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By Root 3973 0

on duty to announce him once more, but he was looked at with mockery and told that his turn would come in due time. After several persons were led into and out of the minister’s office by the adjutant, the fearsome door received an officer who had struck Prince Andrei with his humiliated and frightened look. The officer’s audience lasted a long time. Suddenly the thunder of an unpleasant voice was heard from behind the door, and the officer emerged, pale, his lips trembling, and, clutching his head, passed through the anteroom. After that, Prince Andrei was led to the door, and the officer on duty said in a whisper: “To the right, by the window.”

Prince Andrei entered a tidy, unostentatious office and saw by the desk a forty-year-old man with a long waist, a long, close-cropped head, and thick wrinkles, with scowling brows over dull, hazel-green eyes and a drooping red nose. Arakcheev turned his head towards him without looking at him.

“What’s your petition?” asked Arakcheev.

“I am not…petitioning for anything, Your Excellency,” Prince Andrei said softly. Arakcheev’s eyes turned towards him.

“Sit down,” said Arakcheev, “Prince Bolkonsky.”

“I am not petitioning for anything, but the sovereign emperor has deigned to pass on to Your Excellency the memorandum I submitted…”

“You see, my most gentle sir, I have read your memorandum,” Arakcheev interrupted, speaking only the first words benignly, again without looking him in the face and lapsing more and more into a grumblingly contemptuous tone. “Proposing new military regulations? There are many regulations, and no one to carry out the old ones. Everybody writes regulations these days; it’s easier to write them than to follow them.”

“I have come by the will of the sovereign emperor to learn from Your Excellency what chances you intend to give to the memorandum submitted,” Prince Andrei said courteously.

“I wrote a decision on your memorandum and it was passed on to the committee. I do not approve,” said Arakcheev, getting up and taking a paper from his desk. “Here,” he handed it to Prince Andrei.

Across the paper was scrawled, in pencil, without capitals, without orthography, without punctuation: “unsoundly compiled since copied from french military regulations and unnecessarily deviating from military articles.”

“To what committee has the memorandum been passed on?” asked Prince Andrei.

“To the commission on military regulations, and I have proposed that Your Honor be enrolled as a member. Only without salary.”

Prince Andrei smiled.

“I do not wish any.”

“Member, without salary,” repeated Arakcheev. “My respects. Hey! Call ’em in! Who’s next?” he shouted, bowing to Prince Andrei.

V

While waiting to hear about his enrollment as a member of the committee, Prince Andrei renewed old acquaintances, especially with those persons whom he knew were in power and could be useful to him. He now experienced in Petersburg a feeling similar to what he had experienced on the eve of battle, when he had fretted with anxious curiosity and was irresistibly drawn to the higher spheres, where the future was being prepared on which the fates of millions depended. He sensed by the spitefulness of the old men, by the curiosity of the uninitiate, by the reserve of the initiate, by the haste and preoccupation of all, by the countless number of committees and commissions—and he learned of the existence of new ones every day—that now, in the year 1809, here in Petersburg, some enormous civil battle was being prepared, of which the commander in chief was a mysterious person, still unknown to him, whom he imagined to be a genius—Speransky. And both the matter of the reform, which he vaguely knew, and Speransky, who was its chief promoter, began to interest him so passionately that the matter of military regulations was very soon shifted to a secondary place in his consciousness.

Prince Andrei occupied one of the most advantageous positions for being well received in all the highest and most diverse circles of Petersburg society at that time. The party of the reformers cordially welcomed