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Volume II, Part Two, Chapter XIX

In the square to which the sovereign had ridden, there stood face to face, on the right a battalion of the Preobrazhensky regiment, on the left a battalion of the French Guard in their bearskin caps.

At the moment when the sovereign rode up to one flank of the battalions, which had presented arms, another throng of horsemen galloped up to the opposite flank, and at their head Rostov recognized Napoleon. It could be no one else. He rode at a gallop in a small hat, with the ribbon of St. Andrew across his shoulder, in a blue uniform open over a white waistcoat, on an unusually fine-bred gray Arab horse, on a crimson, gold-embroidered saddlecloth. Riding up to Alexander, he raised his hat, and at that movement Rostov's cavalryman's eye could not help noticing that Napoleon sat his horse badly and insecurely. The battalions shouted: Hurrah and Vive l'Empereur! Napoleon said something to Alexander. Both Emperors dismounted and took each other by the hand. On Napoleon's face was an unpleasantly affected smile. Alexander, with an affectionate expression, was saying something to him.

Rostov, not taking his eyes off them, despite the trampling of the horses of the French gendarmes who were forcing back the crowd, followed every movement of the Emperor Alexander and Bonaparte. He was struck, as by something unexpected, by the fact that Alexander bore himself as an equal with Bonaparte, and that Bonaparte, entirely at his ease — as though this intimacy with a sovereign were natural and familiar to him — treated the Russian Tsar as an equal.

Alexander and Napoleon, with the long tail of the suite, approached the right flank of the Preobrazhensky battalion, straight toward the crowd that was standing there. The crowd unexpectedly found itself so close to the Emperors that Rostov, standing in its front rows, grew afraid he might be recognized.

— Sire, je vous demande la permission de donner la légion d'honneur au plus brave de vos soldats, — said a sharp, precise voice, articulating every letter.

This was said by the diminutive Bonaparte, looking up straight into Alexander's eyes from below. Alexander listened attentively to what was being said to him and, inclining his head, smiled pleasantly.

— A celui qui s'est le plus vaillament conduit dans cette dernière guerre, — added Napoleon, rapping out every syllable, surveying with a composure and assurance outrageous to Rostov the ranks of Russian soldiers drawn up before him, all holding at the present and gazing motionless into the face of their own Emperor.

— Votre majesté me permettra-t-elle de demander l'avis du colonel — said Alexander, and took several hurried steps toward Prince Kozlovsky, the battalion commander. Bonaparte meanwhile began drawing the glove off his small white hand and, tearing it, threw it down. An adjutant, rushing hurriedly forward from behind, picked it up.

— Whom shall I give it to? — the Emperor Alexander asked Kozlovsky in a low voice, in Russian.

— To whomever you command, Your Majesty.

The sovereign frowned with displeasure and, glancing round, said:

— But one must give him an answer, after all.

Kozlovsky, with a resolute air, looked round at the ranks, and in that glance took in Rostov as well.

"Surely not me?" thought Rostov.

— Lazarev! — the colonel commanded with a frown; and the first soldier by height, Lazarev, stepped briskly forward.

— Where are you going? Stop here! — voices whispered to Lazarev, who did not know where to go. Lazarev halted, casting a frightened sidelong glance at the colonel, and his face quivered, as happens with soldiers called out before the front.

Napoleon turned his head slightly back and drew back his small plump hand, as though wishing to take something. The faces of his suite, guessing at that very second what was wanted, bestirred themselves, whispered, passing something from one to another, and the page — the very one Rostov had seen the day before at Boris's — ran forward and, bowing respectfully over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting a single second, laid in it an order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without looking, pressed two fingers together. The order found itself between them. Napoleon went up to Lazarev, who, rolling his eyes, stubbornly continued to look only at his own sovereign, and glanced round at the Emperor Alexander, showing by this that what he was now doing he was doing for his ally. The small white hand with the order touched a button of the soldier Lazarev. It was as though Napoleon knew that, for this soldier to be forever happy, rewarded, and set apart from all the world, it was only necessary that his, Napoleon's, hand should deign to touch the soldier's breast. Napoleon merely laid the cross against Lazarev's breast and, letting go his hand, turned to Alexander, as though he knew that the cross must stick to Lazarev's breast. And the cross did indeed stick.

