War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [169]
The concentrated movement which began that morning in the emperors’ headquarters and gave a push to all subsequent movement was like the first movement of the central wheel in a big tower clock. Slowly one wheel started, another turned, a third, and the wheels, pulleys, and gears were set turning more and more quickly, chimes began to ring, figures popped out, and the clock hands started their measured advance, showing the result of that movement.
As in the mechanism of a clock, so also in the mechanism of military action, the movement once given is just as irrepressible until the final results, and just as indifferently motionless are the parts of the mechanism not yet involved in the action even a moment before movement is transmitted to them. Wheels whizz on their axles, cogs catch, fast-spinning pulleys whirr, yet the neighboring wheel is as calm and immobile as though it was ready to stand for a hundred years in that immobility; but a moment comes—the lever catches, and, obedient to its movement, the wheel creaks, turning, and merges into one movement with the whole, the result and purpose of which are incomprehensible to it.
As in a clock the result of the complex movement of numberless wheels and pulleys is merely the slow and measured movement of the hands pointing to the time, so also the result of all the complex human movements of these hundred and sixty thousand Russians and French—all the passions, desires, regrets, humiliations, sufferings, bursts of pride, fear, rapture—was merely the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three emperors, that is, a slow movement of the world-historical hand on the clockface of human history.
Prince Andrei was on duty that day and constantly by the commander in chief.
After five in the evening, Kutuzov came to the emperors’ headquarters and, having spent a short time with the sovereign, went to see the grand marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.
Bolkonsky made use of this time to go to Dolgorukov and find out the details of the action. Prince Andrei sensed that Kutuzov was upset and displeased about something, and that there was displeasure with him at headquarters, and that all the persons of the imperial headquarters used with him the tone of people who knew something that others did not, and therefore he wanted to talk with Dolgorukov.
“Well, greetings, mon cher,” said Dolgorukov, who was having tea with Bilibin. “The fête is tomorrow. How’s your old man? In a bad humor?”
“I wouldn’t say he’s in a bad humor, but it seems he’d like to be heard.”
“He was heard at the council of war and will be heard when he talks to the point; but to drag our feet and wait for something now, when Bonaparte is afraid of a general battle more than anything—is impossible.”
“So you saw him?” asked Prince Andrei. “Well, what is Bonaparte like? What impression did he make on you?”
“Yes, I saw him and became convinced that he is afraid of a general battle more than anything in the world,” Dolgorukov repeated, obviously cherishing this overall conclusion which he had come to after his meeting with Napoleon. “If he wasn’t afraid of a battle, what would make him ask for this meeting, conduct negotiations, and, above all, retreat, when retreat is so contrary to his whole method of conducting war? Believe me, he’s afraid, afraid of a general battle, his hour has come. That I can tell you.”
“But tell me, how is he, what’s he like?” Prince Andrei asked again.
“He’s a man in a gray frock coat, who wished very much that I would say ‘Your Majesty’ to him, but, to his regret, did not receive any titles from me. That’s what he’s like, and nothing more,” Dolgorukov replied, glancing at Bilibin with a smile.
“Despite my full respect for old Kutuzov,” he went on, “what good ones we’d all be, waiting for something and giving him a chance to escape or trick us, whereas now he’s certainly in our hands. No, we mustn’t forget Suvorov and his rules: don’t put yourself in a position