War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [714]
All these people, precisely because they could not understand him, were convinced that there was no point in talking with the old man; that he would never understand all the profundity of their plans; that he would reply to them with his phrases (they thought they were only phrases) about a golden bridge, about the impossibility of crossing the border with a crowd of vagrants, and so on. They had already heard all that from him. And all that he said—for instance, that they should wait for provisions, that the men had no boots—all that was so simple, while all that they proposed was so complex and clever, that it was obvious to them that he was old and stupid, and they, though not in authority, were commanders of genius.
Especially after the union with the army of the brilliant admiral and Petersburg hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the staff gossip reached the highest limit. Kutuzov saw it and only shrugged his shoulders with a sigh. Only once, after the Berezina, did he get angry and write to Bennigsen, who reported separately to the sovereign, the following letter:
By reason of your bouts of illness, be so good, Your Excellency, upon receipt of this present, to go to Kaluga and wait there for further commands and appointments from His Imperial Majesty.
But following the sending away of Bennigsen, the grand duke Konstantin Pavlovich came to the army; he had participated in the beginning of the campaign and had been removed by Kutuzov. Now the grand duke, having come to the army, informed Kutuzov of the displeasure of the sovereign emperor at the poor success of our troops and the slowness of their movement. The sovereign emperor intended to come to the army himself any day.
The old man, as experienced in court affairs as in military, the same Kutuzov who in August of that year had been chosen commander in chief against the will of the sovereign, the same one who had removed the heir and grand duke from the army, who, on his own authority, in opposition to the sovereign’s will, had decreed the abandoning of Moscow, that Kutuzov now understood at once that his time was up, that his role had been played, and that he no longer had that imaginary authority of his. He understood it not only by the attitude of the court. On the one hand, he saw that the military business in which he had played his role was finished, and he felt that his mission was fulfilled. On the other hand, he began at the same time to feel physical weariness in his old body and the necessity of physical repose.
On the twenty-ninth of November, Kutuzov rode into Vilno—into his good old Vilno, as he used to say. Twice during his service, Kutuzov had been governor of Vilno.3 In wealthy, unscathed Vilno, apart from the comforts of life he had been deprived of for so long, Kutuzov found old friends and memories. And, suddenly turning away from all military and state cares, he immersed himself in the regular, habitual life, insofar as he was left in peace by the passions that boiled around him, as if all that was being accomplished now and had yet to be accomplished in the historical world did not concern him in the least.
Chichagov, one of the most passionate cutters-off and overrunners, Chichagov, who at first had wanted to make a diversion to Greece, and then to Warsaw, but had in no way wanted to go where he was ordered, Chichagov, known for his boldness of speech