“With that I must observe, Your Excellency,” he went on, remembering Dolokhov’s conversation with Kutuzov and his own last encounter with the demoted soldier, “that the demoted private Dolokhov, before my eyes, took a French officer prisoner and particularly distinguished himself.”
“And I also saw the attack of the Pavlogradsky hussars, Your Excellency,” interrupted Zherkov, looking around uneasily, though he had not seen any hussars that day, but had only heard about them from an infantry officer. “They broke two squares, Your Excellency.”
Some smiled at Zherkov’s words, expecting a joke from him as usual; but, noticing that what he said also contributed to the glory of our arms and of that day, they assumed serious expressions, though many knew very well that what Zherkov had said was a lie, with no foundation at all. Prince Bagration turned to the little old colonel.
“I thank you all, gentlemen, all the branches acted heroically: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How is it that two guns in the center were abandoned?” he asked, seeking someone with his eyes. (Prince Bagration did not ask about the guns of the left flank; he already knew that all the cannon there had been abandoned at the very beginning.) “I asked you to go, I believe,” he turned to the staff officer on duty.
“One was knocked out,” the staff officer replied, “but I cannot understand about the other. I was there myself all the while and giving orders, and I had only just left…It was hot, to tell the truth,” he added modestly.
Someone said that Captain Tushin was there near the village and had already been sent for.
“You were there, too,” said Prince Bagration, turning to Prince Andrei.
“Of course, we nearly ran into each other,” said the staff officer on duty, smiling pleasantly at Bolkonsky.
“I did not have the pleasure of seeing you,” Prince Andrei said coldly and abruptly. They all fell silent.
Tushin appeared in the doorway, timidly making his way from behind the generals’ backs. Going around the generals in the crowded cottage, embarrassed as usual at the sight of his superiors, Tushin did not see the staff of the standard and stumbled over it. Several voices laughed.
“How is it that a gun was abandoned?” asked Bagration, frowning not so much at the captain as at those who laughed, among whom Zherkov’s voice sounded louder than the others.
Only now, at the sight of his dread superiors, did Tushin realize in all its horror his guilt and disgrace at having remained alive while losing two guns. He had been so agitated that until that moment he had not managed to think of it. The laughter of the officers threw him off still more. He stood before Bagration with a trembling lower jaw and was barely able to say:
“I don’t know…Your Excellency…I had no men, Your Excellency.”
“You could have taken some of the covering troops!”
Tushin did not tell him that there were no covering troops, though that was the plain truth. He was afraid to let down another officer that way and silently, with fixed eyes, looked straight into Bagration’s face, as a confused student looks into his examiner’s eyes.
The silence was rather prolonged. Prince Bagration, probably unwilling to be severe, could not find what to say; the rest did not dare mix into the conversation. Prince Andrei looked at Tushin from under his eyebrows, and his fingers twitched nervously.
“Your Excellency,” Prince Andrei broke the silence with his sharp voice, “you were pleased to send me to Captain Tushin’s battery. I was there and found two-thirds of the men and horses killed, two guns crippled, and no cover at all.”
Prince Bagration and Tushin now looked with the same intentness at Bolkonsky, who was speaking with restraint and agitation.
“And if Your Excellency will allow me to voice my opinion,” he went on, “we owe the success of the day most of all to the operation of this battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company,” said Prince Andrei and, without waiting for a reply, he got up at once and stepped away from the table.
Prince Bagration looked at Tushin and, obviously not wishing to show any mistrust of Bolkonsky’s sharp judgment, and at the same time feeling himself unable to believe him fully, inclined his head and told Tushin he could go. Prince Andrei went out after him.
“Thank you, dear heart, you rescued me,” Tushin said to him.
Prince Andrei looked at Tushin and, saying nothing, walked away. Prince Andrei felt sad and downhearted. All this was so strange, so unlike what he had hoped for.
“Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will it all end?” thought Rostov, looking at the shifting shadows before him. The pain in his arm was becoming more and more tormenting. Sleep drew him irresistibly, red circles danced before his eyes, and the impressions of those voices and those faces and a feeling of loneliness merged with the feeling of pain. It was they, these soldiers, wounded and not wounded—it was they who crushed and weighed down and twisted the sinews and burned the flesh of his racked arm and shoulder. To get rid of them, he closed his eyes.
He became oblivious for a moment, but in that brief interval of oblivion he saw a numberless multitude of things in a dream: he saw his mother and her large white hand, saw Sonya’s thin little shoulders, Natasha’s eyes and laughter, and Denisov with his voice and mustache, and Telyanin, and his whole story with Telyanin and Bogdanych. That whole story was the same as this soldier with the sharp voice, and that whole story and this soldier were what held, crushed, and pulled his arm to one side so painfully and relentlessly. He tried to get away from them, but they would not let go of his shoulder for a moment, for a split second. It would not hurt, it would be well, if they were not pulling on it; but there was no getting rid of them.
He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of the night hung three feet above the light from the coals. A dust of falling snow flew through that light. Tushin did not return, the doctor did not come. He was alone, only some little soldier now sat naked on the other side of the fire, warming his thin, yellow body.
“Nobody needs me!” thought Rostov. “There’s nobody to help me or pity me. And once I was at home, strong, cheerful, loved.” He sighed and involuntarily groaned as he sighed.
“Ouch, it hurts, eh?” the little soldier asked, waving his shirt over the fire and, not waiting for a reply, he grunted and said: “Quite a few folk got damaged today—awful!”
Rostov was not listening to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes dancing above the fire and remembered the Russian winter with a warm, bright house, a fluffy fur coat, swift sleighs, a healthy body, and all the love and care of a family. “And why did I come here?” he wondered.
The next day the French did not renew the attack, and the remnant of Bagration’s detachment joined Kutuzov’s army.
I
Prince Vassily did not think out his plans. Still less did he think of doing people harm in order to profit from it. He was simply a man of the world, who succeeded in the world and made a habit of that success. According to his circumstances and his intimacy with people, he constantly formed various plans and schemes which he himself was not quite aware of, but which constituted all the interest of his life. He would have not one or two of these plans and schemes going, but dozens, of which some were only beginning to take shape for him, while others were coming to completion, and still others were abolished. He did not say to himself, for instance: “Here is a man who is now in power, I must gain his trust and friendship and through him arrange for myself the payment of a one-time subsidy,” nor did he say to himself: “Here Pierre is rich, I must entice him to marry my daughter and borrow the forty thousand that I need from him” but let him meet a man in power, and in the same moment his instinct would tell him that the man might be useful, and Prince Vassily would become intimate with him and at the first opportunity, without any preparation, instinctively, would flatter him, behave familiarly, talk about what was needed.