War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [100]
“From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?” he asked. “With good news, I hope? There was an encounter with Mortier? A victory? About time!”
He took the dispatch, which was addressed to him, and began reading it with a sorrowful expression.
“Ah, my God! My God! Schmidt!” he said in German. “What a misfortune! What a misfortune!”
Having looked through the dispatch, he put it on the table and glanced at Prince Andrei, clearly weighing something.
“Ah, what a misfortune! You say it was a decisive action? Mortier wasn’t taken, however.” (He reflected.) “I’m very glad you’ve come with good news, though Schmidt’s death is a high price for a victory. His Majesty will certainly wish to see you, but not today. Thank you, get some rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the parade. I’ll let you know, however.”
The stupid smile that had disappeared during the conversation reappeared on the minister of war’s face.
“Good-bye, thank you very much. The sovereign emperor will probably wish to see you,” he repeated and inclined his head.
When Prince Andrei left the palace, he felt that all the interest and happiness afforded him by the victory had now left him and been given over into the indifferent hands of the minister of war and the courteous adjutant. His whole way of thinking changed instantly: the battle appeared to him now as a long-past, far-off memory.
X
Prince Andrei stayed in Brünn with his acquaintance, the Russian diplomat Bilibin.
“Ah, dear prince, there’s no guest more welcome,” said Bilibin, coming out to meet Prince Andrei. “Franz, take the prince’s things to my bedroom!” he turned to the servant who accompanied Bolkonsky. “What, are you a herald of victory? Excellent. And I’m sitting here sick, as you see.”
Prince Andrei, having washed and dressed, came out to the diplomat’s luxurious study and sat down to the prepared dinner. Bilibin settled comfortably by the fireplace.
Not only after his trip, but after the whole campaign, during which he had been deprived of all the comforts of cleanliness and the refinements of life, Prince Andrei experienced the pleasant feeling of repose amidst the luxurious conditions of life to which he had been accustomed since childhood. Besides, it was pleasant for him, after his Austrian reception, to speak, if not Russian (they spoke French), at least with a Russian man, who, he supposed, shared the general Russian aversion (now especially sharply felt) to the Austrians.
Bilibin was a man of about thirty-five, a bachelor, of the same society as Prince Andrei. They had been acquainted back in Petersburg, but had become more closely acquainted during Prince Andrei’s visit to Vienna with Kutuzov. As Prince Andrei was a young man who promised to go far in his military career, so, and still more, was Bilibin promising in the diplomacy. He was still a young man, but no longer a young diplomat, since he had begun to serve at the age of sixteen, had been in Paris, in Copenhagen, and now occupied a rather important post in Vienna. Both the chancellor and our ambassador in Vienna7 knew him and valued him. He did not belong to that large number of diplomats whose duty it is to have only negative merits, to not do certain things, and to speak French so as to be very good diplomats; he was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness, he occasionally spent nights at his desk. He worked equally well whatever the essence of the work consisted of. He was