We arrived in * * *, an enormous village fifteen miles from the provincial capital. There were a great many neighbors around us, most of them newly arrived from Moscow. We all got together each day; our country life was just like city life. Letters from the army came almost every day; the old ladies looked for the location of the bivouac on the map and were angry at not finding it. Polina was interested only in politics, read nothing but newspapers and Rastopchin’s handbills, and did not open a single book. Surrounded by people whose notions were limited, constantly hearing absurd opinions and ill-founded news, she fell into deep despondency; languor took possession of her soul. She despaired of the salvation of the fatherland, it seemed to her that Russia was quickly approaching its fall, each report redoubled her hopelessness, Count Rastopchin’s police announcements put her out of patience. She found their jocular tone the height of indecency, and the measures he had taken an insufferable barbarity. She did not grasp the idea of that time, so great in its horror, the idea whose bold execution saved Russia and freed Europe. She spent hours at a time, her elbows propped on a map of Russia, counting the miles, following the quick movements of the troops. Strange ideas came to her head. Once she declared to me her intention of leaving our village, going to the French camp, making her way to Napoleon, and killing him there with her own hands. I had no difficulty persuading her of the madness of such an undertaking. But the thought of Charlotte Corday stayed with her for a long time.
Her father, as you already know, was a rather light-minded man; all he thought about was living in the country in as much of a Moscow style as possible. He gave dinners, started a
There were four of them. Three were quite insignificant men, fanatically devoted to Napoleon, unbearably loud-mouthed, though in truth they had paid for their boastfulness with their honorable wounds. But the fourth was an extremely remarkable man.
He was then twenty-six years old. He belonged to a good family. His face was pleasant. His tone was very good. We paid attention to him at once. He accepted our kindnesses with noble modesty. He spoke little, but what he said was well grounded. Polina liked him, because he was the first who could clearly explain military actions and troop movements to her. He calmed her down, explaining that the retreat of the Russian army was not a senseless flight and was as disturbing for the French as it was infuriating for the Russians.
“But you,” Polina asked him, “aren’t you convinced of your emperor’s invincibility?”
Sénicourt (I shall also call him by the name Mr. Zagoskin gave him)—Sénicourt, after a brief pause, replied that in his situation frankness would be awkward. Polina insistently demanded an answer. Sénicourt admitted that the thrust of French troops into the heart of Russia could prove dangerous for them, that it seemed the campaign of 1812 was over, but had produced nothing decisive.
“Over!” Polina objected. “Yet Napoleon still keeps going forward, and we still keep retreating!”
“So much the worse for us,” Sénicourt replied, and changed the subject.
Polina, who was sick of both the cowardly prophecies and the foolish boasting of our neighbors, listened eagerly to judgments based on actual knowledge and impartiality. From my brother I received letters which it was impossible to make any sense of. They were filled with jokes, clever and bad, questions about Polina, banal assurances of love, and so on. Polina, reading them, became annoyed and shrugged her shoulders.
“Admit,” she said, “that your Alexei is a most empty man. Even in the present circumstances, from the battlefield, he finds a way of writing letters that mean nothing at all. What sort of conversation will he have with me in the course of a quiet family life?”
She was mistaken. The emptiness of my brother’s letters proceeded not from his own nonentity, but from a prejudice—a most insulting one for us, however: he supposed that with women one should use language adapted to the weakness of their understanding, and that important subjects do not concern us. Such an opinion would be impolite anywhere, but with us it is also stupid. There is no doubt that Russian women are better educated, read more, and think more than the men, who busy themselves with God knows what.
