War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [544]
They went because for Russians there could be no question of whether it would be good or bad under French rule in Moscow. To be under French rule was impossible: it was the worst thing of all. They were leaving before the battle of Borodino, and still more quickly after the battle of Borodino, despite the call to defense, despite the announcement by Moscow’s commander in chief of his intention to take up the Iverskaya icon and go to fight, and the hot-air balloons that were to destroy the French, and despite all the nonsense Rastopchin wrote in his posters. They knew it was for the army to fight, and if it could not, it was impossible to go to the Three Hills with young ladies and servants to fight Napoleon, and they had to leave, however sorry they were to abandon their property to destruction. They were leaving without thinking of the majestic significance of that huge, wealthy capital being abandoned by its inhabitants and obviously burned (a large, wooden city was bound to be burned); each was leaving for his own sake, and at the same time it was only because they left that that majestic event took place which will forever remain the finest glory of the Russian people. The lady who, in the month of June, was already moving out of Moscow to her estate near Saratov with her blackamoors and women jesters, with a vague awareness that she was not a servant to Bonaparte and fearing she might be stopped by an order from Count Rastopchin, was performing, simply and genuinely, that great deed which saved Russia. But Count Rastopchin, who now shamed those who were leaving, now evacuated government offices, now distributed good-for-nothing weapons among the drunken riffraff, now took up icons, now forbade Augustin to evacuate relics and icons, now confiscated all private carts, now transported the hot-air balloon constructed by Leppich on a hundred and thirty-six carts, now hinted that he would burn Moscow, now told how he had burned his own house and wrote a proclamation to the French in which he solemnly reproached them for destroying his orphanage; now he assumed the glory of having burned Moscow, now he renounced it, now he ordered the people to catch all the spies and bring them to him, now he reproached the people for it, now he banished all the French from Moscow, now he allowed Mme Aubert-Chalmet, the center of all the French population of Moscow, to remain in the city3 and ordered the old and venerable postmaster general Klyucharev, who had done nothing particularly wrong, to be arrested and exiled; now he gathered the people on the Three Hills to fight the French,4 now, in order to be rid of those same people, he turned them loose to murder a man and escaped through the back gate himself; now he said he would not survive the misfortune of Moscow, now he wrote French verses in an album about his part in the affair*512 —this man did not understand the meaning of the event that was taking place, but only wanted to do something himself, to astonish someone or other, to accomplish something patriotically heroic, and, like a boy, frolicked over the majestic and inevitable event of the abandoning and burning of Moscow, and tried with his little hand now to encourage, now to stem the flow of the enormous current of people which carried him along with it.
VI
Hélène, having returned with the court from Vilno to Petersburg, found herself in a difficult situation.
In Petersburg Hélène enjoyed the special patronage of a dignitary who occupied one of the highest posts in the state. In Vilno she had become close with a young foreign prince. When she returned to Petersburg, both the prince and the dignitary were there, both claimed their rights, and Hélène was faced with a new task in her career: to maintain her close relations with them both without offending either.
What would have seemed difficult and even impossible for another woman, never once