The captain looked at Pierre. He had the habit of stopping in mid-conversation and staring closely with his gentle, laughing eyes.
'Well, if you hadn't told me you're a Russian I would have laid odds you came from Paris. You have that indefinable quality . . .' and after this compliment he stared at him again in silence.
'I have been in Paris. I spent years there,' said Pierre.
'I can see that! Paris! A man who doesn't know Paris is a barbarian . . . You can spot a Parisian a mile off. Paris is . . . Talma, la Duchenois, Potier, the Sorbonne . . . 5 the boulevards.' But, suddenly aware that this conclusion was becoming rather anti-climactic, he hastened to add, 'There is only one Paris in the world . . . You've been in Paris, but you stayed Russian. Well, I don't think any the less of you for that.'
Pierre was now feeling the effect of the wine, and after several days spent alone with his gloomy thoughts he found himself drawn irresistibly into enjoying this conversation with such a cheerful and good-hearted person.
'To return to your ladies - I hear they are very beautiful. What a ridiculous idea to go and bury themselves out on the steppe when the French army is in Moscow. What a lost opportunity! Your peasants are different, but you civilized people ought to know us better than that. We have taken Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome, Warsaw - every capital in the world. We are feared, but we are also loved. We are worth knowing. And as for the Emperor . . .' he started to say, but Pierre cut across him.
'The Emperor,' he repeated, his face looking suddenly sombre and embarrassed. 'Is the Emperor . . . ?'
'The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius - that's what the Emperor is. I can vouch for it . . . I, Ramballe, the man you see before you, was an enemy of his eight years ago. My father was an emigre count. But he has won me over, that man has. Taken hold of me. I couldn't resist the spectacle of the greatness and glory he was heaping on France. When I understood what he wanted, when I saw he was preparing a bed of laurels for us, I said to myself, you know, "This is a monarch!" And I gave myself up to him. Oh yes, he is the greatest man of past centuries and those to come.'
'But is he here in Moscow?' Pierre asked, hesitantly, with a shifty look.
'No, he will make his entry tomorrow,' said the French officer, and he went on with his chatter.
Their conversation was interrupted by voices from the gate, followed by Morel coming in to tell the captain some Wurttemberg hussars had arrived and they wanted to put up their horses in the yard where the captain's were already put up. The worst thing was that the hussars couldn't understand what was being said to them.
The captain sent for the senior NCO and asked him sternly which regiment he belonged to, who his commanding officer was, and on what basis he allowed himself to start taking over quarters that were already occupied. He was a German who knew very little French, and although he managed answers to the first two questions, he replied to the last one, which he hadn't understood, in a mixture of broken French and German, saying that he was quartermaster of his regiment, acting under orders from his superior officer to occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre was a German-speaker, and he translated the German's words for the captain, and then translated the captain's response for the benefit of the Wurttemberg hussar. Once he understood what was being said to him, the German gave way and went off with his men.
The captain went out to the entrance and barked out a few orders.
When he came back in Pierre was sitting in the same place, with his hands clasped around his head. His face was a picture of anguish. He really was going through it at that moment. The moment the captain had gone out and Pierre had been left alone, he suddenly came to and realized what a situation he was now in. It wasn't just that Moscow had been taken, or that these lucky conquerors were making themselves at home and patronizing him, that tormented him at that time, painful though all this was in itself. He was tormented by a sudden awareness of his own weakness. One or two glasses of wine and a chat with this genial man had destroyed the mood of sombre concentration he had been living in for the last few days, and this mood was essential to him if he was going to carry out his mission. His things were ready, the pistol, the dagger and the peasant's coat. Napoleon was making his entry tomorrow. Pierre felt just as convinced it would be the right and proper thing to do to slay this villain, but he now had the feeling he was not going to do it. Why not? He didn't know - it was just a vague presentiment that he wasn't going to carry out his mission. He was fighting against this awareness of his own weakness, knowing somehow he wasn't going to overcome it, and his dark ideas of yesterday - vengeance, murder and self-sacrifice - had been blown away like dust at the first contact with another human being.
