War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [405]
“It’s a week since the campaign began, and you failed to defend Vilno. You’re cut in two and thrown out of the Polish provinces. Your army murmurs…”
“On the contrary, Your Majesty,” said Balashov, barely managing to remember what had been told him and following with difficulty these verbal fireworks, “the troops are burning with desire…”
“I know everything,” Napoleon interrupted him, “I know everything, and I know the number of your battalions as accurately as my own. You have less than two hundred thousand men, and I have three times that number. I give you my word of honor,” said Napoleon, forgetting that his word of honor could have no meaning, “I give you ma parole d’honneur que j’ai cinq cent trente mille hommes de ce coté de la Vistule.*410 The Turks are no help to you: they’re good for nothing and have proved it by making peace with you. The Swedes—their destiny is to be ruled by mad kings. Their king was insane, they changed him and took another, Bernadotte, who promptly went out of his mind—because no Swede who wasn’t a madman would conclude alliances with Russia.”15 Napoleon grinned spitefully and again put his snuffbox to his nose.
To each of Napoleon’s phrases, Balashov could and would have objected; he continually made the movement of a man who wishes to say something, but Napoleon interrupted him. For instance, about the madness of the Swedes, Balashov was about to say that Sweden was an island when Russia backed her; but Napoleon cried out angrily to stifle his voice. Napoleon was in that state of irritation in which a man has to talk and talk and talk, only so as to prove his rightness to himself. It was becoming oppressive for Balashov: as an envoy, he was afraid of losing his dignity and felt it necessary to object; but as a human being he shrank morally before the oblivion of groundless wrath in which Napoleon obviously found himself. He knew that all the words Napoleon was now saying meant nothing, that he would be ashamed of them himself once he came to his senses. Balashov stood, his eyes lowered, looking at the movements of Napoleon’s fat legs, and tried to avoid his gaze.
“What do I care about your allies?” said Napoleon. “I have the Poles for allies: there are eighty thousand of them, they fight like lions. And there will be two hundred thousand of them.”
And, probably becoming still more aroused because, in saying that, he had said an obvious untruth, and because Balashov, in the same pose of submission to his fate, stood silently before him, he turned around sharply, went up very close to Balashov’s face, and, making energetic and rapid gestures with his white hands, nearly shouted:
“Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, know that I will wipe her off the map of Europe,” he said with a pale face distorted by anger, beating one small hand against the other with an energetic gesture. “Yes, I’ll hurl you back beyond the Dvina, beyond the Dnieper, and rebuild that barrier against you which Europe was criminal and blind to have allowed to be destroyed.16 Yes, that’s what will happen to you, that’s what you’ve gained by distancing yourselves from me,” he said and silently paced the room several times, his fat shoulders twitching. He put the snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out again, brought it to his nose several times, and stopped facing Balashov. He paused, looking