War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [397]
In the evening, between two orders—one about the speedy delivery of forged Russian banknotes prepared for distribution in Russia, and the other about the shooting of the Saxon caught with a letter containing information about the orders of the French army—Napoleon gave a third order about enrolling the Polish colonel who had needlessly thrown himself into the river in the Légion d’honneur, of which Napoleon himself was the head.8
Quos vult perdere—dementat.9
III
Meanwhile the Russian emperor had already spent more than a month in Vilno, holding reviews and maneuvers. Nothing was prepared for the war which everybody expected and for the preparation of which the emperor had come from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. Hesitation over which plan of all those proposed was to be accepted increased still more after the emperor’s one-month stay at headquarters. Each of the three armies had a separate commander in chief,10 but there was no supreme commander over all the armies, and the emperor would not take the title upon himself.
The longer the emperor stayed in Vilno, the less and less did they prepare for war, grown weary of expecting it. All the strivings of the people who surrounded the sovereign were, it seemed, aimed only at making the sovereign, while passing the time pleasantly, forget about the impending war.
In the month of June, after many balls and fêtes given by the Polish dignitaries, by the courtiers, and by the sovereign himself, the thought occurred to one of the sovereign’s Polish adjutant generals of giving a dinner and ball for the sovereign on the part of his adjutant generals. This thought was greeted joyfully by everyone. The sovereign gave his consent. The adjutant generals collected money by subscription. The person who might be most pleasing to the sovereign was invited to be hostess of the ball. Count Bennigsen, a landowner of Vilno province, offered his country house for the fête, and the thirteenth of June was the day fixed for the dinner, ball, boat rides, and fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen’s country house.
On the same day on which Napoleon gave orders to cross the Niemen, and his vanguard troops, driving back the Cossacks, crossed the Russian border, Alexander spent the evening at Bennigsen’s house—at the ball given by his adjutant generals.
It was a gay, brilliant fête; connoisseurs said that rarely had so many beauties gathered in one place. Countess Bezukhov, among other Russian ladies who had followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vilno, was at this ball, eclipsing the refined Polish ladies by her heavy, so-called Russian beauty. She was noticed, and the sovereign favored her with a dance.
Boris Drubetskoy, en garçon (playing the bachelor), as he put it, having left his wife in Moscow, was also at this ball, and, though not an adjutant general, contributed a large sum to the subscription for the ball. Boris was now a rich man, far advanced in honors, no longer seeking patronage, but standing on an equal footing with the highest of his peers.
At midnight the dancing was still going on. Hélène, who did not have a worthy partner, invited Boris for the mazurka herself. They sat out as the third couple. Boris, glancing coolly at Hélène’s gleaming bare shoulders emerging from her gown of dark gauze with gold, talked of old acquaintances and at the same time, unnoticeably to himself and others, never ceased for a second to observe the sovereign, who was in the same room. The sovereign was not dancing; he stood in the doorway and stopped now one couple, now another, with gracious words that he alone knew how to utter.
At the start of the mazurka, Boris saw the adjutant general Balashov, one of the closest persons to the sovereign, go up to him and in uncourtly fashion stop very close to the sovereign, who was talking with a Polish lady. When he finished talking with the lady, the sovereign glanced around questioningly and, evidently realizing that Balashov was acting that way only because there were very important reasons for it, nodded slightly to