War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [491]
“Enough now, ma cousine, where do you get your information? On the contrary…”
“I will not submit to your Napoleon. Others can do as they like…If you don’t want to do this…”
“I’ll do it, I’ll give the order at once.”
The princess was clearly annoyed that there was no one to be angry with. She sat down on a chair, whispering something.
“But you’ve been incorrectly informed,” said Pierre. “The city’s all quiet, and there isn’t any danger. See what I’ve just read…” Pierre showed the little posters to the princess. “The count writes that he answers with his life that the enemy will not be in Moscow.”
“Ah, this count of yours,” the princess began with anger, “is a hypocrite, a villain, who set the people to rebelling himself. Didn’t he write in these foolish posters that whoever it might be, just take him by the topknot and drag him to the precinct? How stupid! Anybody who gets one, they say, honor and glory to him. So much for his pretty words. Varvara Ivanovna says the people nearly killed her for speaking French…”
“But that’s just…You take it all too much to heart,” said Pierre, and he began laying out patience.
Though the patience came out, Pierre did not go to the army, but remained in deserted Moscow, still in the same anxiety, irresolution, in the fear and at the same time the joy of awaiting something terrible.
The princess left towards evening the next day, and Pierre’s head steward arrived with news that it was impossible to get hold of the money needed to equip a regiment unless one of the estates was sold. In general, the head steward made it seem to Pierre that this whole undertaking with the regiment would ruin him. Pierre had a hard time concealing a smile as he listened to the steward’s words.
“Well, sell one,” he said. “What’s to be done, I can’t back out of it now!”
The worse the state of any affairs, and especially his own, the more pleasant it was for Pierre, the more obvious it was that the catastrophe he expected was approaching. By then Pierre had almost no acquaintances left in the city. Julie was gone, Princess Marya was gone. Of close acquaintances, only the Rostovs remained; but Pierre did not call on them.
That day, to distract himself, Pierre went to the village of Vorontsovo to look at the big hot-air balloon that was being constructed by Leppich to destroy the enemy,23 and the testing of the balloon, which was to go up the next day. The balloon was not ready yet, but, as Pierre learned, it was being constructed at the wish of the sovereign. About this balloon, the sovereign wrote the following to Rastopchin:
Aussitôt que Leppich sera prêt, composez-lui un équipage pour sa nacelle d’hommes sûrs et intelligents et dépêchez un courrier au général Koutousoff pour l’en prévenir. Je l’ai instruit de la chose.
Recommandez, je vous prie, à Leppich d’être bien attentif sur l’endroit où il descendra la première fois, pour ne pas se tromper et ne pas tomber dans les mains de l’ennemi. Il est indispensable qu’il combine ses mouvements avec le général-en-chef.*461
Returning home from Vorontsovo and driving through Bolotnaya Square, Pierre saw a crowd at the execution ground, stopped, and got out of the droshky. It was the flogging of a French cook accused of spying. The flogging had just ended, and the executioner was releasing from the flogging-horse a fat man with red side-whiskers, in blue stockings and a green jacket, who was moaning pitifully. Another criminal, thin and pale, was standing nearby. Both, judging by their faces, were Frenchmen. With a morbidly frightened air, similar to that on the thin Frenchman’s face, Pierre pushed his way through the crowd.
“What is this? Who? For what?” he asked. But the attention of the crowd—office clerks, tradesmen,