War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [465]
He knew very well that this was Napoleon himself, and the presence of Napoleon could not throw him off any more than the presence of Rostov or of a sergeant major with a whip, because there was nothing he could be deprived of either by a sergeant major or by Napoleon.
He blurted out everything that was the talk among the orderlies. Much of it was true. But when Napoleon asked what the Russians thought about defeating or not defeating Napoleon, Lavrushka narrowed his eyes and fell to thinking.
He saw a subtle cunning here, as people like Lavrushka always see cunning in everything, so he frowned and paused.
“It’s like this: if there’s a battle,” he said thoughtfully, “and at the soonest, then that’s just that. Well, but if it happens three days after that same date, then it means that same battle’s going to put a drag on things.”
This is how it was translated for Napoleon: “Si la bataille est donnée avant trois jours, les Français la gagneraient, mais que si elle serait donnée plus tard, Dieu seul sait ce qui en arriverait,”*446 Lelorgne d’Ideville conveyed with a smile. Napoleon did not smile, though he was clearly in the most cheerful state of mind, and asked these words to be repeated for him.
Lavrushka noticed it and, to cheer him up more, said, pretending not to know who he was:
“We know you’ve got Bonaparte, he’s beaten everybody in the world—well, but with us things are different…” he said, not knowing himself how and why this boastful patriotism had slipped into his words towards the end. The translator conveyed these words to Napoleon without the end, and Bonaparte smiled. “Le jeune Cosaque fit sourire son puissant interlocuteur,”†447 says Thiers. Having ridden several paces in silence, Napoleon turned to Berthier and said he would like to test what effect would be produced sur cet enfant du Don‡448 by the news that this man with whom the enfant du Don was speaking was the emperor himself, the same emperor who had written his immortally victorious name on the pyramids.
The news was conveyed.
Lavrushka (realizing that this had been done in order to take him aback, and that Napoleon thought he would become frightened), so as to cater to his new masters, instantly pretended to be amazed, dumbfounded, goggled his eyes, and made the same face he was accustomed to make when taken off to be whipped. “À peine l’interprète de Napoléon,” says Thiers, “avait-il parlé, que le Cosaque, saisi d’une sorte d’ébahissement ne proféra plus une parole et marcha les yeux constamment attachés sur ce conquérant, dont le nom avait pénétré jusqu’à lui, à travers les steppes de l’Orient. Toute sa loquacité s’était subitement arrêtée, pour faire place à un sentiment d’admiration naïve et silencieuse. Napoléon, aprés l’avoir récompensé, lui fit donner la liberté, comme à un oiseau qu’on rend aux champs qui l’ont vu naître.”§449
Napoleon rode on, dreaming of that Moscou which so filled his imagination, and l’oiseau qu’on rendit aux champs qui l’ont vu naître galloped to the outposts, inventing beforehand everything that had not happened and that he would tell to his comrades. What had actually happened to him he did not want to tell, precisely because he thought it was not worth telling. He rode out to the Cossacks, asked them the whereabouts of the regiment that was part of Platov’s detachment, and towards evening found his master, Nikolai Rostov, who was staying in Yankovo and had just mounted up to go for a ride with Ilyin around the neighboring villages. He gave Lavrushka another horse and took him along.
VIII
Princess Marya was not in Moscow and out of danger, as Prince Andrei thought.
After Alpatych’s return from Smolensk, the old prince seemed suddenly to have awakened from sleep. He ordered the militia assembled in the villages, armed them, and wrote a letter to the commander in chief in which he informed him of the intention he had taken to remain in Bald Hills