War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [857]
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*487Have biscuits and rice been distributed to the regiments of the guard?
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†488Rice, too?
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‡489Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, such is its nature; leave life alone there and let it defend itself: it will do more than if you paralyze it by loading it down with remedies. Our body is like a perfect watch that must run for a certain time; the watchmaker is not able to open it, he can only handle it by feel and blindfolded. Our body is a machine for living, that’s all.
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§490Tomorrow we’ll be dealing with Kutuzov.
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*491Ah! an old-timer!
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*492The baptism of fire.
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*493Tell the king of Naples…that it’s not yet midday, and that I still don’t see my chessboard clearly. Go…
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*494Well, what is it?
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†495Gosling I made into an eagle.
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‡496A hellish fire.
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*497Go…
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†498The men of iron.
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‡499Of bundles of standards and enemy eagles.
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*500At eight hundred leagues from France I won’t have my guard annihilated.
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*501The old gentleman…makes himself quite comfortable.
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†502At the old gentleman’s self-conceit.
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‡503So you don’t think like others that we are obliged to retreat?
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*504On the contrary, Your Highness, in undecided affairs it is always the most stubborn one who remains victorious…and my opinion…
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*505They want more!…
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†506They want more…give it to them.
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*507The battlefield was superb.
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†508The war in Russia should have been the most popular of modern times: it was a war of good sense and true interests, of rest and security for all; it was purely pacific and conservative.
It was for the great cause, the end of uncertainties and the beginning of security. A new horizon, new works would unfold, all filled with well-being and the prosperity of all. The European system had been founded; it was only a question of organizing it.
Satisfied on these major points and at peace everywhere, I also would have had my congress and my holy alliance. Those are ideas that were stolen from me. In this meeting of the great sovereigns, we would have dealt with our interests as a family and accounted to the peoples as clerk to master.
In this way, Europe would soon have become truly one people, and each person, traveling everywhere, would always have found himself in a common fatherland. It would have called for all rivers to be navigable for everyone, the communality of the seas, and that the great standing armies be henceforth reduced to nothing but guards for the sovereigns.
On returning to France, to the bosom of the fatherland—great, strong, magnificent, peaceful, glorious—I would have proclaimed its limits immutable, all future wars purely defensive; and any new enlargement antinational. I would have associated my son with the Empire; my dictatorship would have ended, and his constitutional reign would have begun…
Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the envy of the nations!…
My ensuing leisure and my old age would have been devoted, in company of the empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to visiting gradually and as a real country couple, with our own horses, every nook and cranny of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing wrongs, and scattering monuments and benefactions all over and everywhere.
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*509Of the 400,000 men who crossed the Vistula, half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles, Bavarians, Württembergers, Mecklenburgers, Spanish, Italians, Neapolitans. The imperial army properly speaking was made up of one-third Dutch, Belgians, inhabitants of the banks of the Rhine, Piedmontese, Swiss, Genoans, Tuscans, Romans, inhabitants of the 32nd military division, Bremen, Hamburg, etc.; it counted