War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [613]
“Colonel Michaud, n’oubliez pas ce que je vous dis ici; peut-être qu’un jour nous nous le rappellerons avec plaisir…Napoléon ou moi,” said the sovereign, touching his breast. “Nous ne pouvons plus régner ensemble. J’ai appris à le connaître, il ne me trompera plus…”*662 And the sovereign frowned and fell silent.
Hearing these words, seeing the expression of firm resolution in the sovereign’s eyes, Michaud, quoique étranger, mais Russe de coeur et d’âme, felt himself at this moment enthousiasmé par tout ce qu’il venait d’entendre†663 (as he said afterwards), and he expressed in the following terms his own feelings as well as the feelings of the Russian people, of whom he regarded himself as the plenipotentiary.
“Sire!” he said. “Votre Majesté signe dans ce moment la gloire de la nation et le salut de l’Europe.”‡664
The sovereign inclined his head, dismissing Michaud.
IV
At that time when Russia was half conquered and the inhabitants of Moscow were fleeing to the distant provinces, and one popular militia after another was rising to the defense of the fatherland, we, who were not living at that time, involuntarily imagine that all Russian people, great and small, were taken up only with sacrificing themselves, saving the fatherland, or weeping over its loss. The stories and descriptions of that time all speak without exception of self-sacrifice, love of the fatherland, despair, grief, and the heroism of the Russians. In reality, it was not like that. It seems so to us only because all we see in the past is the general historical interest of the time, and we do not see all those personal, human interests that the people of that time had. And yet in reality the personal interests of the day are so much more significant than the general interests that as a result the general interests are never felt (or even noticed at all). The majority of the people of that time paid no attention to the general course of things, but were guided only by the personal interests of the day. And those people were the most useful figures of that time.
Those, however, who tried to understand the general course of things and wanted to take part in it with self-sacrifice and heroism, were the most useless members of society; they saw everything inside out, and everything they did to be useful turned out to be useless nonsense, like Pierre’s and Mamonov’s regiments, which looted Russian villages, like the lint that young ladies plucked and that never got to the wounded, and so on. Even those who were fond of being clever and expressing their feelings, when discussing the present situation of Russia, involuntarily gave their speeches the stamp either of pretense and falseness, or of useless condemnation and spite against the people, accusing them of something no one could be guilty of. In historical events what is most obvious is the prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Only unconscious activity bears fruit, and a man who plays a role in a historical event never understands its significance. If he attempts to understand it, he is struck with fruitlessness.
The significance of the event that was then taking place in Russia was the less conspicuous the closer a man’s participation in it was. In Petersburg and in provincial towns far from Moscow, ladies and men in militia uniform wept over Russia and the capital and spoke of self-sacrifice and so on; but in the army that was retreating beyond Moscow, there was almost no talk or thought of Moscow and, looking at it burning, no one swore revenge on the French, but they thought of the next pay day, of their next halt, of Matryoshka the sutler, and the like…
Nikolai Rostov, without any aim of self-sacrifice, but by chance, since the war found him in the service, took a direct and prolonged part in the defense of the fatherland, and therefore