‘Three times they slew me, three times I rose again from the dead. They stoned me, they crucified me ... I shall rise again ... I shall rise again ... I shall rise again. My body they tore to pieces. The kingdom of heaven will be overthrown . . . Three times I will overthrow it, and three times I will set it up again,’ he screamed, his voice growing shriller and shriller. Count Rastoptchin suddenly turned white, as he had turned white when the crowd fell upon Vereshtchagin. He turned away. ‘G ... go on, faster! ’ he cried in a trembling voice to his coachman.
The carriage dashed on at the horses’ topmost speed. But for a long while yet Count Rastoptchin heard behind him the frantic, desperate scream getting further away, while before his eyes he saw nothing but the wondering, frightened, bleeding face of the traitor in the fur-lined coat. Fresh as that image was, Rastoptchin felt now that it was deeply for ever imprinted on his heart. He felt clearly now that the bloody print of that memory would never leave him, that the further he went the more cruelly, the more vindictively, would that fearful memory rankle in his heart to the end of his life. Fie seemed to be hearing now the sound of his own words: ‘Tear him to pieces, you shall answer for it to me!— Why did I say these words? I said it somehow without meaning to . . .
I might not have said them,’ he thought, ‘and then nothing would have happened.’ He saw the terror-stricken, and then suddenly frenzied face of the dragoon who had struck the first blow, and the glance of silent, timid reproach cast on him by that lad in the fox-lined coat. ‘But I didn’t do
it on my own account. I was bound to act in that way. La plebe . . . le traitre . . . le bien publique, . . .’ he mused.
The bridge over the Yauza was still crowded with troops. It was hot. Kutuzov, looking careworn and weary, was sitting on a bench near the bridge, and playing with a whip on the sand, when a carriage rattled noisily up to him. A man in the uniform of a general, wearing a hat with plumes, came up to Kutuzov. He began addressing him in French, his eyes shifting uneasily, with a look between anger and terror in them. It was Count Rastoptchin. Fie told Kutuzov that he had come here, for since Moscow was no more, the army was all that was left. ‘It might have been very different if your highness had not told me you would not abandon Moscow without a battle; all this would not have been! ’ said he.
Kutuzov stared at Rastoptchin, and, as though not understanding the meaning of the words addressed to him, he strove earnestly to decipher the special meaning betrayed at that minute on the face of the man addressing him. Rastoptchin ceased speaking in discomfiture. Kutuzov slightly shook his head, and, still keeping his searching eyes on Rastopt- chin’s face, he murmured softly:
‘Yes, I won’t give up Moscow without a battle.’
Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something different when he uttered those words, or said them purposely, knowing them to be meaningless, Count Rastoptchin made him no reply, and hastily left him. And— stfange to tell! the governor of Moscow, the proud Count Rastoptchin, picking up a horse whip, went to the bridge, and fell to shouting and driving on the crowded carts.
XXVI
At four o’clock in the afternoon, Murat’s troops entered Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Wiirtemberg hussars, behind, with an immense suite, rode the King of Naples himself.
Near the middle of Arbaty, close to Nikola Yavlenny, Murat halted to await information from the detachment in advance as to the condition in which the citadel of the city, ‘le Kremlin,’ had been found.
A small group of inhabitants of Moscow had gathered about Murat. All stared with timid astonishment at the strange figure of the longhaired commander, decked in gold and feathers.
‘Why, is this their Tsar himself? Nought amiss with him,’ voices were heard saying softly.
An interpreter approached the group of gazers.
‘Caps . . . caps off,’ they muttered, turning to each other in the little :rowd. The interpreter accosted one old porter, and asked him if it were tar to the Kremlin. The porter, listening with surprise to the unfamiliar Polish accent, and not recognising the interpreter’s words for Russian, lad no notion what was being said to hirn, and took refuge behind he others.
844 WARANDPEACE
Murat approached the interpreter, and told him to ask where were the Russian troops. One of the Russians understood this question, and several voices began answering the interpreter simultaneously. A French officer from the detachment in advance rode up to Murat and reported that the gates into the citadel were blocked up, and that probably there was an ambush there.
‘Good,’ said Murat, and turning to one of the gentlemen of his suite, he commanded four light cannons to be moved forward, and the gates to be shelled upon.
