of soldiers, like a spray of white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer pushed his way through, in a cape, with his physiognomy distinct from the soldiers’ occasionally, like a chip of wood swirled along by the river, a dismounted hussar, an orderly, or a local inhabitant was borne across the bridge by the waves of infantry; occasionally, like a log floating down the river, a company’s or an officer’s cart floated across the bridge, surrounded on all sides, loaded to the top, and covered with leather.