War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [445]
The secretary was told to write down the resolution of the Moscow nobility that the Muscovites, like the people of Smolensk, would donate ten men per thousand with full equipment. The gentlemen of the session stood up as if relieved, scraping their chairs, and walked about the hall to stretch their legs, some arm in arm and talking.
“The sovereign! The sovereign!” suddenly spread through the hall, and the entire crowd rushed to the door.
Down a wide passage between walls of noblemen, the sovereign came into the hall. A respectful and frightened curiosity was expressed on all faces. Pierre was standing rather far away and could not hear all that the sovereign said. From what he did hear, he understood only that the sovereign was speaking of the danger the country was in, and of the hopes he placed in the Moscow nobility. Another voice responded to the sovereign, telling of the resolution just arrived at by the Moscow nobility.
“Gentlemen!” said the faltering voice of the sovereign; the crowd rustled and grew still again, and Pierre clearly heard the sovereign’s voice, so pleasantly human and touched with emotion, saying: “I have never doubted the zeal of the Russian nobility. But today it has exceeded my expectations. I thank you on behalf of the fatherland. Gentlemen, let us act—time is most precious…”
The sovereign fell silent, the crowd began to press around him, and rapturous exclamations were heard on all sides.
“Yes, most precious…spoken like a tsar,” the sobbing voice of Ilya Andreich said from behind. He had heard nothing, but had understood it all in his own way.
From the hall of the nobility, the sovereign passed into the hall of the merchants. He stayed there for about ten minutes. Pierre, among others, saw the sovereign come out of the merchants’ hall with tears of tenderness in his eyes. As was learned later, the sovereign had just begun his speech to the merchants when tears gushed from his eyes, and he had finished it in a trembling voice. When Pierre saw the sovereign, he was coming out accompanied by two merchants. One was a fat tax farmer known to Pierre, the other a mayor with a thin, narrow-bearded, yellow face. Both were weeping. The thin one’s eyes were filled with tears, but the fat tax farmer sobbed like a child and kept insisting:
“Take my life and my property, Your Majesty!”
Pierre had no other feelings at that moment except the desire to show that it was all nothing to him, and he was ready to sacrifice everything. He saw his speech with its constitutional tendency as a reproach to himself; he sought an occasion to smooth it over. Learning that Count Mamonov had donated a regiment, Bezukhov at once declared to Count Rastopchin that he was giving a thousand men and their maintenance.
Old Rostov could not tell his wife what had happened without tears, and at once agreed to Petya’s demand, and went himself to sign him up.
The sovereign left the next day. All the assembled noblemen took off their uniforms, planted themselves at home or in the clubs again, and, groaning, gave their stewards orders about the militia, astonished at what they had done.
Part Two
I
Napoleon started the war with Russia because he could not help going to Dresden, could not help getting befuddled with honors, could not help putting on a Polish uniform, yielding to the heartening impression of a June morning, could not refrain from outbursts of anger in the presence of Kurakin and then of Balashov.
Alexander refused all negotiations because he felt himself personally offended. Barclay de Tolly tried to lead his army in the best fashion, so as to fulfill his duty and earn the glory of a great general. Rostov rode to the attack against the French because he could not resist the wish to go galloping across a level field. And all the countless persons who participated in this war acted in just the same way, as a result of their personal qualities,