War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy [interesting novels to read .TXT] 📗

which I shall know nothing. I shall not exist.⁠ ⁠…”

He looked at the row of birches shining in the sunshine, with their motionless green and yellow foliage and white bark. “To die⁠ ⁠… to be killed tomorrow⁠ ⁠… That I should not exist⁠ ⁠… That all this should still be, but no me.⁠ ⁠…”

And the birches with their light and shade, the curly clouds, the smoke of the campfires, and all that was around him changed and seemed terrible and menacing. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He rose quickly, went out of the shed, and began to walk about.

After he had returned, voices were heard outside the shed. “Who’s that?” he cried.

The red-nosed Captain Timókhin, formerly Dólokhov’s squadron commander, but now from lack of officers a battalion commander, shyly entered the shed followed by an adjutant and the regimental paymaster.

Prince Andréy rose hastily, listened to the business they had come about, gave them some further instructions, and was about to dismiss them when he heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed.

“Devil take it!” said the voice of a man stumbling over something.

Prince Andréy looked out of the shed and saw Pierre, who had tripped over a pole on the ground and had nearly fallen, coming his way. It was unpleasant to Prince Andréy to meet people of his own set in general, and Pierre especially, for he reminded him of all the painful moments of his last visit to Moscow.

“You? What a surprise!” said he. “What brings you here? This is unexpected!”

As he said this his eyes and face expressed more than coldness⁠—they expressed hostility, which Pierre noticed at once. He had approached the shed full of animation, but on seeing Prince Andréy’s face he felt constrained and ill at ease.

“I have come⁠ ⁠… simply⁠ ⁠… you know⁠ ⁠… come⁠ ⁠… it interests me,” said Pierre, who had so often that day senselessly repeated that word “interesting.” “I wish to see the battle.”

“Oh yes, and what do the Masonic brothers say about war? How would they stop it?” said Prince Andréy sarcastically. “Well, and how’s Moscow? And my people? Have they reached Moscow at last?” he asked seriously.

“Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskáya told me so. I went to see them, but missed them. They have gone to your estate near Moscow.”

XXV

The officers were about to take leave, but Prince Andréy, apparently reluctant to be left alone with his friend, asked them to stay and have tea. Seats were brought in and so was the tea. The officers gazed with surprise at Pierre’s huge stout figure and listened to his talk of Moscow and the position of our army, round which he had ridden. Prince Andréy remained silent, and his expression was so forbidding that Pierre addressed his remarks chiefly to the good-natured battalion commander.

“So you understand the whole position of our troops?” Prince Andréy interrupted him.

“Yes⁠—that is, how do you mean?” said Pierre. “Not being a military man I can’t say I have understood it fully, but I understand the general position.”

“Well, then, you know more than anyone else, be it who it may,” said Prince Andréy.

“Oh!” said Pierre, looking over his spectacles in perplexity at Prince Andréy. “Well, and what do you think of Kutúzov’s appointment?” he asked.

“I was very glad of his appointment, that’s all I know,” replied Prince Andréy.

“And tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In Moscow they are saying heaven knows what about him.⁠ ⁠… What do you think of him?”

“Ask them,” replied Prince Andréy, indicating the officers.

Pierre looked at Timókhin with the condescendingly interrogative smile with which everybody involuntarily addressed that officer.

“We see light again, since his Serenity has been appointed, your excellency,” said Timókhin timidly, and continually turning to glance at his colonel.

“Why so?” asked Pierre.

“Well, to mention only firewood and fodder, let me inform you. Why, when we were retreating from Sventsyáni we dare not touch a stick or a wisp of hay or anything. You see, we were going away, so he would get it all; wasn’t it so, your excellency?” and again Timókhin turned to the prince. “But we daren’t. In our regiment two officers were court-martialed for that kind of thing. But when his Serenity took command everything became straightforward. Now we see light.⁠ ⁠…”

“Then why was it forbidden?”

Timókhin looked about in confusion, not knowing what or how to answer such a question. Pierre put the same question to Prince Andréy.

“Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were abandoning to the enemy,” said Prince Andréy with venomous irony. “It is very sound: one can’t permit the land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to marauding. At Smolénsk too he judged correctly that the French might outflank us, as they had larger forces. But he could not understand this,” cried Prince Andréy in a shrill voice that seemed to escape him involuntarily: “he could not understand that there, for the first time, we were fighting for Russian soil, and that there was a spirit in the men such as I had never seen before, that we had held the French for two days, and that that success had increased our strength tenfold. He ordered us to retreat, and all our efforts and losses went for nothing. He had no thought of betraying us, he tried to do the best he could, he thought out everything, and that is why he is unsuitable. He is unsuitable now, just because he plans out everything very thoroughly and accurately as every German has to. How can I explain?⁠ ⁠… Well, say your father has a German valet, and he is a splendid valet and satisfies your father’s requirements better than you could, then it’s all right to let him serve. But if your father is mortally sick you’ll send the valet away and attend to your father with your own unpracticed, awkward hands, and will soothe him better than a skilled man who is a stranger could. So it has been with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could serve her and