War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [74]
The princess lay in the armchair, and Mlle Bourienne rubbed her temples. Princess Marya, supporting her sister-in-law, went on looking with her beautiful, tear-filled eyes at the door through which Prince Andrei had gone and making signs of the cross at him. From the study, like gunshots, came the oft-repeated angry sounds of the old man blowing his nose. As soon as Prince Andrei left, the door to the study quickly opened, and the old man’s stern figure appeared in its white smock.
“Gone? Well, that’s good!” he said, gave the unconscious little princess an angry look, shook his head reproachfully, and slammed the door.
Part Two
I
In October 1805 Russian troops were occupying villages and towns in the archduchy of Austria, and more new regiments kept arriving from Russia to be stationed by the fortress of Braunau, burdening the local inhabitants with their billeting. In Braunau the commander in chief, Kutuzov, had his headquarters.
On the eleventh of October, 1805, one of the infantry regiments just arrived in Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be reviewed by the commander in chief. Despite the non-Russian locality and surroundings—orchards, stone walls, tile roofs, mountains visible in the distance—and the non-Russian folk gazing with curiosity at the soldiers, the regiment looked exactly the same as any Russian regiment waiting for review somewhere in central Russia.
In the evening of the latest march an order had been received that the commander in chief would review the regiment on the march. Though the wording of the order seemed unclear to the regimental commander and the question arose of how to take the wording of the order—in marching uniform or not?—in the council of battalion commanders it was decided to present the regiment for review in parade uniform, on the grounds that it is always better to bow too much than not to bow enough. And so the soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, without a wink of sleep, spent the whole night mending and cleaning; the adjutants and company commanders calculated and counted off; and by morning the regiment, instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it had been the day before, during the latest march, was a well-ordered mass of two thousand men, each of whom knew his place, his duty, each of whose buttons and straps was in its place and sparkling clean. Not only were the externals in good order, but if it should please the commander in chief to look under the uniform, he would see on each man the same clean shirt, and in each pack he would find the prescribed number of things, “the whole kit and caboodle,” as soldiers say. There was only one circumstance with regard to which no one could be at ease. This was footgear. More than half the men had their boots falling to pieces. But this shortcoming was not the regimental commander’s fault, since, despite his repeated requests, the Austrian department had not released a supply, and the regiment had walked seven hundred miles.
The regimental commander was an elderly, sanguine general with grizzled eyebrows and side-whiskers, stocky and broader from chest to back than from shoulder to shoulder. He was wearing a brand-new uniform with creases from being packed away, and thick gold epaulettes which seemed not to weigh down but to lift up his massive shoulders. The regimental commander had the look of a man happily performing one of the most solemn duties in life. He strolled about before the front line, bouncing at each step as he strolled, and arching his back slightly. It was clear that the regimental commander admired his regiment, was happy with it, and that all his inner forces were taken up only with the regiment; but, in spite of that, his bouncing gait seemed to say that, besides military interests, no small part of his soul was taken up by the interests of social life and the female sex.
“Well, Mikhailo Mitrich, old boy,” he addressed one of the battalion commanders (the battalion commander, smiling, moved forward; it was clear that both men were happy), “we were hard put to