War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [483]
Prince Andrei arrived in Tsarevo-Zaimishche on the same day and at the same time of day that Kutuzov held the first review of the troops. Prince Andrei stopped in the village at the house of the priest, in front of which the commander in chief’s carriage stood, and sat down on a bench by the gate to wait for his serenity, as everyone now called Kutuzov. From the field beyond the village one could hear the sounds of regimental music, then the roaring of an enormous number of voices shouting “Hurrah!” to the new commander in chief. There by the gate, ten paces from Prince Andrei, taking advantage of the prince’s absence and the splendid weather, stood two orderlies, a courier, and a butler. A small, dark-haired lieutenant colonel of hussars, all overgrown with mustaches and side-whiskers, rode up to the gate and, glancing at Prince Andrei, asked if his serenity was staying there and when he would be back.
Prince Andrei said that he did not belong to his serenity’s staff and was also a new arrival. The hussar lieutenant colonel turned to a smartly-dressed orderly, and the commander in chief’s orderly said to him, with that special contempt with which a commander in chief’s orderlies speak to officers:
“What, his serenity? Should be here shortly. What do you want?”
The hussar lieutenant colonel smiled into his mustaches at the orderly’s tone, got off his horse, handed it over to the courier, and went up to Bolkonsky with a slight bow. Bolkonsky moved over on the bench. The hussar lieutenant colonel sat down beside him.
“Also waiting for the commander in chief?” said the hussar lieutenant colonel. “They say he’s accessible to everybody, thank God. With those sausage-makers it was big trouble! Not for nothing did Ermolov ask to be made a German. Now maybe Russians will be able to speak, too. Otherwise devil knows what they’ve been up to. Retreating, retreating all the time. Did you do the campaign?” he asked.
“I had the pleasure,” replied Prince Andrei, “not only of taking part in the retreat, but also of losing in that retreat everything that was dear to me, not to speak of my estates and the house I was born in…my father, who died of grief. I’m from the province of Smolensk.”
“Ah?…You’re Prince Bolkonsky? Very glad to make your acquaintance: Lieutenant Colonel Denisov, better known as Vaska,” said Denisov, shaking Prince Andrei’s hand and peering into his face with especially kind attention. “Yes, I heard,” he said with sympathy and, after a brief pause, went on: “That’s Scythian war. It’s all very well, only not for those who catch it in the ribs. So you’re Prince Andrei Bolkonsky?” He nodded his head. “Very glad, Prince, very glad to make your acquaintance,” he added, again with a sad smile, shaking his hand.
Prince Andrei knew Denisov from Natasha’s stories about her first suitor. That memory now carried him back sweetly and painfully to those aching feelings which he had not thought of for a long time now, but which were still there in his soul. Recently he had received so many other and such serious impressions—the abandoning of Smolensk, his visit to Bald Hills, the recent news of his father’s death—and had experienced so many feelings, that these memories had not come to him for a long time, and when they came, were far from affecting him with their former strength. And for Denisov that series of memories evoked by the name Bolkonsky was a distant, poetic past, when, after supper and Natasha’s singing, not knowing how himself, he had proposed to a fifteen-year-old girl. He smiled at the memory of that time and of his love for Natasha, and went on at once to what now concerned him passionately and exclusively. It was a campaign plan he had thought up while serving at outposts during the retreat. He had presented this plan to Barclay de Tolly and now intended to present it to Kutuzov. The plan was based on the fact that the French line of operations was very extended, and that, instead of or along with acting from the front, blocking the road for the