War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [506]
“At such a moment?” Pierre said reproachfully.
“At such a moment,” Prince Andrei repeated. “For them it’s only the moment when they can undermine a rival and acquire one more little cross or ribbon. For me tomorrow is this: a hundred thousand Russian and a hundred thousand French troops have come together to fight, and the fact is that these two hundred thousand men will fight, and whoever fights hardest and spares himself least will win. And if you like, I’ll tell you that, whatever goes on there, whatever muddle they make at the top, we’ll win the battle tomorrow. Tomorrow, whatever goes on there, we’ll win the battle.”
“That’s the truth, Your Excellency, that’s the veritable truth,” said Timokhin. “No sparing ourselves now! The soldiers in my battalion, if you can believe it, refused to drink their vodka: not on such a day, they said.” Everybody fell silent.
The officers stood up. Prince Andrei went out of the shed with them, giving his last orders to the adjutant. When the officers had gone, Pierre went up to Prince Andrei and was just about to begin a conversation when, on the road not far from the shed, the hoofbeats of three horses were heard, and, glancing in that direction, Prince Andrei recognized Wolzogen and Clausewitz, accompanied by a Cossack. They passed close by, continuing to converse, and Pierre and Andrei involuntarily heard the following phrases:
“Der Krieg muss im Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht kann ich nicht genug Preis geben,”*467 said one.
“O ja,” said the other voice. “Da der Zweck ist nur den Feind zu schwächen, so kann man gewiss nicht den Verlust der Privatpersonen in Achtung nehmen.”†468
“O ja,” the first voice confirmed.
“Yes, im Raum verlegen,” Prince Andrei repeated, snorting angrily, when they had ridden by. “Im this Raum I had a father, and a son, and a sister in Bald Hills. It’s all the same to him. There’s what I was saying to you—tomorrow these German gentlemen won’t win the battle, they’ll only muck things up as much as they can, because all there is in a German head is reasoning, which isn’t worth a tinker’s damn, but in their hearts they haven’t got the one thing needed for tomorrow—which is what’s in Timokhin. They gave him the whole of Europe and came to teach us! Fine teachers!” his voice shrieked again.
“So you think the battle will be won tomorrow?” said Pierre.
“Yes, yes,” Prince Andrei said distractedly. “One thing I would do if I had power,” he began again, “I would not take prisoners. What are prisoners? It’s chivalry. The French devastated my home and are on their way to devastate Moscow, and they’ve offended me and offend me every second. They’re my enemies, they’re all criminals, to my mind. And Timokhin and the whole army think the same. They must be executed! If they’re my enemies, they can’t be friends, whatever they may have talked about in Tilsit.”
“Yes, yes,” said Pierre, gazing at Prince Andrei with flashing eyes, “I agree with you completely, completely!”
The question that had been troubling Pierre ever since the hill in Mozhaisk and all that day, now presented itself to him as perfectly clear and fully resolved. He now understood the whole meaning and the whole significance of this war and the impending battle. Everything he had seen that day, all the significant, stern expressions on the faces he had seen flash by, appeared to him in a new light. He understood that hidden—latente, as they say in physics—warmth of patriotism which was in all the people he had seen, and which explained for him why all those people were calmly and as if light-mindedly preparing