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Volume II, Part One, Chapter I

On returning to Moscow from the army, Nikolái Róstov was welcomed by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their darling Nikólushka; by his relations as a charming, agreeable, and polite young man; and by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good dancer, and one of the best matches in Moscow.

The Róstovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nikólushka, keeping his own trotter, wearing the smartest cavalry trousers—the like of which had never been seen in Moscow before—and the most fashionable boots, with the most pointed toes and small silver spurs, passed his time very pleasantly. On returning home he had experienced the pleasant sensation of fitting himself into old habits after a certain lapse of time. He felt that he had matured and grown up very much. His despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money from Gavríla to pay a coachman, his secret kisses with Sónya—he now recalled all this as childishness from which he was immeasurably far removed. Now he was a lieutenant of hussars in a silver-laced pelisse, with the Cross of St. George, and getting his trotter ready for a race, together with well-known, elderly, and respectable sportsmen. He had a lady acquaintance on the boulevard to whom he went in the evening. He led the mazurka at the Arkhárovs' ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal Kaménsky, visited the English Club, and was on intimate terms with a forty-year-old colonel to whom Denísov had introduced him.

His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow, as he had not seen him during that time. But he still often spoke about the Emperor and his love for him, giving it to be understood that he was not saying everything and that there was something else in his feeling for the Emperor which could not be understood by everyone; and with all his soul he shared the general feeling of adoration for Emperor Alexander Pávlovich that was prevalent at that time in Moscow, where he was then known by the name of "angel in the flesh."

During this short stay of Róstov's in Moscow, before his departure for the army, he did not draw closer to Sónya, but rather drifted away from her. She was very pretty, sweet, and obviously passionately in love with him; but he was at that period of youth when there seems to be so much to do that there is no time for that sort of thing, and a young man fears to bind himself—prizing his freedom, which he needs for many other things. When he thought of Sónya during this new stay in Moscow he said to himself: "Ah! there will be, and are, many, many more like her somewhere, whom I do not yet know. There will be time enough to occupy myself with love when I want to, but for the present I have no time." Besides, it seemed to him that there was something derogatory to his manhood in the society of women. He went to balls and into women's society with an affectation of doing so against his will. The races, the English Club, carousals with Denísov, and visits there—that was another matter: that was the proper thing for a dashing young hussar.

At the beginning of March, old Count Ilyá Andréyevich Róstov was busy arranging a dinner at the English Club for the reception of Prince Bagratión.

The count, in his dressing gown, walked up and down the hall, giving orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktíst, the English Club's head cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish for Prince Bagratión's dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee of the club from the day it was founded. He was entrusted by the club with the arrangement of the festivity for Bagratión, because rarely could anyone arrange a feast so lavishly and hospitably, and especially because rarely could anyone be found who would, and could, put his own money into the arrangement of a feast if necessary. The cook and the steward of the club listened to the count's orders with cheerful faces, for they knew that under no one else's management could they make a better profit from a dinner that cost several thousands.

"Well then, mind you put scallops, scallops in the turtle soup, you know!"

"Three cold dishes then?..." asked the cook. The count considered.

"There can't be less—three... mayonnaise is one," said he, bending down a finger...

"Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked the steward.

"Yes, take them if they won't let them go for less. Yes, my dear fellow, I had almost forgotten. We must have another entrée on the table. Ah, good heavens!" He clutched his head. "But who is going to bring me the flowers? Mítenka! Ah, Mítenka! Gallop off, Mítenka, to the estate near Moscow," he addressed his steward who had come at his call, "gallop off to the estate near Moscow and tell Maksímka the gardener to set the serfs to work at once. Tell him to drag all the greenhouses here, wrapping them in felt. I must have two hundred pots here by Friday."

Having given a few more different orders, he was about to go to the little countess to rest, but remembering something else necessary he returned himself, recalled the cook and steward, and again began giving orders. A light, manly step, the clinking of spurs, was heard at the door, and the young count entered, handsome, rosy, with a dark mustache, evidently rested and well-groomed from a quiet life in Moscow.

"Ah, my dear boy! My head is spinning," said the old man, smiling with a sort of bashfulness before his son. "If only you would help! We must have singers too. I have my own music, but what if we called in the gypsies? Your military lot likes that."

"Really, Papa, I think Prince Bagratión fussed less when he was preparing for the battle of Schöngrabern than you are doing now," said his son, smiling.

The old count pretended to be angry.

"Yes, you talk, you try it!"

And the count turned to the cook, who with an intelligent and respectful face was looking observantly and affectionately at father and son.

"What do you think of our young men, eh, Feoktíst?" said he. "Laughing at us old fellows."

"Well, Your Excellency, all they want is a good dinner, but as to assembling and serving it, that's not their business."

"That's it, that's it!" shouted the count, and playfully seizing his son by both hands he cried: "So here's what it is, I've caught you! Take a two-horse sleigh at once and go to Bezúkhov's, and tell him that Count Ilyá Andréyevich has sent to ask you for fresh strawberries and pineapples. Nobody else has them. If he's not in himself, go in and tell the princesses, and from there, do you hear, go to the Razgulyáy—Ipátka the coachman knows—find the gypsy Ilyúshka there, the one who danced at Count Orlóv's that time, remember, in a white kazakín, and drag him here to me."

