War and Peace

rince Andrew stayed at Brünn with Bilíbin, a Russian acquaintance of
his in the diplomatic service.

“Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor,”
said Bilíbin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. “Franz, put the
prince’s things in my bedroom,” said he to the servant who was
ushering Bolkónski in. “So you’re a messenger of victory, eh?
Splendid! And I am sitting here ill, as you see.”

After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat’s
luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilíbin
settled down comfortably beside the fire.

After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived of
all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life, Prince
Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious surroundings such
as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides it was pleasant,
after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not in Russian
(for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who would, he
supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the Austrians which was
then particularly strong.

Bilíbin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle as
Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in Petersburg, but
had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with Kutúzov.
Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising high
in the military profession, so to an even greater extent Bilíbin gave
promise of rising in his diplomatic career. He was still a young man but
no longer a young diplomat, as he had entered the service at the age
of sixteen, had been in Paris and Copenhagen, and now held a rather
important post in Vienna. Both the foreign minister and our ambassador
in Vienna knew him and valued him. He was not one of those many
diplomats who are esteemed because they have certain negative qualities,
avoid doing certain things, and speak French. He was one of those,
who, liking work, knew how to do it, and despite his indolence would
sometimes spend a whole night at his writing table. He worked well
whatever the import of his work. It was not the question “What for?”
but the question “How?” that interested him. What the diplomatic
matter might be he did not care, but it gave him great pleasure to
prepare a circular, memorandum, or report, skillfully, pointedly, and
elegantly. Bilíbin’s services were valued not only for what he wrote,
but also for his skill in dealing and conversing with those in the
highest spheres.

Bilíbin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be
made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to say
something striking and took part in a conversation only when that was
possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with wittily original,
finished phrases of general interest. These sayings were prepared in the
inner laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if intentionally, so
that insignificant society people might carry them from drawing room to
drawing room. And, in fact, Bilíbin’s witticisms were hawked about
in the Viennese drawing rooms and often had an influence on matters
considered important.

His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which always
looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one’s fingers after a
Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the principal play
of expression on his face. Now his forehead would pucker into deep folds
and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows would descend and
deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small, deep-set eyes always
twinkled and looked out straight.

“Well, now tell me about your exploits,” said he.

Bolkónski, very modestly without once mentioning himself, described the
engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.

“They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of
skittles,” said he in conclusion.

Bilíbin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.

“Cependant, mon cher,” he remarked, examining his nails from a
distance and puckering the skin above his left eye, “malgré la haute
estime que je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j’avoue que
votre victoire n’est pas des plus victorieuses.” *

* “But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox
Russian army, I must say that your victory was not
particularly victorious.”

He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those words in
Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.

“Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate Mortier
and his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your fingers!
Where’s the victory?”

“But seriously,” said Prince Andrew, “we can at any rate say
without boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm...”

“Why didn’t you capture one, just one, marshal for us?”

“Because not everything happens as one expects or with the smoothness
of a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at their rear by
seven in the morning but had not reached it by five in the afternoon.”

“And why didn’t you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have
been there at seven in the morning,” returned Bilíbin with a smile.
“You ought to have been there at seven in the morning.”

“Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic
methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?” retorted Prince Andrew
in the same tone.

“I know,” interrupted Bilíbin, “you’re thinking it’s very
easy to take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but
still why didn’t you capture him? So don’t be surprised if not only
the Minister of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and
King Francis is not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor
secretary of the Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of my
joy to give my Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to the
Prater... True, we have no Prater here...”

He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his
forehead.

“It is now my turn to ask you ‘why?’ mon cher,” said Bolkónski.
“I confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic
subtleties here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can’t make it
out. Mack loses a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke
Karl give no signs of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutúzov
alone at last gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the
invincibility of the French, and the Minister of War does not even care
to hear the details.”

“That’s just it, my dear fellow. You see it’s hurrah for the Tsar,
for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but
what do we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories? Bring
us nice news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one
archduke’s as good as another, as you know) and even if it is only
over a fire brigade of Bonaparte’s, that will be another story and
we’ll fire off some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done
on purpose to vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke
Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its
defense—as much as to say: ‘Heaven is with us, but heaven help you
and your capital!’ The one general whom we all loved, Schmidt, you
expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit
that more irritating news than yours could not have been conceived.
It’s as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose
you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a
victory, what effect would that have on the general course of events?
It’s too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French army!”

“What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?”

“Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schönbrunn, and the count,
our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders.”

After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception, and
especially after having dined, Bolkónski felt that he could not take in
the full significance of the words he heard.

“Count Lichtenfels was here this morning,” Bilíbin continued,
“and showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna
was fully described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that
your victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can’t be
received as a savior.”

“Really I don’t care about that, I don’t care at all,” said
Prince Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle
before Krems was really of small importance in view of such events as
the fall of Austria’s capital. “How is it Vienna was taken? What of
the bridge and its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard
reports that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?” he said.

“Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is
defending us—doing it very badly, I think, but still he is defending
us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has not yet been
taken and I hope it will not be, for it is mined and orders have been
given to blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the
mountains of Bohemia, and you and your army would have spent a bad
quarter of an hour between two fires.”

“But still this does not mean that the campaign is over,” said
Prince Andrew.

“Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they
daren’t say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign,
it won’t be your skirmishing at Dürrenstein, or gunpowder at all,
that will decide the matter, but those who devised it,” said Bilíbin
quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, and
pausing. “The only question is what will come of the meeting between
the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia
joins the Allies, Austria’s hand will be forced and there will be war.
If not it is merely a question of settling where the preliminaries of
the new Campo Formio are to be drawn up.”

“What an extraordinary genius!” Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,
clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, “and what
luck the man has!”

“Buonaparte?” said Bilíbin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead
to indicate that he was about to say something witty. “Buonaparte?”
he repeated, accentuating the u: “I think, however, now that he lays
down laws for Austria at Schönbrunn, il faut lui faire grâce de
l’u! * I shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply
Bonaparte!”

* “We must let him off the u!”

“But joking apart,” said Prince Andrew, “do you really think the
campaign is over?”

“This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is
not used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the
first place because her provinces have been pillaged—they say the Holy
Russian army loots terribly—her army is destroyed, her capital
taken, and all this for the beaux yeux * of His Sardinian Majesty. And
therefore—this is between ourselves—I instinctively feel that we
are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France and
projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately.”

* Fine eyes.

“Impossible!” cried Prince Andrew. “That would be too base.”

“If we live we shall see,” replied Bilíbin, his face again becoming
smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end.

When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in a
clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows, he
felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far
away from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria’s treachery,
Bonaparte’s new triumph, tomorrow’s levee and parade, and the
audience with the Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.

He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of musketry
and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his ears, and now
again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were descending the hill,
the French were firing, and he felt his heart palpitating as he rode
forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily whistling all around,
and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as he had not done since
childhood.

He woke up...

“Yes, that all happened!” he said, and, smiling happily to himself
like a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.