“Ah! there are a great many stories now about that engagement.”
“Yes, stories!” said Rostov loudly, looking from Boris to Bolkonsky with eyes full of sudden fury, “a great many stories, I dare say, but our stories are the stories of men who have been under the enemy’s fire, our stories have some weight, they’re not the tales of little staff upstarts, who draw pay for doing nothing.”
“The class to which you assume me to belong,” said Prince Andrey, with a calm and particularly amiable smile.
A strange feeling of exasperation was mingled in Rostov’s heart with respect for the self-possession of this person.
“I’m not talking about you,” he said; “I don’t know you, and, I’ll own, I don’t want to. I’m speaking of staff-officers in general.”
“Let me tell you this,” Prince Andrey cut him short in a tone of quiet authority, “you are trying to insult me, and I’m ready to agree with you that it is very easy to do so, if you haven’t sufficient respect for yourself. But you will agree that the time and place is ill-chosen for this squabble. In a day or two we have to take part in a great and more serious duel, and besides, Drubetskoy, who tells me he is an old friend of yours, is in no way to blame because my physiognomy is so unfortunate as to displease you. However,” he said, getting up, “you know my name, and know where to find me; but don’t forget,” he added, “that I don’t consider either myself or you insulted, and my advice, as a man older than you, is to let the matter drop. So on Friday, after the review, I shall expect you, Drubetskoy; good-bye till then,” cried Prince Andrey, and he went out, bowing to both.
Rostov only bethought him of what he ought to have answered when he had gone. And he was more furious still that he had not thought of saying it. He ordered his horse to be brought round at once, and taking leave of Boris coldly, he rode back. Whether to ride to-morrow to headquarters and challenge that conceited adjutant, or whether really to let the matter drop, was the question that worried him all the way. At one moment he thought vindictively how he would enjoy seeing the fright that feeble, little, conceited fellow would be in, facing his pistol, at the next he was feeling with surprise that, of all the men he knew, there was no one he would be more glad to have for his friend than that detested little adjutant.
VIII
The day after Rostov’s visit to Boris, the review took place of the Austrian and Russian troops, both the reinforcements freshly arrived from Russia and the troops that had been campaigning with Kutuzov. Both Emperors, the Russian Emperor with the Tsarevitch, and the Austrian with the archduke, were to assist at this review of the allied forces, making up together an army of eighty thousand men. From early morning the troops, all smart and clean, had been moving about the plain before the fortress. Thousands of legs and bayonets moved with flags waving, and halted at the word of command, turned and formed at regular intervals, moving round other similar masses of infantry in different uniforms. With the rhythmic tramp of hoofs, the smartly dressed cavalry in blue, and red, and green laced uniforms rode jingling by on black and chestnut and grey horses, the bandsmen in front covered with embroidery. Between the infantry and the cavalry the artillery, in a long line of polished, shining cannons quivering on their carriages, crawled slowly by with their heavy, brazen sound, and their peculiar smell from the linstocks, and ranged themselves in their places. Not only the generals in their full parade uniform, wearing scarves and all their decorations, with waists, portly and slim alike, pinched in to the uttermost, and red necks squeezed into stiff collars, not only the pomaded, dandified officers, but every soldier, with his clean, washed, and shaven face, and weapons polished to the utmost possibility of glitter, every horse rubbed down till its coat shone like satin, and every hair in its moistened mane lay in place—all alike felt it no joking matter, felt that something grave and solemn was going forward. Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own significance, feeling himself but a grain of sand in that ocean of humanity, and at the same time was conscious of his might, feeling himself a part of that vast whole. There had been strenuous exertion and bustle since early morning, and by ten o’clock everything was in the required order. The rows of soldiers were standing on the immense plain. The whole army was drawn out in three lines. In front was the cavalry; behind, the artillery; still further back, the infantry.
Between each two ranks of soldiery there was as it were a street. The army was sharply divided into three parts: Kutuzov’s army (on the right flank of which stood the Pavlograd hussars in the front line), the regiments of the line and the guards that had arrived from Russia, and the Austrian troops. But all stood in one line, under one command, and in similar order.
Like a wind passing over the leaves, the excited whisper fluttered over the plain: “They are coming! they are coming!” There was a sound of frightened voices, and the hurried men’s fuss over the last finishing touches ran like a wave over the troops.
A group came into sight moving towards them from Olmütz in front of them. And at the same moment, though there had been no wind, a faint breeze fluttered over the army, and stirred the streamers on the lances, and sent the unfurled flags flapping against their flag-staffs. It looked as though in this slight movement the army itself were expressing its joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was heard saying: “Steady!” Then like cocks at sunrise, voices caught up and repeated the sound in different parts of the plain. And all sank into silence.
In the deathlike stillness, the only sound was the tramp of hoofs. It was the Emperors’ suite. The Emperors rode towards the flank, and the trumpets of the first cavalry regiment began playing a march. It seemed as though the sound did not come from the trumpeters, but that the army itself was naturally giving forth this music in its delight at the Emperors’ approach. Through the music could be distinctly heard one voice, the genial, youthful voice of the Emperor Alexander. He uttered some words of greeting, and the first regiment boomed out: “Hurrah!” with a shout so deafening, so prolonged, so joyful, that the men themselves felt awestruck at the multitude and force of the mass they made up.
Rostov, standing in the foremost ranks of Kutuzov’s army, which the Tsar approached first of all, was possessed by the feeling, common to every man in that army—a feeling of self-oblivion, of proud consciousness of their might and passionate devotion to the man who was the centre of that solemn ceremony.
He felt that at one word from that man all that vast mass (and he, an insignificant atom bound up with it) would rush through fire and water, to crime, to death, or to the grandest heroism, and so he could not but thrill and tremble at the sight of the man who was the embodiment of that word.
“Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” thundered on all sides, and one regiment after another greeted the Tsar with the strains of the march, then hurrah!… then the march, and again hurrah! and hurrah! which growing stronger and fuller, blended into a deafening roar.
Before the Tsar had reached it, each regiment in its speechless immobility seemed like a lifeless body. But as soon as the Tsar was on a level with it, each regiment broke into life and noise, which joined with the roar of all the line, by which the Tsar had passed already. In the terrific, deafening uproar of those voices, between the square masses of troops, immobile as though turned to stone, moved carelessly, but symmetrically and freely, some hundreds of men on horseback, the suite, and in front of them two figures—the Emperors. Upon these was entirely concentrated the repressed, passionate attention of all that mass of men.
The handsome, youthful Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse Guards, in a triangular hat with the base in front, attracted the greater share of attention with his pleasant face and sonorous, low voice.