War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [398]
But the sovereign and Balashov went out, without noticing Arakcheev, through the door leading to the lighted garden. Arakcheev, holding his sword and looking around spitefully, followed some twenty paces behind them.
While performing the figures of the mazurka, Boris was ceaselessly tormented by the thought of the news brought by Balashov and how to find it out before anyone else.
During a figure in which he had to choose a lady, whispering to Hélène that he wanted to choose Countess Potocki, who seemed to have gone out to the balcony, he rushed, gliding over the parquet, to the door to the garden and, seeing the sovereign stepping onto the terrace with Balashov, stopped. The sovereign and Balashov were heading for the door. Boris, flustered, as if he had no time to retreat, pressed himself deferentially to the door frame and lowered his head.
The sovereign, with the agitation of a man personally offended, was finishing the following words:
“To enter Russia without a declaration of war. I will make peace only when not a single armed enemy remains on my soil,” he said. It seemed to Boris that the sovereign enjoyed uttering these words: he was pleased with the form in which he had expressed his thought, but displeased that Boris had overheard it.
“No one must know anything!” the sovereign added, frowning. Boris understood that this referred to him and, closing his eyes, bowed his head slightly. The sovereign went back into the room and remained at the ball for another half hour.
Boris was the first to learn the news of French troops crossing the Niemen and thanks to that had the chance to show certain important persons that much of what was concealed from others was known to him, and thereby had the chance to rise higher in the opinion of those persons.
The unexpected news of the French crossing the Niemen was particularly unexpected after a month of unfulfilled expectation, and that at a ball! The sovereign, in the first moment of receiving the news, under the influence of indignation and offense, had found a phrase which later became famous, which he liked himself, and which fully expressed his feelings. On returning home from the ball, at two o’clock in the morning, the sovereign sent for his secretary Shishkov and told him to write an order to the army and a rescript to Field Marshal Prince Saltykov, in which he insistently demanded the insertion of the words that he would not make peace so long as a single armed Frenchman remained on Russian soil.
The next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon.
Monsieur mon frère,*395
J’ai appris hier que malgré la loyauté avec laquelle j’ai maintenu mes engagements envers Votre Majesté, ses troupes ont franchis les frontières de la Russie, et je reçois à l’instant de Pétersbourg une note par laquelle le comte Lauriston, pour cause de cette agression, annonce que Votre Majesté s’est considerée comme en état de guerre avec moi dès le moment où le prince Kourakine11 a fait la demande de ses passeports. Les motifs sur lesquels le duc de Bassano fondait son refus de les lui délivrer, n’auraient jamais pu me faire supposer que cette démarche servirait jamais de prétexte à l’agression. En effet cet ambassadeur n’y a jamais été autorisé comme il l’a déclaré luimême, et aussitôt que j’en fus informé, je lui ai fait connaître combien je le désapprouvais en lui donnant l’ordre de rester à son poste. Si Votre Majesté n’est