Just as naturally, as simply, and as gradually as Kutuzov had come b the Court of Exchequer at Petersburg out of Turkey to raise the lilitia, and then to take the command of the army just at the time when e was needed, did a new commander come now to replace him, when his art was played.
1038 WAR AND PEACE
The war of 1812, in addition to its national significance, dear to ever Russian heart, was to take a new European character.
The movement of men from west to east was to be followed by a move ment from east to west, and this new war needed a new representative with other aims and other qualities, and moved by impulses differen from Kutuzov’s.
For the movement from east to west, and the establishment of th position of peoples, Alexander was needed just as Kutuzov was needei for the deliverance and the glory of Russia.
Kutuzov did not see what was meant by Europe, the balance of power and Napoleon. He could not understand all that.
After the enemy had been annihilated, Russia had been delivered am raised to the highest pinnacle of her glory, the representative of the Rus sian people, a Russian of the Russians, had no more left to do. Nothin; was left for the representative of the national war but to die. And hi did die.
XII
As is generally the case, Pierre only felt the full strain of the physica hardships and privations he had suffered as a prisoner, when they wen over. After he had been rescued, he went to Orel, and two days aften getting there, as he was preparing to start for Kiev, he fell ill and speni three months laid up at Orel. He was suffering, so the doctors said, frorr a bilious fever. Although they treated him by letting blood and giving him drugs, he recovered.
Everything that had happened to Pierre from the time of his rescue up to his illness had left hardly any impression on his mind. He had onlj a memory of dark grey weather, sometimes rainy and sometimes sunshiny, of internal physical aches, of pain in his feet and his side. He remembered a general impression of the misery and suffering of men. remembered the worrying curiosity of officers and generals, who questioned him about his imprisonment, the trouble he had to get horses and a conveyance; and more than all he remembered his own dulness of thought and of feeling all that time.
On the day of his rescue he saw the dead body of Petya Rostov. The same day he learned that Prince Andrey had lived for more than a month after the battle of Borodino, and had only a short time before died at Yaroslavl in the Rostovs’ house. The same day Denisov, who had told Pierre this piece of news, happened to allude in conversation to the death of Ellen, supposing Pierre to have been long aware of it. All this had at the time seemed to Pierre only strange. He felt that he could not take in all the bearings of these facts. He was at the time simply in haste to) get away from these places where men were slaughtering each other to some quiet refuge where he might rest and recover his faculties, and think over all the new strange things he had learned.
But as soon as he reached Orel, he fell ill. On coming to himself after
WAR AND PEACE 1039
s illness, Pierre saw waiting on him two of his servants, Terenty and aska, who had come from Moscow, and the eldest of his cousins, who as staying at Pierre’s estate in Elets, and hearing of his rescue and his mess had come to nurse him.
During his convalescence Pierre could only gradually recover from le impressions of the last few months, which had become habitual. Only V degrees could he become accustomed to the idea that there was no le to drive him on to-morrow, that no one would take his warm bed om him, and that he was quite sure of getting his dinner, and tea, and ipper. But for a long while afterwards he was always in his dreams irrounded by his conditions as a prisoner.
And only in the same gradual way did Pierre grasp the meaning of le news he had heard since his escape: of the death of Prince Andrey, f the death of his wife, and of the overthrow of the French.