Obliging Russian and French hands instantly caught up the cross and fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev glanced gloomily at the little man with white hands who had done something over him and, continuing to hold motionless at the present, again looked straight into Alexander's eyes, as though asking Alexander whether he was still to stand there, or whether they would order him to walk about now, or perhaps to do something else. But no one gave him any orders, and he remained for quite a long time in this motionless state.

The sovereigns mounted and rode away. The Preobrazhensky men, breaking their ranks, mingled with the French Guardsmen and sat down at the tables prepared for them.

Lazarev sat in the place of honor; Russian and French officers embraced him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of officers and common folk came up just to look at Lazarev. The hum of Russian and French talk and of laughter hung over the square around the tables. Two officers with flushed faces, merry and happy, passed by Rostov.

— How's that for a spread, brother? Everything on silver, — said one. — Have you seen Lazarev?

— I've seen him.

— Tomorrow, they say, the Preobrazhensky men are to entertain them.

— No, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs' pension for life.

— Now there's a cap, lads! — shouted a Preobrazhensky man, putting on a Frenchman's shaggy cap.

— Wonderfully fine, a beauty!

— Did you hear the password? — one Guards officer said to another. The day before yesterday it was Napoléon, France, bravoure; yesterday Alexandre, Russie, grandeur; one day our sovereign gives the password, and the next day Napoleon. Tomorrow the sovereign will send the Cross of St. George to the bravest of the French Guards. It can't be helped! He must respond in kind.

Boris, with his comrade Zhilinsky, had also come to look at the Preobrazhensky banquet. Returning, Boris noticed Rostov, who was standing at the corner of a house.

— Rostov! Hello; we haven't even seen each other, — he said to him, and could not refrain from asking what had happened to him, so strangely gloomy and upset was Rostov's face.

— Nothing, nothing, — answered Rostov.

— Will you come in?

— Yes, I'll come.

Rostov stood for a long time at the corner, looking from afar at the revelers. In his mind a tormenting labor was going on, which he could in no way bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in his soul. Now he remembered Denisov with his changed expression, with his submissiveness, and the whole hospital with those torn-off arms and legs, with that filth and disease. So vividly did it seem to him that he could now smell that hospital odor of a dead body that he looked round to understand where the smell could be coming from. Now he remembered that self-satisfied Bonaparte with his white little hand, who was now an Emperor, whom the Emperor Alexander loved and respected. What, then, were the torn-off arms and legs, the slain men, for? Now he remembered the rewarded Lazarev and Denisov, punished and unpardoned. He caught himself in such strange thoughts that they frightened him.

The smell of the Preobrazhensky men's food and his hunger roused him from this state: he had to eat something before leaving. He went to the inn he had seen that morning. At the inn he found so many people and officers who, like himself, had come in civilian dress, that he could scarcely manage to get dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The conversation naturally turned to the peace. The officers, Rostov's comrades, like most of the army, were dissatisfied with the peace concluded after Friedland. They said that if only they had held out a little longer Napoleon would have been done for, that he had neither biscuit nor charges left in his troops. Nikolai ate in silence and chiefly drank. He drank two bottles of wine by himself. The inner labor that had risen up in him, finding no resolution, tormented him as before. He was afraid to give himself up to his thoughts and could not tear himself from them. Suddenly, at the words of one of the officers that it was offensive to look at the French, Rostov began to shout with a vehemence in no way justified, and which therefore greatly surprised the officers.

— And how can you judge what would have been better! — he shouted, his face suddenly suffused with blood. — How can you judge of the sovereign's actions, what right have we to reason about them?! We can comprehend neither the aims nor the actions of the sovereign!

— But I never said a word about the sovereign, — the officer defended himself, unable to explain Rostov's hot temper except by supposing that he was drunk.

But Rostov did not listen to him.

— We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more, — he went on. — They tell us to die — then we die. And if we are punished, it means we are guilty; it is not for us to judge. If it pleases the Sovereign Emperor to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an alliance with him, then it must be so. But if we began to judge and reason about everything, then nothing sacred would be left. This way we'll be saying there is no God, nothing at all, — Nikolai cried, striking the table — most inopportunely, in the view of his listeners, but most consistently in the course of his own thoughts.

— Our business is to do our duty, to hack away, and not to think — that's all, — he concluded.

— And to drink, — said one of the officers, not wishing to quarrel.

— Yes, and to drink, — Nikolai chimed in. — Hey, you there! Another bottle! — he shouted.