you hear? Eh? Come quick …” he shouted.
Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvítski and another adjutant having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm. This was particularly noticeable on Nesvítski’s usually laughing countenance.
“Where is the commander-in-chief?” asked Bolkónski.
“Here, in that house,” answered the adjutant.
“Well, is it true that it’s peace and capitulation?” asked Nesvítski.
“I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I could do to get here.”
“And we, my dear boy! It’s terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack, we’re getting it still worse,” said Nesvítski. “But sit down and have something to eat.”
“You won’t be able to find either your baggage or anything else now, Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is,” said the other adjutant.
“Where are headquarters?”
“We are to spend the night in Znaim.”
“Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses,” said Nesvítski. “They’ve made up splendid packs for me—fit to cross the Bohemian mountains with. It’s a bad lookout, old fellow! But what’s the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that,” he added, noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.
“It’s nothing,” replied Prince Andrew.
He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor’s wife and the convoy officer.
“What is the commander-in-chief doing here?” he asked.
“I can’t make out at all,” said Nesvítski.
“Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable, abominable, quite abominable!” said Prince Andrew, and he went off to the house where the commander-in-chief was.
Passing by Kutúzov’s carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince Andrew entered the passage. Kutúzov himself, he was told, was in the house with Prince Bagratión and Weyrother. Weyrother was the Austrian general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little Kozlóvski was squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk, with cuffs turned up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom upwards. Kozlóvski’s face looked worn—he too had evidently not slept all night. He glanced at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to him.
“Second line … have you written it?” he continued dictating to the clerk. “The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian …”
“One can’t write so fast, your honor,” said the clerk, glancing angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlóvski.
Through the door came the sounds of Kutúzov’s voice, excited and dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlóvski looked at him, the disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the clerk and Kozlóvski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to the commander in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks holding the horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that something important and disastrous was about to happen.
He turned to Kozlóvski with urgent questions.
“Immediately, Prince,” said Kozlóvski. “Dispositions for Bagratión.”
“What about capitulation?”
“Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle.”
Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard. Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened, and Kutúzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the doorway. Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutúzov but the expression of the commander in chief’s one sound eye showed him to be so preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of his presence. He looked straight at his adjutant’s face without recognizing him.
“Well, have you finished?” said he to Kozlóvski.
“One moment, Your Excellency.”
Bagratión, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm, impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander-in-chief.
“I have the honor to present myself,” repeated Prince Andrew rather loudly, handing Kutúzov an envelope.
“Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!”
Kutúzov went out into the porch with Bagratión.
“Well, goodbye, Prince,” said he to Bagratión. “My blessing, and may Christ be with you in your great endeavor!”
His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his left hand he drew Bagratión toward him, and with his right, on which he wore a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a gesture evidently habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagratión kissed him on the neck instead.
“Christ be with you!” Kutúzov repeated and went toward his carriage. “Get in with me,” said he to Bolkónski.
“Your Excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to remain with Prince Bagratión’s detachment.”
“Get in,” said Kutúzov, and noticing that Bolkónski still delayed, he added: “I need good officers myself, need them myself!”
They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.
“There is still much, much before us,” he said, as if with an old man’s penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkónski’s mind. “If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God,” he added as if speaking to himself.
Prince Andrew glanced at Kutúzov’s face only a foot distant from him and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar near his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the empty eye socket. “Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those men’s death,” thought Bolkónski.
“That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment,” he said.
Kutúzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently swaying on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince Andrew. There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With delicate irony he questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his interview with the emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court concerning the Krems affair, and about some ladies they both knew.
34 “That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of the earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same fate—(the fate of the army at Ulm).”
On November 1st Kutúzov had received, through a spy, news that the army he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported that the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing in immense force upon Kutúzov’s line of communication with the troops that were arriving from Russia. If Kutúzov decided to remain at Krems, Napoleon’s army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut him off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty thousand, and he would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If Kutúzov decided to abandon the road connecting him with the troops arriving from Russia, he would have to march with no road into unknown parts of the Bohemian mountains, defending himself against superior forces of the enemy and abandoning all hope of a junction with Buxhöwden. If Kutúzov decided to retreat along the road from Krems to Olmütz, to unite with the troops arriving from Russia, he risked being forestalled on that road