War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [708]
“Ah, standards!” said Kutuzov, clearly having difficulty tearing himself away from the subject that occupied his thoughts. He looked around absentmindedly. Thousands of eyes were looking at him from all sides, waiting for a word from him.
He stopped in front of the Preobrazhensky regiment, sighed deeply, and closed his eyes. Someone from the suite waved to the soldiers holding the standards to come and place them staff-down around the commander in chief. Kutuzov was silent for a few seconds, and, with evident reluctance, submitting to the necessity of his position, raised his head and began to speak. Crowds of officers surrounded him. He gazed attentively at the circle of officers, recognizing some of them.
“I thank you all!” he said, turning to the soldiers and again to the officers. In the silence that reigned around him, his slowly articulated words could be heard distinctly. “I thank you all for your difficult and faithful service. The victory is complete, and Russia will not forget you. Glory to you forever!” He paused, looking around.
“Lower it, lower its head,” he said to a soldier who was holding the French eagle and had inadvertently inclined it before the Preobrazhensky standards. “Further, further, like that. Hurrah, lads!” he said with a quick movement of his chin, addressing the soldiers.
“Hur-ra-ra-rah!” thousands of voices roared.
While the soldiers were shouting, Kutuzov, hunching up on his saddle, bent his head, and his eye lit up with a meek, as if mocking glint.
“Here’s the thing, brothers,” he said when the voices died down…
And suddenly his voice and the expression of his face changed: it was no longer a commander in chief speaking, but a simple old man, who obviously now wished to tell his comrades something they needed most of all.
There was a movement in the crowd of officers and in the ranks of soldiers, so that they could hear more clearly what he was going to say now.
“Here’s the thing, brothers. I know it’s hard for you, but what’s to be done! Be patient; it won’t last long. We’ll see our guests off, then we’ll have a rest. The tsar will not forget your service. It’s hard for you, but still you’re at home; but they—see what they’ve come to,” he said, pointing to the prisoners. “Worse than the lowest beggars. While they were strong, we took no pity on ourselves, but now we can pity them. They’re also people. Right, lads?”
He looked around, and in the intent, respectfully puzzled eyes directed at him he read sympathy with his words: his face began to grow brighter and brighter, starting from the old man’s meek smile that wrinkled, starlike, the corners of his mouth and eyes. He paused and hung his head as if in perplexity.
“But, that said, who invited them here? It’s their own doing, f…th…in the f…” he suddenly said, raising his head. And, swinging his whip, he rode off at a gallop for the first time in the whole campaign, while the soldiers, breaking ranks, joyfully guffawed and roared “Hurrah!”
The words spoken by Kutuzov were hardly understood by the troops. No one would have been able to convey the contents of the field marshal’s at first solemn and in the end simple-hearted old man’s speech; but the heartfelt meaning of that speech was not only understood, but that same feeling of majestic triumph, combined with pity for the foe and the consciousness of his rightness, expressed precisely by that old man’s good-natured oath—that same feeling lay in the soul of every soldier, and expressed itself in a joyful, long-drawn shout. When, after that, one of the generals addressed him with the question whether the commander in chief would be ordering a carriage brought, Kutuzov, in answering, sobbed unexpectedly, evidently deeply moved.
VII
The eighth of November, the last day of the battles at Krasnoe: it was already dark when the troops came to their night camp. The whole day had been quiet, frosty, with light, sparse snow falling; towards evening it began to clear. The deep purple, starry sky could be seen through the snowflakes,