War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [200]
“If there were no Bagration, il faudrait l’inventer,”*278 said the joker Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire.5 No one spoke of Kutuzov, and some denounced him in whispers, calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.
All over Moscow they repeated the words of Prince Dolgorukov: “Paste, paste, and you get pasted”—comforting himself for our defeat with the memory of previous victories, and repeated the words of Rastopchin, that French soldiers had to be urged into battle by high-flown phrases, that with Germans you had to reason logically, persuading them that it was more dangerous to run away than to go forward, but that Russian soldiers only had to be held back and begged to slow down. On all sides more and more new stories were heard about particular examples of courage shown by soldiers and officers at Austerlitz. This one had saved a standard, that one had killed five Frenchmen, that one had loaded five cannons single-handed. It was even said of Berg, by those who did not know him, that, wounded in the right hand, he had taken his sword in his left and forged ahead. Of Bolkonsky nothing was said, and only those who knew him closely regretted that he had died early, leaving his pregnant wife with his eccentric father.
III
On the third of March, the drone of talking voices hung in all the rooms of the English Club and, like bees in spring, the members and guests of the club shuttled back and forth, sat, stood, came together and dispersed again, in uniforms, tailcoats, and some even in powdered wigs and kaftans.6 Powdered, liveried servants in stockings and buckled shoes stood by every door and strained to catch every movement of the guests and members of the club, in order to offer their services. The majority of those present were venerable old people with broad, self-confident faces, fat fingers, firm movements and voices. This sort of guests and members sat in their known, habitual places, and met together in known, habitual circles. A small part of those present consisted of chance guests—mostly young men, among whom were Denisov, Rostov, and Dolokhov, who had again become an officer of the Semyonovsky regiment. On the faces of the young men, especially the military, there was an expression of that feeling of disdainful deference towards the old men which seemed to say to the older generation: “We’re prepared to respect and honor you, but remember all the same that the future is ours.”
Nesvitsky was there as an old member of the club. Pierre, who, on his wife’s orders, had let his hair grow long and removed his spectacles, was fashionably dressed, but walked about the rooms with a sad and dejected air. As everywhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of people who bowed before his wealth, and he treated them with a habitual lordliness and absentminded disdain.
By his age he should have been with the young people, but by his wealth and connections he was a member of the circle of old, venerable guests, and therefore he kept going from one circle to another. The most distinguished old men were at the centers of the circles, deferentially surrounded even by strangers, who came to listen to the well-known people. Big circles formed around Count Rastopchin, Valuev, and Naryshkin. Rastopchin was telling about how the Russians had been overrun by the fleeing Austrians and had had to use bayonets to make their way through the fugitives.
Valuev told confidentially that Uvarov had been sent from Petersburg to find out the opinion of the Muscovites about Austerlitz.
In the third circle, Naryshkin was talking about the meeting of the Austrian council of war in which Suvorov had crowed like a cock in response to some Austrian general’s stupidity.7 Shinshin, who was standing there, was about to make a joke, saying that Kutuzov had been unable to learn even that simple skill—of crowing like a cock—from Suvorov; but the old men gave the joker a stern look, letting