‘Well, goodbye, my dear fellow. I feel for you with all my heart in your great sorrow, and don’t forget – as far as you’re concerned I’m not his Highness, or a prince, or a commander-in-chief, I’m a father to you. If you need anything come straight to me. Goodbye, my dear boy!’ Again he hugged and kissed him.
And Prince Andrey was hardly out of the room when Kutuzov heaved a sigh of relief and settled down to Madame de Genlis and
How or why it came about Prince Andrey could never have explained, but after this encounter with Kutuzov he returned to his regiment greatly reassured about the way things were going and the man they had been entrusted to. The more clearly he registered the absence of all personal interest in this old man, who seemed to have reduced himself to going through the motions of old passions, and had replaced an active mind capable of organizing things and coming to conclusions with a capacity for calm contemplation as events unfolded, the more confident he felt that everything would work out as it should. ‘He has no axe to grind. He won’t have any ideas or hatch any schemes,’ Prince Andrey told himself, ‘but he’ll listen to everybody and miss nothing, he’ll put things in their proper places, he won’t get in the way of anything useful or allow anything that might do any harm. He knows there is something stronger and more important than his will – the inexorable march of events – and he has the knack of watching events and seeing what they mean, and when he sees what they mean he knows how to stand back from them and redirect his will somewhere else. But the main reason for believing in him,’ thought Prince Andrey, ‘is that he’s Russian – never mind Madame de Genlis and a few French proverbs – and his voice shook when he said, “Is this what we’ve been reduced to?” and he choked when he said he would “soon have them eating horse-flesh!” ’
It was this feeling, shared more or less dimly by everyone, that underpinned the unanimity and general approval which accompanied the appointment of Kutuzov as commander-in-chief, the people’s choice whatever misgivings may have been felt in court circles.
CHAPTER 17
After the Tsar’s departure from Moscow life went on in the same old way, and its course seemed so normal that it was soon hard to recall the days of fervour and heady patriotism, and hard to believe the country was in real danger, and the members of the English Club were also sons of Mother Russia, ready for any sacrifice. The one thing that brought back the general mood of patriotic fervour during the Tsar’s Moscow visit was the call for contributions of men and money, which soon turned from offers into officially formulated demands that had every appearance of being legal and binding.
As the enemy closed in on Moscow the attitude of the inhabitants to their situation, far from becoming all serious-minded, actually became more frivolous, as always happens with people who can see a terrible danger bearing down on them. At the first approach of danger two voices always speak out with equal force in a man’s heart: one tells him very sensibly to consider the exact extent of the danger and any means of avoiding it; the other says even more sensibly that it’s too wearisome and agonizing to contemplate the danger, since it is not in a man’s power to anticipate future events and avoid the general run of things, so you might as well turn away from the nastiness until it hits you, and dwell on things that are pleasant. Left to himself a man will usually listen to the first voice; out in society he listens to the second one. This is what was now happening to the good people of Moscow. It was years since there had been so much fun in the city.
Rostopchin’s broadsheets were the talk of the town, rivalling Vasily Pushkin’s3 latest
