• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3986 0

This adjutant was there. He sat on the rolled-up bedding and dozed, evidently worn out by carousing or work. There were two doors in the reception room: one led straight to the former drawing room, the other to the study on the right. From the first door came the sound of voices talking in German and occasionally in French. There, in the former drawing room, were assembled, at the sovereign’s wish, not a council of war (the sovereign liked indefiniteness), but some persons whose opinion about the forthcoming difficulties he wished to know. It was not a council of war, but, as it were, a council of some people chosen to clarify certain questions personally for the sovereign. To this semi-council there had been invited the Swedish general Armfelt, the adjutant general Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, whom Napoleon had called a fugitive French subject, Michaud, Toll, Count Stein, who was not a military man at all, and finally Pfuel himself, who, as Prince Andrei had heard, was the cheville ouvrière*417 of the whole thing. Prince Andrei chanced to have a good look at him, because Pfuel arrived soon after he did and went to the drawing room after stopping for a moment to talk with Chernyshov.

At first glance, Pfuel, in his poorly cut Russian general’s uniform, which sat awkwardly on him like a mummer’s costume, seemed familiar to Prince Andrei, though he had never seen him. There was in him something of Weyrother, and of Mack, and of Schmidt, and of many other German theorist-generals whom Prince Andrei had managed to see in 1805; but he was the most typical of them all. Such a German theorist, who combined in himself all that there was in those other Germans, Prince Andrei had never seen before.

Pfuel was of small stature, very thin, but broad-boned, of coarse, robust build, with broad hips and sharp shoulder blades. His face was very wrinkled, his eyes deep-set. His hair in front, at the temples, had obviously been hastily slicked down with a brush, but in back it stuck up naïvely in little tufts. He came into the room looking around uneasily and angrily, as if he was afraid of everything in that big room he had come into. Keeping a hand awkwardly on his sword, he addressed Chernyshov, asking in German where the sovereign was. He clearly wanted to go inside as quickly as possible, have done with the bowings and greetings, and get down to work on the map, where he felt he belonged. He hastily nodded his head to Chernyshov’s words and smiled ironically, listening to him say that the sovereign was inspecting the fortifications which he, Pfuel himself, had laid out according to his theory. He grumbled something to himself in a tough bass voice, the way self-assured Germans speak: “Dummkopf…” or “Zu Grunde die ganze Geschichte…” or “S’wird was gescheites d’raus werden…”*418 Prince Andrei did not quite hear and would have passed by, but Chernyshov introduced him to Pfuel, observing that Prince Andrei had come from Turkey, where the war had ended so fortunately. Pfuel barely glanced not so much at as through Prince Andrei and said, laughing: “Da muss ein schöner taktischer Krieg gewesen sein.”†419 And, with a contemptuous laugh, he walked into the room in which the voices were heard.

Clearly, Pfuel, always ready for ironic irritation anyway, was especially upset that day that they had dared to inspect and criticize his camp without him. From this one brief encounter with Pfuel, Prince Andrei, owing to his memories of Austerlitz, formed a clear notion of the man’s character for himself. Pfuel was one of those hopelessly, permanently, painfully self-assured men as only Germans can be, and precisely because only Germans can be self-assured on the basis of an abstract idea—science, that is, an imaginary knowledge of the perfect truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he considers himself personally, in mind as well as body, irresistibly enchanting for men as well as women. An Englishman is self-assured on the grounds that he is a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore, as an Englishman, he always knows what he must