But Boris, noticing that Rostov was preparing to make fun of Berg, artfully diverted the conversation. He asked Rostov to tell them how and where he had received his wound. This pleased Rostov, and he began telling the story, growing more and more animated as it went on. He told them about his Schöngraben action in just the way that those who take part in battles usually tell about them, that is, in the way they would like it to have been, the way they have heard others tell it, the way it could be told more beautifully, but not at all the way it had been. Rostov was a truthful young man, not for anything would he have deliberately told an untruth. He began telling the story with the intention of telling it exactly as it had been, but imperceptibly, involuntarily, and inevitably for himself, he went over into untruth. If he had told the truth to these listeners, who, like himself, had already heard accounts of attacks numerous times and had formed for themselves a definite notion of what an attack was, and were expecting exactly the same sort of account—they either would not have believed him or, worse still, would have thought it was Rostov’s own fault that what usually happens in stories of cavalry attacks had not happened with him. He could not simply tell them that they all set out at a trot, he fell off his horse, dislocated his arm, and ran to the woods as fast as he could to escape a Frenchman. Besides, in order to tell everything as it had been, one would have to make an effort with oneself so as to tell only what had been. To tell the truth is very difficult, and young men are rarely capable of it. They were expecting an account of how he got all fired up, forgetting himself, how he flew like a storm at the square; how he cut his way into it, hacking right and left; how his saber tasted flesh, how he fell exhausted, and so on. And he told them all that.
In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: “You can’t imagine what a strange feeling of fury one experiences during an attack,” Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, whom Boris was expecting, came in. Prince Andrei, who liked to patronize young men, who was flattered to be turned to for a favor, and was well-disposed towards Boris, who had managed to please him the day before, wished to fulfill the young man’s wish. Sent by Kutuzov with papers for the grand duke, he stopped to see the young man, hoping to find him alone. Coming into the room and seeing a frontline hussar telling about his military adventures (the sort of people Prince Andrei could not stand), he smiled affectionately to Boris, winced, narrowed his eyes at Rostov, and, bowing slightly, sat down wearily and lazily on the sofa. He was not pleased to have landed among bad company. Rostov blushed, understanding that. But it was all the same to him: the man was an outsider. But, glancing at Boris, he saw that he, too, seemed ashamed of the frontline hussar. In spite of Prince Andrei’s unpleasant, mocking tone, in spite of the general disdain which Rostov, from his fighting army point of view, had for all these staff adjutants, to whom the newcomer obviously belonged, Rostov felt embarrassed, turned red, and fell silent. Boris asked what was the news at the staff and what, without being indiscreet, was rumored about our dispositions.
“They’ll probably advance,” Bolkonsky replied, clearly not wishing to say more in front of strangers.
Berg used the opportunity to ask with particular courtesy whether, as rumor had it, company commanders were now to draw a double allotment for forage. To which Prince Andrei replied with a smile that he was unable to opine about such important government instructions, and Berg laughed joyfully.
“About your affair,” Prince Andrei turned to Boris again, “we’ll speak later,” and he glanced at Rostov. “Come to me after the review, we’ll do all that’s possible.”
And, glancing around the room, he turned to Rostov, whose state of uncontrollable childish embarrassment, turning into spite, he did not deign to notice, and said:
“It seems you were telling about the Schöngraben action? Were you there?”
“I was there,” Rostov said spitefully, as if wishing to insult the adjutant by it.
Bolkonsky noticed the hussar’s state and found it amusing. He gave a slightly contemptuous smile.
“Yes! many stories are told now about that action.”
“Yes, stories!” Rostov began speaking loudly, glancing now at Boris, now at Bolkonsky, with eyes suddenly grown furious. “Yes, many stories are told, but our stories—the stories of those who were there, right under enemy fire—our stories have weight, not the stories of those fellows on the staff, who get rewards for doing nothing.”
“To whom you suppose that I belong?” Prince Andrei said calmly and with an especially pleasant smile.
A strange feeling of spite and along with that of respect for the calmness of this figure came together at that moment in Rostov’s soul.
“I’m not talking about you,” he said, “I don’t know you, and, I confess, I don’t wish to. I’m talking about the staff in general.”
“And I will tell you this,” Prince Andrei interrupted him with calm power in his voice. “You want to insult me, and I am ready to agree with you that it is very easy to do so, if you lack sufficient respect for yourself; but you must agree that the time and place have been rather poorly chosen for that. One of these days we’ll all take part in a big, more serious duel, and besides that, Drubetskoy, who says he’s your old friend, is not at all to blame for the fact that my physiognomy has the misfortune not to please you. However,” he said, getting up, “you know my name and where to find me; but don’t forget,” he added, “that I consider neither myself nor you insulted in the least, and my advice, as an older man, is to let this matter go without consequences. So I’ll be waiting for you on Friday after the review, Drubetskoy. Good-bye,” Prince Andrei concluded and left, after bowing to them both.
Rostov remembered what reply he should have given only when the man was already gone. And he was the more angry because he had forgotten to say it. Rostov ordered his horse brought at once, and having drily taken leave of Boris, rode home. Should he go to headquarters tomorrow and challenge this mincing adjutant, or indeed let the affair go at that? This was the question that tormented him all the way. Now he thought spitefully of what a pleasure it would be to see this small, weak, and proud man’s fear in the face of his pistol, then he was surprised to feel that, of all the people he knew, there was no one he so wished to have for a friend as this hateful little adjutant.
VIII
On the day after the meeting of Boris and Rostov, there was a review of the Russian and Austrian troops, the fresh ones come from Russia, as well as those returned from campaigning with Kutuzov. Both emperors, the Russian with his heir the grand duke, and the Austrian with the archduke, made this review of the combined eighty-thousand-man army.
Since early morning, the trim and smartly polished troops had been on the move, lining up in the field in front of the fortress. Now thousands of feet and bayonets moved with flying standards and, at the officers’ command, halted, turned, and lined up at intervals, circling around other similar masses of infantry in different uniforms; now there came the sounds of the measured thudding and clanking of the dressed-up cavalry, in blue, red, and green embroidered uniforms, with embroidered musicians in front, on black, chestnut, or gray horses; now, stretching out with the brazen noise of polished, shining cannon shaking on their carriages, and with their smell of linstocks, the artillery crawled between the infantry and cavalry and settled in their appointed places. Not only the generals in full parade dress, their waists, fat or slender, tightened to the utmost, their necks reddened by high-propped collars, wearing sashes and all their decorations; not only the pomaded, spruced-up officers, but every soldier, his face freshly scrubbed and shaven, his equipment polished to the highest shine possible, and every horse, groomed so that its hide gleamed like satin, its wetted mane lying hair by hair—they all felt that what was taking place was earnest, significant, and solemn. Every general and soldier sensed his own nullity, aware of being a grain of sand in this sea of people, and at the same time sensed his strength, aware of being part of this enormous whole.