‘To the army.’
‘But you meant to stay another two days?’
‘But now I am going at once’; and Prince Andrey, after a few words arranging about his journey, went to his room.
Do you know, my dear boy,’ said Bilibin, coming into his room, ‘I have been thinking about you. What are you going for?’ And in support of the irrefutability of his arguments on the subject, all the creases ran off his [ face.
Prince Andrey looked inquiringly at him and made no reply.
‘Why are you going? I know you consider that it’s your duty to gallop off to the army now that the army is in danger. I understand that, my boy, it’s heroism.’
‘Nothing of the kind,’ said Prince Andrey.
‘But you are un philosophe, be one fully, look at things from the other ; side, and you will see that it is your duty, on the contrary, to take care of I yourself. Leave that to others who are no good for anything else . . .
You have received no orders to go back, and you are not dismissed from ! here, so that you can remain and go with us, where our ill-luck takes us. : They say they are going to Olmiitz. And Olmutz is a very charming town.
And w r e can travel there comfortably together in my carriage.’
1 ‘That’s enough joking, Bilibin,’ said Bolkonsky.
‘I am speaking to you sincerely as a friend. Consider where are you going and with what object now, when you can stay here. You have two j alternatives before you’ (he puckered up the skin of his left temple) ‘either ; you won’t reach the army before peace will be concluded, or you will share
the defeat and disgrace with Kutuzov’s whole army.’ And Bilibin let his brow go smooth again, feeling that his dilemma was beyond attack.
‘That I can’t enter into,’ said Prince Audrey coldly, but he thought: ‘I am going to save the army.’
‘My dear fellow, you are a hero,’ said Bilibin.
XIII
The same night, after taking leave of the minister of war, Bolkonsky set off to join the army, not knowing where he should find it, at the risk of being caught by the French on the way to Krems.
At Briinn all the court and every one connected with it was packing up, and the heavy baggage was already being despatched to Olmiitz. Near Esselsdorf, Prince Andrey came out on the road along which the Russian army was moving in the utmost haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was so obstructed with baggage-wagons that it was impossible to get by in a carriage. Prince Andrey procured a horse and a Cossack from the officer in command of the Cossacks, and hungry and weary he threaded his way in and out between the waggons and rode in search of the commander-in-chief and his own luggage. The most sinister rumours as to the position of the army reached him on the road, and the appearance of | the army fieeing in disorder confirmed these rumours.
‘As for that Russian army which English gold has brought from the ends of the universe, we are going to inflict upon it the same fate (the fate of the army of Ulm)’; he remembered the words of Bonaparte’s I address to his army at the beginning of the campaign, and these words aroused in him simultaneously admiration for the genius of his hero, a feeling of mortified pride, and the hope of glory. ‘And if there’s nothing left but to die?’ he thought. ‘Well, if it must be! I will do it no worse than others.’
Prince Andrey looked disdainfully at the endless, confused mass of companies, of baggagC-waggons, parks of artillery, and again store-waggons, carts, and waggons of every possible form, pursuing one another and obstructing the muddy road three and four abreast. On every side, behind ; and before, as far as the ear could reach in every direction there was the 1 rumble of wheels, the rattle of carts, of waggons, and of gun-carriages, the tramp of horses, the crack of whips, the shouts of drivers, the swearing i of soldiers, of orderlies, and officers. At the sides of the roads he saw fallen horses, and sometimes their skinned carcases, broken-down waggons, with ; 1 solitary soldiers sitting on them, waiting for something, detached groups j - of soldiers strayed from their companies, starting off to neighbouring P villages, or dragging back from them fowls, sheep, hay, or sacks of stores J of some sort. Where the road went uphill or downhill the crush became i I greater, and there was an uninterrupted roar of shouts. The soldiers ! iij floundering knee-deep in the mud clutched the guns and clung to the wag- ti gons in the midst of cracking whips, slipping hoofs, breaking traces and
throat-splitting yells. The officers superintending their movements rode to and fro in front and behind the convoys. Their voices were faintly audible in the midst of the general uproar, their faces betrayed that they despaired of the possibility of checking the disorder.
‘Voila le cher holy armament,’ thought Bolkonsky, recalling Bilibin’s words.
