War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [102]
“Precisely for that reason, my dear. Voyez-vous, mon cher: hurrah for the tsar, for Rus, for the faith! Tout ça est bel et bon,‡191 but what do we—I mean the Austrian court—care about your victories? Bring us some nice little news about a victory of the archduke Karl or Ferdinand—un archiduc vaut l’autre,§192 as you know—even over a fire brigade of Bonaparte’s, and that will be a different story, we’ll shoot off all our cannons. Whereas this, as if on purpose, can only exasperate us. The archduke Karl does nothing, the archduke Ferdinand covers himself in shame. You abandon Vienna, you no longer protect it, comme si vous disiez:*193 God is with us, and God help you and your capital. There was one general we all loved: Schmidt. You put him in the path of a bullet and congratulate us with your victory!…You must agree that to think up more exasperating news than what you’ve brought would be impossible. C’est comme un fait exprés, comme un fait exprés.†194 Besides that, well, if you were to gain a truly brilliant victory, if the archduke Karl were even to gain a victory, what would it change in the general course of affairs? It’s too late now, since Vienna’s occupied by French troops.”
“Occupied? Vienna occupied?”
“Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is in Schönbrunn, and the count, our dear Count Vrbna, is going to him for orders.”9
After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, the reception, and especially after dinner, Bolkonsky felt that he did not quite understand the full significance of the words he had heard.
“This morning Count Lichtenfels was here,” Bilibin went on, “and he showed me a letter which described in detail the parade of the French in Vienna. Le prince Murat et tout le tremblement…‡195 You see that your victory doesn’t bring much joy and that you can’t be received as a savior…”
“Really, it’s all the same to me, all quite the same!” said Prince Andrei, beginning to realize that his news about the battle at Krems was indeed of little importance in view of such events as the occupation of the capital of Austria. “How is it that Vienna’s been taken? What about the bridge? And the famous tête de pont,§196 and Prince Auersperg? There was a rumor among us that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna,” he said.
“Prince Auersperg is standing on this side, our side, and defending us; I suppose he’s defending us very poorly, but still he’s defending us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has not yet been taken and, I hope, will not be taken, because it’s mined and there’s an order to blow it up. Otherwise we’d have been in the mountains of Bohemia long ago, and you and your army would have spent a bad quarter of an hour between two fires.”
“That still doesn’t mean the campaign is over,” said Prince Andrei.
“But I think it’s over. And the bigwigs here think so, too, though they don’t dare say it. It will turn out as I said at the beginning of the campaign, that the matter won’t be decided by your échauffourée de Dürenstein,*197 nor by gunpowder, but by those who invented gunpowder,” said Bilibin, repeating one of his mots,†198 10 releasing the skin on his forehead, and pausing. “The only question is what the meeting in Berlin between the emperor Alexander and the king of Prussia will tell us. If Prussia enters the alliance, on forcera la main à l’Autriche,‡199 and there will be war. If not, it will only be a matter of arranging where to draw up the preliminary articles for a new Campo Formio.”11
“But what an extraordinary genius!” Prince Andrei cried suddenly, clenching his small fist and pounding it on the table. “And what luck the man has!”
“Buonaparte?” Bilibin said questioningly, wrinkling his forehead and with that letting it be felt that a mot was coming. “Buonaparte?” he said with special emphasis on the u. “I think, however, that now that he’s prescribing laws for Austria from Schönbrunn, il faut lui faire grâce de l’u. I decidedly make an innovation and call him Bonaparte tout court.”§200
“No, joking aside,” said Prince Andrei, “do you really think the campaign is over?