War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [403]
“Good day, General!” he said. “I have received the emperor Alexander’s letter, which you delivered, and am very glad to see you.” He glanced into Balashov’s face with his large eyes and at once began to look straight ahead past him.
It was obvious that Balashov’s person did not interest him in the least. It was clear that only what went on in his soul was of interest to him. Everything that was outside him had no meaning for him, because everything in the world, as it seemed to him, depended only upon his will.
“I do not want and have never wanted war,” he said, “but I was forced into it. Even now” (he emphasized this word) “I am prepared to accept all the explanations you can give me.” And he began to lay out, clearly and briefly, the reasons for his displeasure with the Russian government.
Judging by the calmly moderate and friendly tone with which the French emperor spoke, Balashov was firmly convinced that he wanted peace and intended to enter into negotiations.
“Sire! L’Empereur, mon maître,” Balashov began his long-prepared speech, when Napoleon, having finished his own speech, looked questioningly at the Russian envoy; but the gaze that the emperor’s eyes directed at him confused him. “You’re confused—pull yourself together,” Napoleon seemed to be saying to him, looking over Balashov’s uniform and saber with a barely perceptible smile. Balashov pulled himself together and began to speak. He said that the emperor Alexander did not consider Kurakin’s demand for passports a sufficient reason for starting a war, that Kurakin had acted thus by his own free will and without the consent of the sovereign, that the emperor Alexander did not want war, and that there were no relations with England.
“Not yet,” Napoleon put in, and, as if afraid of giving way to his emotion, he frowned and inclined his head slightly, thereby letting Balashov feel that he could go on.
Having spoken out everything he had been ordered to, Balashov said that the emperor Alexander wanted peace, but would not enter into negotiations otherwise than on condition that…Here Balashov hesitated: he remembered the words that the emperor Alexander had not written in the letter, but which he had ordered to be inserted without fail in the rescript to Saltykov and which he had ordered Balashov to convey to Napoleon. Balashov remembered the words—“that not a single armed enemy remains on Russian soil”—but some complex feeling held him back. He could not say those words, though he wanted to. He hesitated and said: on condition that the French troops withdraw beyond the Niemen.
Napoleon noticed Balashov’s confusion as he uttered these last words; his face twitched, his left calf began to tremble rhythmically. Without leaving his place, he began to speak in a higher and more hurried voice than before. During the speech that followed, Balashov, lowering his eyes more than once, involuntarily observed the trembling of Napoleon’s left calf, which increased as he raised his voice.
“I want peace no less than the emperor Alexander,” he began. “Have I not been doing everything during these eighteen months to obtain it? I have waited eighteen months for explanations. And what is demanded of me, in order to start negotiations?” he said, frowning and making an energetically questioning gesture with his small, white, and plump hand.
“The withdrawal of your troops beyond the Niemen, Sire,” said Balashov.
“Beyond the Niemen?” Napoleon repeated. “So now you want me to withdraw beyond the Niemen? Merely the Niemen?” Napoleon repeated, looking straight at Balashov.
Balashov lowered his head respectfully.
Instead of the demand four months earlier that he withdraw from Pomerania, now they demanded only that he withdraw beyond the Niemen. Napoleon turned quickly and started pacing the room.
“You say that withdrawal beyond the Niemen is demanded of me in order to begin negotiations; but in just the same way it was demanded