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By Root 4125 0

The beautiful role of guide of popular feelings was so much to Rastopchin’s liking, he grew so accustomed to it, that the necessity of quitting that role, the necessity of abandoning Moscow without any heroic effects, caught him unawares, and he suddenly lost the ground under his feet, on which he had been standing, and decidedly did not know what he was to do. He knew, but with all his soul did not believe until the last moment, that Moscow would be abandoned, and did nothing in view of that. The inhabitants were leaving against his will. If the government offices were evacuated, it was done only on the demand of the officials, with whom the count agreed reluctantly. He personally was concerned only with the role he had created for himself. As often happens with people gifted with an ardent imagination, he had known for a long time that Moscow would be abandoned, but had known it only with his reason, while with all his soul he had not believed it, and he was not transported in imagination into that new situation.

All his activity, painstaking and energetic (how far it was useful and had an effect on the people is another question), was aimed only at arousing in the inhabitants the feeling he himself experienced—patriotic hatred of the French and confidence in himself.

But when the event assumed its real, historical dimensions, when a merely verbal expression of hatred of the French proved insufficient, when it was impossible to express that hatred even in battle, when self-confidence proved useless with regard to the one question of Moscow, when the entire population, as one man, abandoned their property and poured out of Moscow, showing by this negative act all the force of their national feeling—then the role chosen by Rastopchin suddenly proved meaningless. He suddenly felt himself alone, weak, and ridiculous, with no ground under his feet.

When, having been awakened from sleep, he received the cold and peremptory note from Kutuzov, Rastopchin felt the more vexed, the more he felt himself to blame. All that he had precisely been charged with, all the government property he was supposed to have evacuated, was still in Moscow. To evacuate everything was impossible.

“Who is to blame, who allowed this to happen?” he thought. “Certainly not I. I had everything ready, I held Moscow like this! And see what they’ve brought things to! Scoundrels! Traitors!” he thought, without defining very well who these scoundrels and traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate whoever the traitors might be who were to blame for the false and ridiculous position he was in.

All that night Count Rastopchin gave orders, for which people came to him from all ends of Moscow. Those close to him had never seen him so gloomy and irritated.

“Your Excellency, they’ve come from the Department of Records, from the director, for instructions…From the Consistory, from the Senate, from the University, from the Foundling Hospital, the auxiliary bishop has sent…he asks…What are your orders for the fire brigade? The warden of the prison…the warden of the madhouse…”—all night announcements kept coming to the count.

To all these questions the count gave brief and angry replies, showing that his instructions were no longer needed, that everything he had so carefully prepared had been spoiled by someone, and that this someone would bear all the responsibility for everything that was happening now.

“Well, tell that blockhead,” he replied to the request from the Department of Records, “that he should stay and keep watch over his documents. What’s that nonsense you asked about the fire brigade? They’ve got horses—let them go to Vladimir. No leaving them to the French.”

“Your Excellency, the superintendent of the insane asylum is here, what are your instructions?”

“My instructions? Let them all leave, that’s all…And let the madmen go free in the city. If we’ve got madmen commanding the armies, these will fill the bill, too.”

To his question about the convicts in prison, the count shouted angrily at the warden:

“What, do you want me to give you a convoy