‘What! it’s as though I were glad to take advantage of his being alone and despondent. It may be disagreeable and painful to him, perhaps, to see an unknown face at such a moment of sadness; besides, what can I say to him now, when at the mere sight of him my heart is throbbing and leaping into my mouth?’ Not one of the innumerable speeches he had addressed to the Tsar in his imagination recurred to his mind now. These speeches for the most part were appropriate to quite other circumstances; they had been uttered for the most part at moments of victory and triumph, and principally on his deathbed when, as he lay dying of his wounds, the Emperor thanked him for his heroic exploits, and he gave expression as he died to the love he had proved in deeds. ‘And then, how am I to ask the Emperor for his instructions to the right flank when it’s four o’clock in the afternoon and the battle is lost? No, certainly I ought not to ride up to him, I ought not to break in on his sorrow. Better die a thousand deaths than that he should give me a glance, a thought of disapproval,’ Rostov decided, and with grief and despair in his heart he rode away, continually looking back at the Tsar, who still stood in the attitude of indecision.
While Rostov was making these reflections and riding mournfully away from the Tsar, Captain Von Toll happened to ride up to the same spot, and seeing the Emperor, went straight up to him, offered him his services, and assisted him to cross the ditch on foot. The Tsar, feeling unwell and in need of rest, sat down under an apple-tree, and Von Toll remained
standing by his side. Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse how Yon Toll talked a long while warmly to the Emperor, how the Emperor, apparently weeping, hid his face in his hand, and pressed Von Toll’s hand.
‘And it might have been I in his place?’ Rostov thought, and hardly restraining his tears of sympathy for the Tsar, he rode away in utter despair, not knowing where and with what object he was going now.
His despair was all the greater from feeling that it was his own weakness that was the cause of his regret.
He might . . . not only might, but ought to have gone up to the Emperor. And it was a unique chance of showing his devotion to the Emperor. And he had not made use of it. . . . ‘What have I done?’ he thought. And he turned his horse and galloped back to the spot where he had seen the Emperor; but there was no one now beyond the ditch. There were only transport waggons and carriages going by. From one carrier Rostov learned that Kutuzov’s staff were not far off in the village towards which the transport waggons were going. Rostov followed them.
In front of him was Kutuzov’s postillion leading horses in horsecloths. A baggage waggon followed the postillion, and behind the waggon walked an old bandy-legged servant in a cap and a cape.
‘Tit, hey. Tit!’ said the postillion.
‘Eh,’ responded the old man absent-mindedly.
‘Tit! Stupay molotitl’ (‘Tit, go a thrashing! ’)
‘Ugh, the fool, pugh!’ said the old man, spitting angrily. A short interval of silence followed, and then the same joke was repeated.
By five o’clock in the evening the battle had been lost at every point. More than a hundred cannons were in the possession of the French. Przhebyshevsky and his corps had surrendered. The other columns had retreated, with the loss of half their men, in confused, disorderly masses. .All that were left of Langeron’s and Dohturov’s forces were crowded together in hopeless confusion on the dikes and banks of the ponds near the village of Augest.
At six o’clock the only firing still to be heard was a heavy cannonade on the French side from numerous batteries ranged on the slope of the table-land of Pratzen, and directed at our retreating troops.
In the rearguard Dohturov and the rest, rallying their battalions, had been firing at the French cavalry who were pursuing them. It was beginning to get dark. On the narrow dam of Augest, where the old miller in his peaked cap had sat for so many years with his fishing tackle, while his grandson, with tucked-up shirt-sleeves, turned over the silvery, floundering fish in the net; on that dam where the Moravians, in their shaggy caps and blue jackets, had for so many years peacefully driven their horses and waggons, loaded with wheat, to the mill and driven back over the same clam, dusty with flour that whitened their waggons—on that narrow dam men, made hideous by the terror of death, now crowded together, amid army waggons and cannons, under horses’ feet and between carriage-wheels, crushing each other, dying, stepping over the
dying, and killing each other, only to be killed in the same way a few steps further on.