The captain came back in, limping a little and whistling to himself.
The Frenchman's chatter that Pierre had found so amusing now seemed revolting. His whistling, his walk, and his way of twirling his moustache all seemed like an insult to Pierre now.
'I'll go. I won't say another word to him,' thought Pierre. He may have thought this, but he still sat there, transfixed by a strange feeling of weakness. He longed to get up and go, but he couldn't do it.
The captain, by contrast, seemed in high spirits. He paced the room a couple of times. There was a gleam in his eye and a slight twitch in his moustache as if he was smiling to himself at some secret joke.
'Charming fellow, the colonel of these Wurttembergers,' he blurted out. 'He's German, but a good fellow if ever there was one. Still, he is German.'
He sat down facing Pierre.
'By the way, I see you're a German-speaker.'
Pierre looked at him in silence.
'What's the German for "shelter"?'
'Shelter?' parroted Pierre. 'Shelter in German is Unterkunft.'
'Say again.' The captain spoke quickly and doubtfully.
'Unterkunft,' repeated Pierre.
'Onterkof,' said the captain, and he stared at Pierre for several seconds with laughter in his eyes. 'Awful fools these Germans, aren't they, Monsieur Pierre?' he concluded.
'Oh well, another bottle of this Moscow claret, eh? Morel, warm us another bottle! Morel!' the captain shouted cheerily.
Morel came in with candles and another bottle of wine. The captain glanced at Pierre in the candle light, and was visibly struck by the look of anguish on his companion's face. Ramballe came over to Pierre and bent towards him with all the appearance of genuine sympathy and regret.
'Oh dear, we are looking gloomy!' he said, touching Pierre on the arm. 'Have I offended you in some way? No, tell me, please, have you anything to hold against me?' He was full of questions. 'Maybe it's just the present situation?'
Pierre said nothing, but he looked warmly into the Frenchman's eyes. He liked his display of sympathy.
'My word of honour, apart from being in your debt, I feel we are friends. Is there anything I can do for you? I am yours to command. In life and death. I say so hand on heart,' he said, slapping himself on the chest.
'Thank you,' said Pierre. The captain looked closely at Pierre just as he had done when learning the German for 'shelter', and his face suddenly brightened.
'Very well, then. Here's to our friendship,' he cried breezily, pouring out two glasses of wine.
Pierre took the glass and drained it. Ramballe did the same, gave Pierre's arm another squeeze, and leant forward with his elbows on the table in an attitude of wistful contemplation.
'Yes, my dear friend, such are the vagaries of fortune . . .' he began. 'Who would have said I would one day be a soldier and captain of dragoons in the service of Bonaparte, as we used to call him? Yet here I am with him in Moscow. I must tell you, my dear fellow,' he continued in the doleful rhythmic tones of a man about to embark on a long story, 'our name is one of the oldest in France . . .'
And with the easy-going simplicity and openness of a Frenchman, the captain told Pierre the history of his ancestors, his childhood, adolescence and manhood, and everything to do wit
h his relations, his fortunes and his family. Naturally enough, 'my poor mother' played a prominent part in the recital.
'But that's only the stage-setting of life. The real thing is love. Love! Isn't that right, Monsieur Pierre?' he said, warming to his theme. 'Another glass.'
Pierre drained his glass again, and filled up a third one.
'Ah, women! Women!' And the captain gazed at Pierre with brimming eyes as he launched into the subject of love and his erotic exploits. There had been a lot of them, and this was easy to believe if the officer's rather smug but handsome face and the eager enthusiasm with which he talked about women were anything to go by. Although all Ramballe's accounts of his love affairs had that degrading quality that the French see as the uniqueness and poetic charm of love, the captain told his stories with such genuine certainty that he was the only man who had ever tasted and known the delights of love, and he described women in such alluring terms, that Pierre could not help but be a good listener.
