War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [551]
“War is the most difficult subjection of man’s freedom to the laws of God,” the voice said. “Simplicity is obedience to God; you cannot get away from Him. And they are simple. They don’t talk, they do. A word spoken is silver, unspoken is gold. Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. The most difficult thing” (Pierre went on thinking or hearing in his sleep) “consists in being able to unite the meaning of all things in his soul. To unite all things?” Pierre said to himself. “No, not to unite. It’s impossible to unite thoughts, but to hitch together all these thoughts—that’s what’s needed! Yes, we must hitch together, hitch together!” Pierre repeated to himself with inner rapture, feeling that precisely these and only these words expressed what he wanted to express and resolved the whole question that tormented him.
“Yes, we must hitch together, it’s time to hitch together.”
“We must hitch up, it’s time to hitch up, Your Excellency! Your Excellency!” some voice repeated, “we must hitch up, it’s time to hitch up…”
It was the voice of his groom, waking Pierre up. The sun was shining directly into Pierre’s face. He glanced at the dirty inn yard, in the middle of which soldiers were watering some scrawny horses, and from which wagons were driving through the gate. Pierre turned away with revulsion, closed his eyes, and quickly fell back again on the seat of the carriage. “No, I don’t want it, I don’t want to see or understand it, I want to understand what was being revealed to me in my dream. One more second, and I’d have understood everything. What am I to do? Hitch together, but how hitch everything together?” And Pierre felt with horror that all the meaning of what he had seen and thought in his dream was destroyed.
The groom, the coachman, and the yard porter told Pierre that an officer had arrived with news that the French were advancing on Mozhaisk and that our troops were leaving.
Pierre got up and, ordering them to harness the carriage and catch up with him, set off on foot through the town.
The troops were leaving and abandoning about ten thousand wounded. These wounded could be seen in the courtyards and in the windows of houses and crowding in the streets. In the streets, around the wagons that were to take the wounded away, shouts, curses, and blows could be heard. Pierre’s carriage caught up with him, and he offered it to a wounded general of his acquaintance, and drove with him to Moscow. On the way, Pierre learned of the death of his brother-in-law and the death of Prince Andrei.
X
On the thirtieth, Pierre returned to Moscow. Almost at the city gate, he ran into Count Rastopchin’s adjutant.
“We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” said the adjutant. “The count absolutely must see you. He asks you to come at once on very important business.”
Pierre, without stopping at home, hired a cab and drove to the commander in chief.
Count Rastopchin had come to town from his suburban house in Sokolniki only that morning. The anteroom and waiting room in the count’s house were full of officials who had come at his request or to receive orders. Vasilchikov and Platov had already seen the count and explained to him that to defend Moscow was impossible and that it would be surrendered. This news was concealed from the inhabitants, but the officials, the heads of various departments, knew that Moscow was to fall into the hands of the enemy, just as Count Rastopchin knew it; and to shift responsibility from themselves, they all came to the commander in chief, to ask what to do with the institutions they were in charge of.
Just as Pierre came into the anteroom, the courier who had come from the army was leaving the count’s office.
The courier waved hopelessly to the questions people addressed to him and walked through the room.
While