And the general, looking round at the adjutant, walked with his quivering strut towards the regiment. It was obvious that he was pleased with his own display of anger, and that, walking through the regiment, he was trying to find a pretext for wrath. Falling foul of one officer for an unpolished ensign, of another for the unevenness of the rank, he approached the third company.
‘How are you standing? Where is your leg? Where is your leg?’ the general shouted with a note of anguish in his voice, stopping five men off Dolohov, who was wearing his blue overcoat. Dolohov slowly straightened his bent leg, and looked with his clear, insolent eyes straight in the general’s face.
‘Why are you in a blue coat? Off with it! ... Sergeant! change his coat . . . the dir . . .’ Before he had time to finish the word—
‘General, I am bound to obey orders, but I am not bound to put up with . . .’ Dolohov hastened to say.
‘No talking in the ranks! . . . No talking, no talking!’
‘Not bound to put up with insults,’ Dolohov went on, loudly and clearly. The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general paused, angrily pulling down his stiff scarf.
‘Change your coat, if you please,’ he said as he walked away.
II
‘Coming!’ the sentinel shouted at that moment. The general, turning red, ran to his horse, with trembling hands caught at the stirrup, swung himself up, settled himself in the saddle, drew out his sword, and with a pleased and resolute face opened his mouth on one side, in readiness to shout. The regiment fluttered all over, like a bird preening its wings, and subsided into stillness.
‘Silence!’ roared the general, in a soul-quaking voice, expressing at once gladness on his own account, severity as regards the regiment, and welcome as regards the approaching commander-in-chief.
A high, blue Vienna coach with several horses was driving at a smart
trot, rumbling on its springs, along the broad unpaved high-road, with trees planted on each side of it. The general’s suite and an escort of Croats galloped after the coach. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian general in a white uniform, that looked strange among the black Russian ones. The coach drew up on reaching the regiment. Kutuzov and the Austrian general were talking of something in low voices, and Kutuzov smiled slightly as, treading heavily, he put his foot on the carriage step, exactly as though those two thousand men gazing breathlessly at him and at their general, did not exist at all.
The word of command rang out, again the regiment quivered with a clanking sound - as it presented arms. In the deathly silence the weak voice of the commander-in-chief was audible. The regiment roared: 'Good health to your Ex . . lency . . lency . . lency!’ And again all was still. At first Kutuzov stood in one spot, while the regiment moved; then Kutuzov began walking on foot among the ranks, the white general beside him, followed by his suite.
From the way that the general in command of the regiment saluted the commander-in-chief, fixing his eyes intently on him, rigidly respectful and obsequious, from the way in which, craning forward, he followed the generals through the ranks, with an effort restraining his quivering strut, and darted up at every word and every gesture of the commander- in-chief,—it was evident that he performed his duties as a subordinate with even greater zest than his duties as a commanding officer. Thanks to the strictness and assiduity of its commander, the regiment was in excellent form as compared with the others that had arrived at Braunau at the same time. The sick and the stragglers left behind only numbered two hundred and seventeen, and everything was in good order except the soldiers’ boots.