Clearly, the Frenchman's favourite version of love was neither that mean, straightforward kind of love that Pierre had once felt for his wife nor the romantic love, blown up out of all proportion by himself, that he now felt for Natasha.
Ramballe treated both these kinds of love with equal contempt - one was for working men, the other for morons. The 'love' that this Frenchman celebrated consisted mainly in having an unnatural relationship with a woman, and in combinations of outrageous behaviour that set the highest premium on sensuality.
Thus the captain related the moving story of his love for a seductive thirty-five-year-old marquise, which had gone on at the same time as an affair with a charming, innocent child of seventeen, the daughter of the said seductive marquise. The battle between mother and daughter as to who could be the more generous ended with the mother sacrificing herself and offering her daughter in marriage to her lover, an outcome that even now, as a distant memory, was capable of moving the captain deeply. Then he related an episode in which the husband played the part of the lover, and he - the lover - the part of the husband, and several comic episodes among his memoirs of Germany, the land where Unterkunft means 'shelter', husbands eat nothing but cabbage soup, and the young girls are excessively blonde.
The last episode, dating back only to Poland, was still fresh in the captain's memory and described with rapid hand movements and a face ablaze with passion. He had saved the life of a Pole - saving people's lives was a constant theme running through the captain's stories - and this man had entrusted him with his seductive wife, a Paris girl at heart, while he himself went off to serve with the French. The captain had been delighted, and the seductive Polish lady had wanted to run away with him, but the captain had been moved by a sudden feeling of generosity and restored the wife to the husband with the words, 'I once saved your life. Now I save your honour!'
At the repetition of these words the captain wiped his eyes and gave himself a shake, as if to rid himself of the weakness that had come over him at the onset of this touching memory.
As often happens late in the evening when the effects of the wine are making themselves felt, Pierre was able to follow and understand every detail of what the captain was saying while also following his own train of personal memories that happened to have popped up in his imagination. As he listened to all these love stories, his own love for Natasha suddenly came into his mind, and as he ran through all the tokens of that love in his imagination, he was mentally comparing them with Ramballe's stories. As he listened to a story of conflict between love and duty, Pierre could see before him every last detail of that meeting with the object of his own love at the Sukharev water-tower. At the time he had not been much affected by it, and not once had it come to mind since. But now he thought he could see something deeply significant and very romantic in that meeting.
'Come on Pyotr Kirillych! I knew it was you!' He could hear her words now. He could see her eyes, her smile, her travelling cap with a stray curl peeping out from under it . . . and it all seemed so sad and moving now.
When the captain got to the end of his tale about the seductive Polish lady he turned to Pierre and asked whether he had had any experiences like this; did he know of any examples of someone sacrificing himself for love while envying a lawful husband?
Roused by this question, Pierre looked up and felt an irresistible urge to talk about what was on his mind. He started off by explaining that he looked upon love for a woman rather differently. He said that in all his life he had only ever loved one woman, and he still loved her, and this woman could never be his.
'You don't say!' said the captain.
Pierre went on to explain that he had loved this woman from her earliest years, but had not dared to think of her because she was then too young, and besides he had been an illegitimate son with no name of his own. Then, when he had received a name and great riches, he had not dared think of her because he loved her too much, because he put her on a pedestal high above the whole world, and especially above himself. When he got to this point in his story Pierre asked the captain whether he could understand all this.
The captain gestured for him to go on with the story even if he couldn't understand it.
'Platonic love . . . Passing clouds . . .' he muttered. It may have been the wine, or an urge to speak out, or the thought that this man didn't know, and never could know, any of the people in his story, or all of these things together, but something loosened Pierre's tongue. With trembling lips and a faraway look in his brimming eyes he came out with the whole story: everything about his marriage, and the story of Natasha's love for his best friend, and her unfaithfulness, and his own uncomplicated relationship with her. In response to questions from Ramballe he also told him what he had at first been at pains to hide, his position in society, and he even disclosed his name.
