‘They ought to understand that we can but lose by taking the offensive Time and patience, these are my champions!’ thought Kutuzov. H knew the apple mutt not be picked while it was green. It will fall of itsel when ripe, but if you pick it green, you spoil the apple and the tree and se your teeth on edge. Like an experienced hunter, he knew the beast wa wounded, wounded as only the whole force of Russia could wound it but whether to death or not, was a question not yet solved. Now fronj the sending of Lauriston and Bertemy, and from the reports brought b; the Irregulars, Kutuzov was almost sure that the wound was a dead! one. But more proof was wanted; he must wait.
‘They want to run and look how they have wounded him. Wait a bit you will see. Always manoeuvres, attacks,’ he thought. ‘What for? Any thing to distinguish themselves. As though there were any fun in fight ing. They are like children from whom you can never get a sensible view o things because they all want to show how well they can fight. But that’ not the point now. And what skilful manoeuvres all these fellows propose They think that when they have thought of two or three contingencie (he recalled the general plan from Petersburg) that they have though of all of them. And there is no limit to them! ’
The unanswered question, whether the wound dealt at Borodino wer mortal or not, had been for a whole month hanging over Kutuzov’s heac On one side, the French had taken possession of Moscow. On the othe side, in all his being, Kutuzov felt beyond all doubt that the terrible blm for which, together with all the Russians, he had strained all his strengt must have been mortal. But in any case proofs were wanted, and he ha> been waiting for them now a month, and as time went on he grew mor impatient. As he lay on his bed through sleepless nights, he did the ver; thing these younger generals did, the very thing he found fault with i them. He imagined all possible contingencies, just like the younger gen
ration, but with this difference that he based no conclusion on these sup^ iositions, and that he saw these contingencies not as two or three, buf s thousands. The more he pondered, the more of them he saw. He nagined all sorts of movements of Napoleon’s army, acting as a whole or a part, on Petersburg, against him, to out-flank him (that was what he /as most afraid of), and also the possibility that Napoleon would fight gainst him with his own weapon, that he would stay on in Moscow wait- ig for him to move. Kutuzov even imagined Napoleon’s army marching iack to Medyn and Yuhnov. But the one thing he could not foresee was i?hat happened—the mad, convulsive stampede of Napoleon’s army dur- ng the first eleven days of its march from Moscow—the stampede that rade possible what Kutuzov did not yet dare to think about, the complete annihilation of the French. Dorohov’s report of Broussier’s division, he news brought by the irregulars of the miseries of Napoleon’s army, umours of preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposi- ion that the French army was beaten and preparing to take flight. But 11 this was merely supposition, that seemed of weight to the younger aen, but not to Kutuzov. With his sixty years’ experience he knew how auch weight to attach to rumours; he knew how ready men are when hey desire anything to manipulate all evidence so as to confirm what hey desire; and he knew how readily in that case they let everything of n opposite significance pass unheeded. And the more Kutuzov desired his supposition to be correct, the less he permitted himself to believe it. "his question absorbed all his spiritual energies. All the rest was for him he mere customary performance of the routine of life. Such a customary lerformance and observance of routine were his conversations with the taff-officers, his letters to Madame de Stael that he wrote from Tarutino, lis French novels, distribution of rewards, correspondence with Peters- >urg, and so on. But the destruction of the French, which he alone fore- aw, was the one absorbing desire of his heart.
On the night of the nth of October he lay leaning on his arm and hinking of that.
There was a stir in the next room, and he heard the steps of Toll, ionovnitsyn and Bolhovitinov.
‘Hey, who is there? Come in, come in! Anything new?’ the commander- n-chief called to them. •
While a footman lighted a candle, Toll told the drift of the news.
‘Who brought it?’ asked Kutuzov, with a face that impressed Toll vhen the candle was lighted by its frigid sternness.
‘There can be no doubt of it, your highness.’
‘Call him, call him here!’
Kutuzov sat with one leg out of bed and his unwieldy, corpulent body >ropped on the other leg bent under him. He screwed up his one seeing ye to get a better view of the messenger, as though he hoped in his face to ead what he cared to know.
‘Tell me, tell me, my dear fellow,’ he said to Bolhovitinov, in his low, ged voice, pulling the shirt together that had come open over his chest.
