Boris had come in with his comrade Zhilinsky to have a look at the banquet. On the way home he came across Rostov standing on the corner outside a house. ‘Rostov! Hello there! We missed each other,’ he said, and he had to ask what was wrong because Rostov looked a strange picture of gloom and despondency.
‘Nothing’s wrong. Nothing,’ answered Rostov.
‘You will drop in?’
‘Yes.’
Rostov stood there on the corner for quite some time, watching the celebrations from a distance. His anguished mind was seething with problems that couldn’t be resolved. His soul was alive with fearful doubts. He remembered Denisov with that new expression on his face and the way he seemed to have given in, and the hospital with all those torn-off arms and legs, the filth and disease. He remembered the stench of dead flesh in the hospital so vividly that he had looked round wondering where the smell was coming from. And he also kept remembering Napoleon with his little white hands, all smugness, and now being treated with affection and respect by the Emperor Alexander. What were all those torn-off legs and arms for, and why had those men been killed? Then he remembered Lazarev being rewarded, while Denisov got punishment instead of a pardon. He caught himself indulging in such strange ideas that they frightened him.
Hunger and the appetizing smell of the Preobrazhensky dinner brought him to his senses. He had to eat before going away. He went to a hotel he had seen that morning. There he encountered such a crowd of people and officers in civilian clothing like him that he had difficulty in getting dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him at his table. Naturally enough the conversation turned to the peace. Like most of the army Rostov’s two officer comrades were dissatisfied with the peace concluded after the battle of Friedland. They kept on saying that if they could have held out just a bit longer Napoleon would have been done for – his troops were out of biscuits and ammunition. Nikolay ate in silence; most of the time he spent drinking. He polished off two bottles of wine by himself. He was agonized by an inner turmoil beyond any resolution. He was scared of his own reflections, but he couldn’t get away from them. All of a sudden, in response to one of the officers who had said it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov started shouting with a degree of violence that was quite uncalled for and shocked all the officers.
‘How can you judge what would have been best!’ he yelled with a rush of blood that reddened his face. ‘How can you judge of the actions of the Emperor? What right have we to do any judging? We can’t understand the aims or the actions of the Emperor!’
‘I never mentioned the Emperor,’ said the officer in self-justification, his only explanation of Rostov’s outburst being that he was drunk.
Rostov wasn’t listening.
‘We’re not officials in the diplomatic section, we’re soldiers, that’s what we are,’ he went on. ‘If they tell us to die, we die. And if we get punished, we must be in the wrong. Ours is not to judge. If his Majesty the Emperor feels like recognizing Bonaparte as an Emperor, and taking him on as an ally, that’s the way it must be. If we started judging and criticizing at every end and turn, well, nothing will be sacred. Next thing we’ll be saying there’s no God, no nothing,’ Nikolay continued, banging on the table and yelling at them, for no good reason according to his companions but, as he saw it, quite logically.
‘We’ve got to do our duty, kill the enemy and stop thinking. And that’s your lot!’ he said.
‘And drink,’ put in one of the officers, not in an arguing mood.
‘Yes, drink,’ said Nikolay in full agreement. ‘Hey, you!’ he roared. ‘Another bottle!’
PART III
CHAPTER 1
In the year 1808 the Emperor Alexander visited Erfurt for another meeting with the Emperor Napoleon, and Petersburg high society had much to say about the splendour of this important meeting.
By 1809 the rapport between the two ‘world sovereigns’, as Napoleon and Alexander came to be called, had become so close that when Napoleon declared war on Austria, a Russian corps crossed the frontier for joint action alongside their old enemy Bonaparte against their old ally, the Austrian Emperor; so close indeed that high society began to talk of a possible marriage between Napoleon and one of Alexander’s sisters. But, aside from foreign policy, Russian society was much preoccupied at this time with internal changes taking place in all government departments.
Meanwhile life itself, the ordinary life of real people with their personal involvement in health and sickness, hard work and relaxation, their involvement in thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, enmity and passion, went on as usual, far removed from political considerations, such as being for or against Napoleon, and all questions of reform.