The part of the story that really impressed the captain was the fact that Pierre was a very rich man with two palatial houses in Moscow, and when he had abandoned everything, instead of leaving Moscow he had stayed on in the town hiding his name and social standing.
Late at night they went outside together. The night was warm and clear. Over on the left there was a glow from the first fire to break out in Moscow, out in Petrovka. On the right a young crescent moon stood high in the sky, and across the firmament in the opposite direction hovered the shining comet that was connected in Pierre's heart with his love. At the gateway into the yard stood Gerasim, the cook and two Frenchmen. They could be heard laughing as they carried on a mutually incomprehensible conversation. They were looking across towards the glow of the fire burning in the town.
A small fire a long way away in a huge city was nothing to worry about.
Gazing up at the lofty, starlit sky, the moon, the comet and the glow from the fire, Pierre felt a thrill of joyous and tender emotion. 'How splendid it all is! What more could anyone want?' he thought. And then suddenly, when he remembered what his mission was, his head seemed to spin, and he felt so nauseous that he had to lean against a fence to avoid falling down.
Without saying goodnight to his new friend Pierre tottered away from the gate and found his way back to his room, where he lay down on the sofa and fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER 30
The glow from the first fire to break out, on the 2nd of September, was watched from various roads and with mixed feelings by citizens streaming out of Moscow on foot and in vehicles, and also the retreating troops.
That night the Rostovs had stopped at Mytyshchi, about fifteen miles outside Moscow. They had set out so late on the 1st of September, the road had been so blocked with traffic and troops, so many things had been forgotten and servants sent back to get them, that they had decided to stop for the first night when they were only two or three miles out of town. They were late setting out the next morning, and again there were so many delays they got no further than Great Mytishchi. At ten o'clock the Rostov family, and the wounded soldiers travelling with them, had all found places for themselves in the yards
and huts of the village, which was quite a large one. The Rostovs' servants and drivers, along with the orderlies of the wounded officers, settled their masters for the night, had some supper, fed the horses and came out on to the wooden steps of one of the huts.
In the next hut lay one of Rayevsky's adjutants, who was moaning and groaning in the most piteous way from the pain of a fractured wrist - a terrible sound that cut through the darkness of the autumn night. At the first stop this adjutant had spent the night in the same yard as the Rostovs. The countess claimed she had never closed an eye all night because of all the moaning, and at Mytyshchi she had moved into a less comfortable hut just to get further away from the wounded man.
It was one of the servants who noticed something in the dark night sky up above the body of a tall carriage by the entry: another small glow from a fire. They had seen one glow some time before, and everybody knew it came from Little Mytyshchi, where Mamonov's Cossacks had set the place on fire.
'Hey, look, boys! Another fire!' said the orderly. They all looked across at the glow.
'Yes, but they told us Mamonov's Cossacks had set fire to Little Mytyshchi.'
'Get away! That's not Mytyshchi, it's further in.'
'Get an eyeful of that. Looks like it's in Moscow.'
Two of the men went down the steps, walked round in front of the carriage and squatted on the step.
'Yon's too far left! Look, Mytyshchi's way over there, and that's miles away on the other side.'
More servants joined them.
'That's got going, that has,' said one. 'Gentlemen, Moscow's on fire. It's in Sushchovsky or mebbe Rogozhsky.'
There was no response. For some time all the servants stared in silence at the distant flames of this new conflagration. Old Danilo, the count's valet (as he was called), came up to the crowd and shouted at little Mishka.
'Stupid boy! Don't stand there gawping! The count might want something and there'd be nobody there. Go and sort them clothes out.'
'Hey, I only run out for some water,' said Mishka.
'What do you think, Danilo? Moscow's on fire, isn't it?' asked one of the footmen.