By the light of the sparks in the tinderbox Bolhovitinov had a glimpsi of Shtcherbinin’s youthful face, and in a corner another man asleep This was Konovnitsyn.
When the tinder broke first into a blue and then into a red flame Shtcherbinin lighted a tallow candle—the cockroaches that had beei gnawing it ran away in all directions—and looked at the messenger Bolhovitinov was bespattered all over, and on rubbing his face with hi: sleeve, had smudged that too with mud.
‘But who sends the report?’ said Shtcherbinin, taking the packet.
‘The news is certain,’ said Bolhovitinov. ‘Prisoners and Cossacks am spies, all tell the same story.’
‘Well there’s no help for it, we must wake him,’ said Shtcherbinin, .etting up and going to the sleeping man who wore a nightcap and was overed up with a military cloak. ‘Pyotr Petrovich!’ he said. Konov- itsyn did not stir. ‘Wanted at headquarters!’ he said with a smile, nowing these words would be sure to wake him. And the head in the ightcap was in fact lifted at once. Konovnitsyn’s strong, handsome face, pith feverishly swollen cheeks, still wore for an instant a far-away, reamy look, but he gave a sudden start and his face resumed its cus- imary expression of calmness and strength.
‘Well, what is it? From whom?’ he asked at once, but with no haste, linking at the light. Hearing what the officer had to tell him, Konov- itsyn broke open the packet and read it. He had hardly read it before e dropped his feet in worsted stockings on to the earth floor and began utting on his boots. Then he took off the nightcap, and combing his air, put on a forage cap.
‘Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his highness.’
Konovnitsyn understood at once that the news was of great impor- mce, and that they must lose no time. As to whether it were good news r bad, he had no opinion and did not even put the question to himself, 'hat did not interest him. He looked at the whole subject of the war, ot with his intellect, not with his reason, but with something different. In is heart he had a deep, unaltered conviction that all would be well, yet lat he ought not to believe in this, and still more ought not to say so, ut ought simply to do his duty. And that he did do, giving all his energies ) it.
Pyotr Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dohturov, is simply as a for- lality included in the list of the so-called heroes of 1812 with the Bar- ays, Raevskys, Yermolovs, Platovs and Miloradovitchs. Like Dohturov, e had the reputation of being a man of very limited capacities and in- irmation; and, like Dohturov, he never proposed plans of campaign, ut was always to be found in the most difficult position. Ever since he id been appointed the general on duty, he had slept with his door open, id given orders to be waked on the arrival of any messenger. In battle a was always under fire, so that Kutuzov even reproached him for it, id was afraid to send him to the front. Like Dohturov, he was one of lose inconspicuous cogwheels, which, moving without creaking or rating, make up the most essential part of the machine.
Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night, Konovnitsyn frowned, irtly from his headache getting worse, and partly from the disagreeable ought that occurred to him of the stir this would make in all the nest influential persons on the staff; of its effect on Bennigsen in particular, ho since the battle of Tarutino had been at daggers drawn with Kutu- v; of the suppositions and discussions and orders and counter-orders, id the presentiment of all that was disagreeable to him, though he knew to be inevitable.
Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news, did in fact begin . once expounding his views on the situation to the general who shared
his abode; and IConovnitsyn, after listening in weary silence, remindet him that they must go to his highness.
XVII
Like all old people, Kutuzov slept little at night. He often dropped inti sudden naps during the daytime, but at night he lay on his bed withou undressing, and generally not asleep but thinking.
He was lying like that now on his bedstead, his huge, heavy, misshapei head leaning on his fat hand. He was thinking with his one eye wide open gazing into the darkness.
Since Bennigsen, who was in correspondence with the Tsar and hai more weight than all the rest of the staff, had avoided him, Kutuzov wa more at ease so far as not being compelled to lead his soldiers into use less offensive operations. The lesson of Tarutino and the day before th< battle, a memory that rankled in Kutuzov’s mind, must, he thought, hav its effect on them too.
