“Rostov, come here, let’s drink from rief!” shouted Denisov, sitting down by the edge of the road in front of a flask and some food.
The officers gathered in a circle, eating and talking, around Denisov’s mess kit.
“Here they come with another one!” said one of the officers, pointing to a captured French dragoon whom two Cossacks were leading along on foot.
One of them was leading by the bridle the captive’s tall and beautiful French horse.
“Sell me the horse!” Denisov shouted to the Cossack.
“If you like, Your Honor…”
The officers stood up and surrounded the Cossacks and the captured Frenchman. The French dragoon was a young fellow, an Alsatian, who spoke French with a German accent. He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and, hearing some words of French, he began speaking quickly to the officers, addressing now one, now another. He said that he would not have been taken, that it was not his fault that he was taken, but that of le caporal who had sent him to fetch the horse-cloths, that he had told him the Russians were already there. And to everything he said, he added: “mais qu’on ne fasse pas de mal à mon petit cheval,”*261 and caressed his horse. It was clear that he did not quite understand where he was. He now apologized for being taken, now, supposing he was facing his superiors, displayed his soldierly punctiliousness and zeal for service. He brought with him to our rear guard all the freshness of atmosphere of the French troops, which was so foreign to us.
The Cossacks let the horse go for two gold pieces, and Rostov, who now, having received money, was the richest of the officers, bought it.
“Mais qu’on ne fasse pas de mal à mon petit cheval,” the Alsatian said good-naturedly to Rostov, when the horse was handed over to the hussar.
Rostov, smiling, reassured the dragoon and gave him some money.
“Allee, allee!” said the Cossack, touching the prisoner’s arm to urge him on.
“The sovereign! The sovereign!” was suddenly heard among the hussars.
Everyone began running, hurrying, and Rostov saw behind him on the road several horsemen with white plumes in their hats riding up. In a single moment, everyone was in his place and waiting.
Rostov did not remember and did not feel how he ran to his place and mounted his horse. His regret over his non-participation in the action, his humdrum mood in the circle of usual faces, instantly went away, and all thought of himself instantly vanished: he was wholly consumed by the feeling of happiness that came from the nearness of the sovereign. He felt himself rewarded by this nearness alone for the loss of that day. He was as happy as a lover who has obtained a hoped-for rendezvous. Not daring to turn to look while in line, and not looking, his rapturous senses felt his approach. And he felt it not only from the hoofbeats of the approaching cavalcade, but felt it because as it approached everything around him became brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more festive. This sun moved ever nearer and nearer to Rostov, spreading around itself rays of mild and majestic light, and he already feels himself caught up in those rays, he hears his voice—that gentle, calm, majestic, and at the same time so simple voice. As it had to be, according to Rostov’s feeling, a deathly silence ensued, and in that silence the sounds of the sovereign’s voice rang out.
“Les hussards de Pavlograd?” he said questioningly.
“La réserve, sire!” someone’s voice replied, so human after the non-human voice that had said: “Les hussards de Pavlograd?”
The sovereign drew even with Rostov and stopped. Alexander’s face was still more beautiful than three days before at the review. It shone with such cheer and youth, such innocent youth that it reminded one of a boyish fourteen-year-old friskiness, and at the same time it was still the face of a majestic emperor. Looking the squadron over at random, the sovereign’s eyes met the eyes of Rostov and rested on them for no more than two seconds. The sovereign may or may not have understood everything that was going on in Rostov’s soul (it seemed to Rostov that he had understood everything), but for about two seconds he looked with his pale blue eyes into Rostov’s face. (A soft, mild light poured from them.) Then he suddenly raised his eyebrows, spurred his horse with a sharp movement of his left foot, and rode on at a gallop.
On hearing gunfire in the vanguard, the young emperor could not restrain his desire to be present at the battle, and, despite all the remonstrations of his courtiers, at noon, having separated from the third column with which he was proceeding, he rode to the vanguard. Before he reached the hussars, several adjutants met him with news of the successful outcome of the action.
The battle, which consisted merely in the capture of a French squadron, was presented as a brilliant victory over the French, and therefore the sovereign and the whole army, especially while the powder smoke still hung over the battlefield, believed that the French were defeated and were retreating against their will. A few minutes after the sovereign rode by, the Pavlogradsky division was ordered to advance. In Wischau itself, a small German town, Rostov saw the sovereign once more. On the town square, where a rather intense exchange of gunfire had taken place before the sovereign’s arrival, lay several dead and wounded men, whom there had been no time to pick up. The sovereign, surrounded by his suite of military and non-military men, was on a bobtailed chestnut mare, already different from the one at the review, and, leaning to one side, holding a gold lorgnette to his eyes with a graceful gesture, was looking through it at a soldier who lay facedown, without his shako, his head bloody. The wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and vile that Rostov was offended by his nearness to the sovereign. Rostov saw how the sovereign’s stooping shoulders shuddered as if a chill ran through them, and how his left foot convulsively began to spur the horse’s side. The well-trained horse looked about indifferently and did not stir from its place. Getting off their horses, some adjutants took the soldier under the arms and began laying him on a stretcher which had just appeared. The soldier groaned.
“Gently, gently, can’t you do it gently?” said the sovereign, clearly suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode off.
Rostov saw the tears that filled the sovereign’s eyes, and heard him say in French to Czartoryski, as he rode off:
“What a terrible thing war is, what a terrible thing! Quel terrible chose que la guerre!”
The troops of the vanguard were positioned before Wischau within sight of the enemy line, which yielded ground to us throughout the day at the least exchange of fire. The sovereign’s gratitude was announced to the vanguard, with a promise of rewards, and the men were given a double ration of vodka. The bivouac fires crackled and the soldiers’ songs rang out still more merrily than the previous night. Denisov celebrated his promotion to major that night, and Rostov, who had already drunk quite a bit, proposed a toast at the end of the party to the health of the sovereign, “but not of the sovereign emperor, as they say at official dinners,” he said, “but to the health of the sovereign, that kind, enchanting, and great man. We drink to his health and to certain victory over the French!”
“If we fought before,” he said, “and gave no quarter to the French, as at Schöngraben, how will it be now when he himself is at our head? We’ll all die, we’ll gladly die for him. Right, gentlemen? Maybe I’m not speaking well, I’ve drunk a lot; but that’s how I feel, and so do you. To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!”