Dolgorukov, one of the most fervent advocates of the offensive, had just come back from the council, weary, exhausted, but animated and proud of the victory won. Prince Andrei introduced the officer he was patronizing, but Prince Dolgorukov, giving him a polite and firm handshake, said nothing to Boris and, obviously unable to keep from speaking out the thoughts that occupied him most at that moment, addressed Prince Andrei in French.
“Well, my friend, what a battle we went through! God only grant that the one that results from it is as victorious. However, my dear,” he spoke haltingly and animatedly, “I must confess my guilt before the Austrians and especially before Weyrother. What precision, what detail, what knowledge of the terrain, what foresight of all possibilities, all conditions, all the smallest details! No, my dear, more advantageous conditions than those we find ourselves in could not be purposely invented. The combination of Austrian clarity with Russian courage—what more do you want?”
“So the offensive is definitely decided upon?” asked Bolkonsky.
“And you know, my friend, it seems to me that Bonaparte has decidedly lost his Latin.4 You know, a letter to the emperor came from him today.” Dolgorukov smiled significantly.
“Well, now! What does he write?” asked Bolkonsky.
“What can he write? Fal-di-diddle-da and the like, all only with the purpose of gaining time. I tell you, he’s in our hands, that’s certain. But the most amusing thing,” he said, suddenly laughing good-naturedly, “is that we simply couldn’t decide how to address the reply! If not as consul, and naturally not as emperor, then as General Buonaparte, it seemed to me.”
“But there’s a difference between not acknowledging him as emperor and calling him General Buonaparte,” said Bolkonsky.
“That’s just it,” Dolgorukov interrupted, laughing and speaking quickly. “You know Bilibin, he’s a very intelligent man, he suggested addressing him as ‘Usurper and Enemy of the Human Race.’”
Dolgorukov burst into merry laughter.
“No more than that?” remarked Bolkonsky.
“But anyhow Bilibin found a serious title of address. A witty and intelligent man…”
“What is it?”
“‘To the head of the French Government, Au chef du gouvernement français,’” Dolgorukov said seriously and with satisfaction. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
“It’s good, but he’ll dislike it very much,” remarked Bolkonsky.
“Oh, very much! My brother knows him: he dined with him, the present emperor, more than once in Paris, and he told me that he never saw a more subtle and clever diplomat—you know, a combination of French adroitness and Italian playacting. Do you know the anecdotes about him and Count Markóv? Count Markóv was the only one who knew how to handle him. Do you know the story of the handkerchief? It’s charming!”
And the loquacious Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris, now to Prince Andrei, told how Bonaparte, wishing to test Markóv, our ambassador, purposely dropped his handkerchief in front of him and stood there looking at him, probably expecting a service from Markóv, and how Markóv at once dropped his own handkerchief next to it and picked it up, without picking up Bonaparte’s handkerchief.
“Charmant,” said Bolkonsky. “But the thing is, Prince, that I’ve come to solicit you for this young man. You see…”
But before Prince Andrei finished, an adjutant came into the room to summon Prince Dolgorukov to the emperor.
“Ah, how vexing!” said Dolgorukov, hurriedly getting up and shaking hands with Prince Andrei and Boris. “You know, I’ll be very glad to do everything in my power both for you and for this nice young man.” He shook Boris’s hand once more with an expression of good-natured, sincere, and animated light-mindedness. “But you see—till next time!”
Boris was excited by the thought of the closeness to supreme power in which he felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious of himself being in touch with the springs that controlled all those huge mass movements, of which he, in his regiment, felt himself a small, submissive, and insignificant part. They followed Prince Dolgorukov to the corridor and met, coming out of the door to the sovereign’s room by which Dolgorukov went in, a short man in civilian clothes, with an intelligent face and a distinctive, sharply protruding jaw, which, without spoiling his looks, endowed him with a particular liveliness and shiftiness of expression. This short man gave the nod of a close acquaintance to Dolgorukov, and began peering at Prince Andrei with an intently cold gaze, walking straight at him, and clearly expecting Prince Andrei to greet him or give way to him. Prince Andrei did neither; his face expressed spite, and the young man, turning away, went down the side of the corridor.
“Who’s that?” asked Boris.
“That is one of the most remarkable, and for me most unpleasant, of men. That is the minister of foreign affairs, Prince Adam Czartoryski. It’s these people,” Bolkonsky said with a sigh which he could not suppress, as they were leaving the palace, “it’s these people who decide the fates of nations.”
The next day the troops set out on the march, and Boris had no time up to the battle of Austerlitz itself to visit either Bolkonsky or Dolgorukov and remained for a time with the Izmailovsky regiment.
X
At dawn on the sixteenth, Denisov’s squadron, in which Nikolai Rostov served and which was in Bagration’s detachment, moved from its night lodgings into action, as they said, and having gone about half a mile behind other columns, halted on the high road. Rostov saw the Cossacks go past him, the first and second squadrons of hussars, the infantry battalions with the artillery, and then Generals Bagration and Dolgorukov rode past with their adjutants. All the fear which, as previously, he experienced before action, all the inner struggle by means of which he overcame that fear, all his dreams of how he would distinguish himself as a fine hussar in this action—went for naught. Their squadron was kept in reserve, and Nikolai Rostov spent that day feeling bored and melancholy. Between eight and nine in the morning, he heard gunfire ahead of him, shouts of “Hurrah,” saw some wounded brought back (they were not many), and finally saw a whole detachment of French cavalry led along in the midst of a Cossack hundred. Obviously the action was over, and the action had obviously been not big, but successful. The soldiers and officers coming back told of a brilliant victory, of the taking of the town of Wischau and the capture of a whole French squadron. The day was clear, sunny, after a heavy night frost, and the cheerful brightness of the fall day coincided with the news of the victory, which was reported not only by those who took part in it, but also by the joyful expression on the faces of the soldiers, officers, generals, and adjutants who went there and came back past Rostov. The more wrung was Rostov’s heart, who had uselessly suffered all the fear that precedes a battle, and had spent this cheerful day in inaction.