War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [614]
Looking at things as he did, he took the news of his being sent to Voronezh to remount the division not only with no regret at not taking part in the coming fight, but with the greatest satisfaction, which he did not conceal, and which his comrades understood perfectly well.
Several days before the battle of Borodino, Nikolai received money, papers, and, sending his hussars on ahead, drove to Voronezh by post chaise.
Only someone who has experienced it—that is, who has spent several months on end in an atmosphere of active duty—can understand the pleasure Nikolai experienced when he got out of the area over which the troops spread their foraging operations, supply trains, and hospitals; when, instead of soldiers, carts, the dirty traces of a camp’s presence, he saw villages with peasant men and women, landowners’ houses, fields with grazing cattle, posting stations with sleeping stationmasters. He felt such joy as if he were seeing it all for the first time. What especially surprised and gladdened him for a long time were the young, healthy women, who did not each have a dozen officers dangling after them, and who were glad and flattered that a traveling officer joked with them.
In the most cheerful state of mind, Nikolai arrived at night at a hotel in Voronezh, ordered everything that he had long been deprived of in the army, and the next day, clean-shaven and wearing his long-unworn full-dress uniform, went to report to the authorities.
The head of the militia was a civilian general, an old man who clearly enjoyed his military title and rank. He received Nikolai gruffly (thinking it was the military way), and questioned him imposingly, as if he had the right to do so, approving and disapproving, as if he were discussing the general course of things. Nikolai felt so cheerful that he found it merely amusing.
From the head of the militia, he went to the governor. The governor was a lively little fellow, very gentle and simple. He pointed Nikolai to the stud farms where he might get horses, recommended a dealer in town and a landowner fifteen miles out of town who had the best horses, and promised him every sort of assistance.
“Are you the son of Count Ilya Andreevich? My wife was great friends with your mother. We receive on Thursdays; today’s a Thursday, kindly come to my place without any formalities,” said the governor, dismissing him.
Straight from the governor’s, Nikolai took relay horses and, putting the sergeant major in with him, galloped off to the landowner’s stud farm fifteen miles away. Everything in this initial period of his stay in Voronezh was cheerful and easy, and as happens when a man is well-disposed himself, everything went smoothly and swimmingly.
The landowner Nikolai went to was an old bachelor, a cavalry officer, a horse fancier, a hunter, the owner of a carpet room,6 of century-old honey vodka, old Hungarian wine, and superb horses.
After a couple of words, Nikolai bought seventeen stallions for six thousand, choice ones (as he said), to make a display of his remount. Having had dinner and drunk a bit too much Hungarian, Rostov exchanged kisses with the landowner, with whom he was already on familiar terms, and galloped back over the abominable road in the merriest spirits, constantly urging the driver on, so as to be back in time for the governor’s soirée.
Changed, scented, his head doused with cold water, Nikolai, somewhat late, but armed with the phrase vaut mieux tard que jamais,*665 arrived at the governor’s.
It was not a ball, and no mention had been made of dancing, but everyone knew