‘Very good, if you’ll kindly wait for a moment,’ he said to the general in Russian but with the French accent that he always adopted when he wanted to speak scornfully, and once he saw Boris, Prince Andrey ignored the general (who came trotting along begging him to listen because he had more to say) and nodded to Boris with a bright smile as he turned towards him. At that moment Boris clearly saw what he had always suspected, that in the army, alongside the ranking and discipline written into the manuals, recognized throughout the regiment and known to him personally, there was a different order of ranking, a more important one, that could force this rigid, red-faced general to stand and wait politely while Prince Andrey – a mere captain – found it pleasant and convenient to have a chat with Lieutenant Drubetskoy. Boris felt all the more determined that from now on he was going to follow not the written code laid down in the regulations, but the unwritten one. He sensed that just by being recommended to Prince Andrey he was one up on the general, who in another setting, say at the front, could have annihilated him, a mere lieutenant. Prince Andrey came over and shook hands.
‘I’m so sorry you didn’t find me in yesterday. I was busy all day with the Germans. I went out with Weierother to check the disposition. You know what Germans are like about details – they go on for ever!’
Boris smiled, as if he understood as a matter of common knowledge what Prince Andrey was talking about. But it was the first time he’d heard the name Weierother, and he didn’t know what ‘disposition’ meant in this context.
‘Well, my dear fellow, I assume you still want to be an adjutant. I’ve been thinking about that since we last met.’
‘Yes,’ said Boris, colouring for some reason, ‘I was thinking of asking the commander-in-chief. He’s had a letter about me from Prince Kuragin. I wanted to ask because,’ he added, apparently by way of an apology, ‘I’m afraid the guards won’t be in action.’
‘Splendid! Splendid! We can talk about this in a minute,’ said Prince Andrey. ‘Just let me deal with this gentleman and I’m all yours.’ While Prince Andrey was away reporting to the commander-in-chief on behalf of the red-faced general, the general himself – he seemed not to share Boris’s views on the superiority of the unwritten code – glared so fiercely at the impertinent lieutenant who had stopped him saying his piece that Boris felt embarrassed. He turned away and waited impatiently for Prince Andrey to emerge from the commander-in-chief’s room.
‘Yes, old fellow, I have been thinking about you – along these lines,’ said Prince Andrey, when they had gone into the big room with the clavier in it. ‘It’s no good going to the commander-in-chief. He’ll be very nice to you, and invite you to dinner,’ (‘which wouldn’t come amiss in the service of that unwritten code,’ thought Boris) ‘but nothing would come of it. Adjutants, staff officers – we’ll soon have our own battalion. But I’ll tell you what we can do. I have a friend who is an adjutant general, an excellent fellow – Prince Dolgorukov. And you may not know it, but the fact is – Kutuzov, his staff, the whole lot of us don’t count for anything now. Everything’s concentrated around the Emperor. So let’s pay a visit to Dolgorukov. I need to see him, and I’ve already told him about you. We’ll be able to see whether he can find you a job on his staff, or somewhere else closer to the sun.’
Prince Andrey was always invigorated by guiding a young man and helping him on in the world. This propensity for helping other people – the kind of help he would have been too proud ever to accept for himself – kept him in close touch with the circle which had success in its gift, and which he found attractive. Only too pleased to take up Boris’s cause, he took him to see Prince Dolgorukov.