"And bring his gypsy girls here with him?" asked Nikolái laughing.

"Now, now!..."

At that moment Anna Mikháylovna entered the room with noiseless steps, with the businesslike, preoccupied, and at the same time Christianly meek air that never left her. Despite the fact that every day Anna Mikháylovna found the count in his dressing gown, every time he became embarrassed before her and apologized for his attire.

"No matter, my dear count," said she, closing her eyes meekly. "I will go to Bezúkhov's myself," she said. "The young Bezúkhov has arrived, and now we will get everything, Count, from his greenhouses. I needed to see him anyway. He has sent me a letter from Borís. Thank God, Bórya is now on the staff."

The count was delighted that Anna Mikháylovna took over one part of his commissions, and ordered the small carriage to be harnessed for her.

"Tell Bezúkhov to come. I will put his name down. Is he with his wife?" asked he.

Anna Mikháylovna turned up her eyes, and a look of deep sorrow was expressed on her face...

"Ah, my friend, he is very unhappy," said she. "If what we have heard is true, it is terrible. And did we think of this when we rejoiced so at his happiness! And such a lofty, heavenly soul, that young Bezúkhov! Yes, I pity him from the bottom of my heart and will try to give him whatever consolation depends on me."

"What is it then?" asked both Róstovs, the elder and the younger.

Anna Mikháylovna sighed deeply.

"Dólokhov, Márya Ivánovna's son," she said in a mysterious whisper, "they say, has completely compromised her. He introduced him, invited him to his house in Petersburg, and now... She has come here, and this daredevil after her," said Anna Mikháylovna, wishing to express her sympathy for Pierre, but showing sympathy for the daredevil, as she called Dólokhov, in her involuntary intonations and half smile. "They say Pierre himself is completely broken by his grief."

"Well, tell him to come to the club all the same—it will all pass off. It will be a regular banquet."

The next day, the 3rd of March, soon after one o'clock, two hundred and fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting the arrival of their distinguished guest and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagratión, to dinner. At first, on receiving the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow had been bewildered. At that time the Russians were so accustomed to victories that on receiving news of a defeat, some simply did not believe it, while others sought explanations for such a strange event in some unusual causes. In the English Club, where all who were prominent, had reliable information and weight, gathered, in the month of December, when the news began to arrive, nothing was said about the war and the last battle, as if everyone had agreed to keep silent about it. The men who gave the tone to the conversations—such as Count Rostopchín, Prince Yúri Vladímirovich Dolgorúki, Valúev, Count Márkov, Prince Vyázemsky—did not show themselves at the club, but gathered in their own intimate circles at home, and the Moscovites who spoke with other men's voices (to whom Ilyá Andréyevich Róstov belonged) remained for a short time without a definite judgment on the matter of the war and without guides. The Moscovites felt that something was wrong and that it was difficult to discuss these bad news, and therefore it was better to keep silent. But after a while, like a jury emerging from the deliberating room, the grandees who gave opinions in the club reappeared, and everyone began to speak clearly and definitely. Reasons were found for that incredible, unheard-of, and impossible event that the Russians had been beaten, and everything became clear, and in all corners of Moscow the same thing was said. The causes were: the treason of the Austrians, the bad provisioning of the army, the treason of the Pole Przebyszéwski and the Frenchman Langerón, the incapacity of Kutúzov, and (it was whispered) the youth and inexperience of the Emperor, who had trusted bad and insignificant men. But the troops, the Russian troops, everyone said, were extraordinary and performed miracles of bravery. Soldiers, officers, generals—were heroes. But the hero of heroes was Prince Bagratión, who had made himself famous by his Schöngrabern affair and the retreat from Austerlitz, where he alone had withdrawn his column unbroken and had all day repulsed an enemy twice as strong. The fact that Bagratión was chosen as the hero in Moscow was contributed to by his having no connections in Moscow and being a stranger there. In his person honor was paid to a simple, fighting Russian soldier, without connections and intrigues, still associated by memories of the Italian campaign with the name of Suvórov. Besides, in paying such honors to him, dislike and disapproval of Kutúzov was best shown.

"If there were no Bagratión, il faudrait l'inventer," [he would have to be invented,] said the joker Shinshín, parodying the words of Voltaire. Of Kutúzov nobody spoke, and some whispered abuse of him, calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.

All over Moscow they repeated the words of Prince Dolgorúkov: "If you go on molding and molding you must get smeared," who consoled himself for our defeat by the memory of former victories, and they repeated the words of Rostopchín about how French soldiers have to be excited to battle by high-flown phrases, and with Germans one must reason logically to convince them that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but that Russian soldiers only need to be restrained and begged: "Not so fast!" From all sides one heard new and yet new accounts of individual examples of courage shown by our soldiers and officers at Austerlitz. One had saved a standard, another had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five cannons alone. They spoke too of Berg, by those who did not know him, how he, wounded in the right arm, had taken his sword in the left and gone forward. Of Bolkónsky nothing was said, and only those who knew him closely regretted that he had died young, leaving a pregnant wife and an eccentric father.