“But what an extraordinary genius!” Prince Andrei cried suddenly, clenching his small fist and pounding it on the table. “And what luck the man has!”
“Buonaparte?” Bilibin said questioningly, wrinkling his forehead and with that letting it be felt that a mot was coming. “Buonaparte?” he said with special emphasis on the u. “I think, however, that now that he’s prescribing laws for Austria from Schönbrunn, il faut lui faire grâce de l’u. I decidedly make an innovation and call him Bonaparte tout court.”§200
“No, joking aside,” said Prince Andrei, “do you really think the campaign is over?”
“Here’s what I think. Austria’s been played for a fool, and she’s not used to it. And she’ll pay it back. She’s been played for a fool because, first, the provinces are devastated (on dit, le Orthodox army est terrible pour le pillage), her army is destroyed, her capital has been taken, and all that pour les beaux yeux du his Sardinian majesty. And therefore—entre nous, mon cher#201 —I feel instinctively that we’re being deceived, I feel instinctively that communications with France and plans for peace, a secret peace, are being concluded separately.”12
“That can’t be!” said Prince Andrei. “It would be too vile.”
“Qui vivra verra,”**202 said Bilibin, again releasing his skin as a sign that the conversation was over.
When Prince Andrei went to the room prepared for him and lay down on the featherbed and fragrant, warmed-up pillows in clean linen—he felt that the battle, the news of which he had brought, was far, far away from him. The Prussian alliance, the treachery of Austria, the new triumph of Bonaparte, the levee, and the parade, and his reception by the emperor Franz the next day preoccupied him.
He closed his eyes, but at that same instant in his ears there crackled a cannonade, gunfire, the rattle of carriage wheels, and now again the stretched-out line of musketeers goes down the hill, and the French are shooting, and he feels his heart thrill, and he is riding in front next to Schmidt, and bullets are whistling merrily around him, and he experiences that feeling of the tenfold joy of life, such as he has not experienced since childhood.
He woke up…
“Yes, all that happened!…” he said, smiling happily to himself like a child, and he fell into a sound, youthful sleep.
XI
The next day he woke up late. Going over his recent impressions, he remembered first of all that he had to present himself to the emperor Franz that day, remembered the minister of war, the courteous Austrian imperial adjutant, Bilibin, and the conversation yesterday evening. Putting on his full dress uniform, which he had not worn in a long time, for his trip to the palace, fresh, animated, and handsome, with his arm in a sling, he went into Bilibin’s study. In the study there were four gentlemen from the diplomatic corps. Bolkonsky was acquainted with Prince Ippolit Kuragin, who was a secretary at the embassy; Bilibin introduced him to the others.
The gentlemen who frequented Bilibin, young, rich, and merry society people, constituted here, as in Vienna, a separate circle, which Bilibin, who was the head of it, called “ours”—les nôtres. This circle, made up almost exclusively of diplomats, clearly had its own high-society interests, which had nothing in common with war and politics, interests in relations with certain women and in the administrative side of their service. These gentlemen received Prince Andrei into their circle with apparent eagerness, as “theirs” (an honor they accorded to few). Out of courtesy and as a subject for getting into conversation, he was asked several questions about the army and the battle, and the conversation again broke up into inconsequentially merry jokes and gossip.
“But it was especially nice,” one said, telling about a fellow diplomat’s failure, “it was especially nice that the chancellor told him straight out that his appointment to London was a promotion and that he should look at it as such. Can you picture his face when he heard that?…”
“But what’s worst of all, gentlemen—I’m betraying Kuragin to you—is that the man is in misfortune, and this Don Juan, this terrible fellow, is taking advantage of it!”
Prince Ippolit was lying in a Voltaire armchair, his legs thrown over the arm-rest. He laughed.
“Parlez-moi de ça,”*203 he said.
“Oh, you Don Juan! Oh, you serpent!” said various voices.
“You don’t know, Bolkonsky,” Bilibin turned to Prince Andrei, “that all the horrors of the French army (I almost said the Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing among the women.”
“La femme est la compagne de l’homme,”*204 uttered Prince Ippolit, and he began examining his raised feet through his lorgnette.
Bilibin and “ours” burst out laughing, looking Ippolit in the eye. Prince Andrei saw that this Ippolit, of whom he (it had to be admitted) had almost been jealous over his wife, was the buffoon of the company.
“No, I must treat you to Kuragin,” Bilibin said softly to Bolkonsky. “He’s charming when he argues about politics, you should see such gravity.”
He sat beside Ippolit and, gathering the folds of his forehead, began a conversation about politics with him. Prince Andrei and the others stood around them.
“Le cabinet de Berlin ne peut pas exprimer un sentiment d’alliance,” Ippolit began, looking around significantly at them all, “sans exprimer…comme dans sa dernière note…vous comprenez…vous comprenez…et puis si sa Majesté l’Empereur ne déroge pas au principe de notre alliance…”
“Attendez, je n’ai pas fini…” he said to Prince Andrei, seizing him by the arm. “Je suppose que l’intervention sera plus forte que la non-intervention. Et…” He paused. “On ne pourra pas imputer à la fin de nonrecevoir notre dépêche du 28 novembre. Voilà comment tout cela finira.”†205
And he let go of Bolkonsky’s arm, thus indicating that he was quite finished.
“Démosthène, je te reconnais au caillou que tu as caché dans ta bouche d’or!”‡206 13 said Bilibin, whose shock of hair moved on his head with pleasure.
They all laughed. Ippolit laughed more than anyone else. He obviously suffered, choked, but was unable to hold back the wild laughter that distended his ever immobile face.
“Well, I tell you what, gentlemen,” said Bilibin, “Bolkonsky is a guest in my house and here in Brünn, and I want to treat him, as far as I can, to all the joys of life here. If we were in Vienna, that would be easy; but here, dans ce vilain trou morave it’s harder, and I ask you all to help. Il faut lui faire les honneurs de Brünn.*207 You’ll take the theater upon yourselves, I’ll take society, and you, Ippolit, naturally, the women.”
“We must show him Amélie—charming!” said one of “ours,” kissing the tips of his fingers.
“Generally, this bloodthirsty soldier,” said Bilibin, “needs to be converted to more humane views.”
“It’s unlikely that I’ll take advantage of your hospitality, gentlemen, and it’s now time for me to go,” Bolkonsky said, glancing at his watch.