War And Peace полностью

If you use this system to write out the words l’empereur Napoléon numerically, the sum of the letter-numbers comes to 666 (allowing 5 for the e omitted from le), which makes Napoleon the beast prophesied in the Apocalypse. More than that, if you apply the same system to the French number forty-two, quarante-deux (the span of months allotted to the beast that spoke ‘great things and blasphemies’), you get 666 once again, from which it emerges that Napoleon came to a peak in 1812, a French Emperor forty-two years old. This prophecy made a great impression on Pierre, and he began wondering what could possibly put an end to the power of the beast that was Napoleon. Using the same system of taking the numerical values of letters and adding them up, he set out to solve this problem. He wrote down possible answers: l’empereur Alexandre? La nation russe? He added up the letters, but they came to much more or much less than 666. Once he applied the system to his own name in its French version, ‘Comte Pierre Besouhof’, but the total was miles out. He changed the spelling, substituting z for s added de and the article le, but he still couldn’t get what he wanted. Then it occurred to him that if the answer he was looking for was to be found in his name, surely his nationality ought to be mentioned as well. He tried Le russe Besuhof and this came to 671, only five too much and 5 was the value of e, the letter dropped from the definite article in l’empereur Napoléon. Dropping the e again (quite unjustifiably) Pierre got the answer he was after in the phrase l’russe Besuhof – exactly 666! This discovery shook him. How, and by what means, he was connected with the great event predicted in the Apocalypse, he couldn’t tell, but the connection was there beyond doubt. It was all there: his love for Natasha, the Antichrist, Napoleon’s invasion, the comet, the number 666, l’empereur Napoléon and l’russe Besuhof – all these things were going to gestate together and something would suddenly emerge from them to help him break out of that vicious circle created by the petty concerns of Moscow that had so enthralled him, and lead him forth to some mighty achievement and true happiness.

The day before the Sunday when the new prayer was read out, Pierre was due to carry out his promise to the Rostovs by calling on Count Rostopchin to collect a copy of the Tsar’s appeal to the country and also pick up any late news from the army. On his arrival at Count Rostopchin’s that morning Pierre ran straight into a special courier just back from the army. The courier was a familiar figure on the Moscow ballroom scene and Pierre knew him well.

‘For heaven’s sake, can you take something off me?’ said the courier. ‘I’ve got a sackful of letters to parents.’

These included a letter from Nikolay Rostov to his father. Pierre took that, and Count Rostopchin gave him a copy of the Tsar’s appeal to Moscow, fresh off the press, the last army orders and his own most recent bulletin. A quick glance through the army announcements, including lists of the dead and wounded, and also recent honours, told Pierre that Nikolay Rostov had been awarded the Order of St George, Fourth Class, for outstanding bravery at Ostrovna, and that Prince Andrey Bolkonsky had been placed in command of a regiment of chasseurs. Although reluctant to reawaken the Rostovs’ memories of Bolkonsky, Pierre couldn’t resist the temptation to raise their spirits by handing on the news of their son’s decoration, so he sent the printed announcement and Nikolay’s letter straight round to the Rostovs, holding back the Tsar’s appeal, Rostopchin’s bulletin and the other announcements so he could take them along at dinner-time.

The conversation with Rostopchin, who looked so worried and hard-pressed, Pierre’s encounter with the courier, who had let it drop so casually that the army was in a terrible state, rumours of spies being caught in Moscow and a pamphlet in circulation stating that Napoleon had sworn to be in both capitals by autumn, together with the Tsar’s impending arrival the next day – all things conspired to rekindle with new intensity in Pierre that feeling of excitement and anticipation that had never really left him since the appearance of the comet, and had flared up again at the beginning of the war.