Waiting for the Tsar, each regiment in its rigid silence seemed like a lifeless body. But once the Tsar reached them each regiment erupted in new life and further clamour, joining in unison with the general roar from all down the line where the Tsar had been. And to the dreadful sound of these shattering cheers, moving in and out among the great rectangles of massed troops standing rigidly to attention as if turned to stone, some hundreds of men rode about casually, freely, defying all symmetry. These were the officers in the royal suite, and ahead of them rode two men, the Emperors, on whom the uncontainable passion of all that mass of men was focused.
It was Emperor Alexander, young and handsome in the uniform of the horse guards with a cocked hat, who attracted most of the attention because of his pleasant face and his soft rich voice.
Rostov was standing near the buglers, and with his keen eyes he spotted the Tsar a long way off and watched him approaching. When the Tsar was only twenty paces away and Nikolay could clearly see every detail of Alexander’s handsome, young and happy face, he experienced a surge of emotion and ecstasy such as he had never known before. Everything about the Tsar – every feature, every movement – seemed to him utterly captivating.
Coming to a halt before the Pavlograd regiment, the Tsar said something in French to the Austrian Emperor and smiled. Seeing him smile, Rostov automatically began to smile himself and felt an even stronger spasm of love for his Emperor. He longed for some means of expressing his love for the Tsar. His eyes watered from knowing it was impossible. The Tsar called up the colonel of the regiment and said a few words to him.
‘My God! What would I do if the Emperor spoke to me?’ thought Rostov. ‘I think I’d die of happiness.’
The Tsar addressed the officers, too.
‘I thank you all, gentlemen,’ he said, every word sounding to Rostov like music from heaven, ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’
Rostov would have gladly died there and then for his Emperor.
‘You have won the colours of St George and you will be worthy of them.’
‘Oh, if only I could die for him, die for him!’ thought Rostov.
The Tsar said something else that Rostov couldn’t hear, and the men, lungs bursting, roared their hurrah.
Rostov, too, thrusting forward in his saddle, roared with all his might, willing to do himself an injury cheering, as long as he could give full voice to his zeal for the Tsar.
The Tsar stood for a few seconds facing the hussars as if wondering what to do next.
‘How could the Emperor wonder what to do next?’ Rostov asked himself, but then sure enough, even this hesitation seemed to him majestic and enchanting, like everything the Tsar did.
The Tsar’s hesitation lasted only an instant. Then the royal foot in its fashionable narrow-pointed boot touched the belly of his bobtailed chestnut mare. The royal hand in its white glove gathered up the reins, and he moved off, accompanied by a sea of aides bobbing up and down. He moved further and further away, stopping at other regiments, until eventually all that Rostov could see of him through the suite surrounding the Emperors was the white plume of his cocked hat.
Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed Bolkonsky, sitting in a slack, indolent pose. Rostov remembered yesterday’s quarrel and again wondered whether or not to challenge him. ‘Of course not,’ Rostov reflected. ‘How could anyone even think or talk about such things at a time like this? A time of such love, such bliss, such self-sacrifice, what do our insults and squabbles matter? This is a time when I love everybody and forgive everybody,’ thought Rostov.
When the Tsar had inspected almost all the regiments, the troops began their march past, and Rostov, bringing up the rear on Bedouin, so recently bought from Denisov, was the last rider in his squadron, and completely exposed to the Tsar’s view.
Still some distance away from him, Rostov, a first-class horseman, twice put his spurs to Bedouin, urging him into the frenzied, eye-catching trot which Bedouin always fell into when he was worked up. Bending his foaming nose down to his chest, arching his tail, virtually floating in mid-air without touching the ground, Bedouin seemed no less conscious of the Tsar’s eye upon him as he lifted his legs in a graceful high action, trotting past in superb style.
Rostov himself drew his legs back and sucked his stomach in, very much at one with his horse, and rode past the Tsar with a frowning but ecstatic face, looking a ‘wight devil’, as Denisov would have said.
‘Bravo, Pavlograds!’ shouted the Tsar.
‘My God! I’d be so happy if he ordered me to go through fire here and now,’ thought Rostov.
