The first words he heard on coming round came from a French convoy officer who was gabbling, ‘We must stop here. The Emperor’s coming soon. He’ll enjoy seeing these gentlemen prisoners.’
‘Too many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army – he’s probably had enough of them,’ said another officer.
‘Yes, but look. They say this one is the chief commander of Alexander’s guards,’ said the first speaker, pointing to a wounded Russian officer in the white uniform of the horse guards. Bolkonsky recognized him as Prince Repnin, having met him in Petersburg society. Next to him stood another wounded horse guards officer, a boy of nineteen.
Napoleon arrived at a gallop and came to a halt.
‘Which one is the senior officer?’ he said, seeing the prisoners.
They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.
‘Are you the commander of Emperor Alexander’s horse guards regiment?’ asked Napoleon.
‘I was in command of a squadron,’ replied Repnin.
‘Your regiment did its duty honourably,’ said Napoleon.
‘Praise from a great general is a soldier’s highest reward,’ said Repnin.
‘I bestow it upon you with pleasure,’ said Napoleon. ‘Who is this young man at your side?’
Prince Repnin named him as Lieutenant Sukhtelen.
Napoleon looked at him and said with a smile, ‘He’s a bit young to be meddling with us.’
‘Being young doesn’t stop you being brave,’ said Sukhtelen with a tremor in his voice.
‘A splendid answer,’ said Napoleon. ‘Young man, you will go far.’
Prince Andrey, who had been pushed forward under the Emperor’s nose as a prize capture, could hardly have failed to attract his attention. Napoleon seemed to remember seeing him on the field, and in speaking to him he used the same epithet, ‘young man’, which his first sight of Bolkonsky had deposited in his memory.
‘What about you, young man,’ he said to him. ‘How are you feeling, my dear fellow?’
Even though five minutes earlier Prince Andrey had been able to say a few words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now, with his eyes glued on Napoleon, he said nothing . . . All the things that Napoleon stood for seemed so trivial at that moment, his hero seemed so petty in his squalid vanity and triumphalism, compared with that lofty, righteous and kindly sky which he had seen and understood, that he couldn’t reply. Everything in the world seemed pointless and trivial beside the solemn and serious line of thinking induced in him by weakness from loss of blood, great pain and a brush with death. Looking Napoleon straight in the eye, Prince Andrey mused on the insignificance of greatness, on the insignificance of human life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and most of all the insignificance of death, which no living person could make sense of or explain.
The Emperor, after pausing for a reply that never came, turned to go and before riding away he spoke to one the officers in command. ‘I want these gentlemen well looked after and taken to my camp. Let my surgeon, Dr Larrey, see to their wounds.
The soldiers carrying Prince Andrey had come across the gold icon that Princess Marya had hung around her brother’s neck and removed it, but once they had seen the Emperor’s benevolent attitude to the prisoners they soon put it back again.
Prince Andrey didn’t see anyone put it back, or how it was done, but suddenly there it was again on his chest outside his uniform, his icon on its delicate gold chain.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ thought Prince Andrey, as he glanced down at the little icon which his sister had hung round his neck with such feeling and reverence, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if everything was as clear-cut and straightforward as it seems to Marie? Wouldn’t it be nice if we knew where to turn to for help in this life and what to expect when it’s over, beyond the grave?’
‘What happiness and peace of mind would be mine if I only could say now, “Lord have mercy upon me! . . .” But who would I be talking to? Either some indeterminate, inaccessible power, which I cannot have any contact with and cannot even put into words, the great All or Nothing,’ he said to himself, ‘or else that God sewn up in a little bag like Marie’s icon? No, nothing is certain, nothing but the nothingness of all that we can understand, and the splendour of something we can’t understand, but we know to be infinitely important!’
