'Take this and give it to him,' said the minister of war to his adjutant, handing him the papers, and still ignoring the Russian courier.
Prince Andrey felt that either the minister of war was less interested in the activities of Kutuzov's army than in any of his other business, or this was the impression that he wanted to create. 'Well,' he thought, 'why should I care?' The minister squared off the remaining papers and put them to one side. Only then did he look up. He had the distinctive head of an intellectual, but the moment he turned to Prince Andrey, the war minister's shrewd and concentrated look changed into a contrived facial expression that he had all too obviously grown used to assuming. His face was left wearing an inane smile - the forced smile, with no attempt to disguise the effort behind it, of a man who receives endless petitioners one after another.
'From General Field-Marshal Kutuzov?' he asked. 'Good news, I hope? Has there been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? Not before time!'
He took the dispatch, which was addressed to him, and began to read it with a glum expression.
'Oh my God! My God! Schmidt!' he said in German. 'What a disaster! What a disaster!' He skimmed the dispatch, laid it on the table and glanced up at Prince Andrey, greatly preoccupied.
'Oh my God, what a disaster! So, you say the action was decisive?' ('But Mortier wasn't taken,' he thought to himself.) 'Very glad you've brought such good news, though the death of Schmidt is a heavy price to pay. His Majesty is sure to wish to see you, but not today. My thanks to you. Please go and rest. Come to the reception tomorrow morning, after the review. Anyway, I'll be in touch.'
The inane smile, which had disappeared during the conversation, now returned to the war minister's face.
'Au revoir. Many thanks indeed. His Majesty the Emperor will probably wish to see you,' he repeated, bowing his head.
Prince Andrey left the palace with the feeling that all the excitement and pleasure that had been his following the victory had now drained away into the uncaring hands of the minister and his unctuous adjutant. His entire cast of mind had changed in an instant. The battle figured in his memory as something far away and long ago.
CHAPTER 10
In Brno Prince Andrey stayed with a Russian diplomat of his acquaintance, Bilibin.
'My dear prince, I couldn't have a more welcome guest,' said Bilibin, advancing to meet Prince Andrey. 'Franz, take the prince's things to my bedroom,' he said to the servant, who was ushering Bolkonsky in. 'So, you're the herald of victory? Splendid. I've been ill, as you can see. Not allowed out.'
After washing and dressing, Prince Andrey came into the diplomat's opulent study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilibin settled down comfortably by the fireplace.
So long deprived of the niceties of cleanliness and sophistication, not only during his journey but throughout the whole campaign, Prince Andrey now felt a delightful sense of relaxation as he returned to the kind of luxurious surroundings he had been accustomed to since childhood. Besides which, after his Austrian reception, he was glad not so much to speak Russian - they spoke in French - but at least to talk to someone who was Russian, and a man who would presumably share the general Russian antipathy towards the Austrians, now at its sharpest.
Bilibin was a bachelor in his mid-thirties from the same background as Prince Andrey. They had known each other in Petersburg, but had become closer during Prince Andrey's last stay in Vienna with Kutuzov. If Prince Andrey was a young man with a promising military career ahead of him, Bilibin promised even more in the diplomatic field. Still young in years, he was not young in diplomacy. Joining the service at the age of sixteen, he had been posted to Paris and Copenhagen, and now occupied a responsible position in Vienna. Both the chancellor and our ambassador in Vienna knew him and thought highly of him. He was not one of that vast army of diplomats required to display negative qualities, those men who rise to the top by speaking French and not doing certain things. He was a diplomat who liked his work and understood it, and for all his natural indolence he would sometimes spend whole nights at his desk. He was equally adept at every aspect of his work, and more interested in the question how than the question why. He didn't mind what kind of diplomatic assignment came his way; it was always an exquisite pleasure for him to work with subtle conciseness and a touch of elegance in composing any circular, memorandum or report. But apart from his written work, Bilibin was also valued for his easy manner when moving and talking in the highest circles.
Bilibin enjoyed talking as much as working, as long as the conversation was stylish and clever. In society he always hung back, waiting for a chance to say something very striking, and would not enter any conversation unless he could do so. His speech was invariably salted with polished phrases, original, witty but of general application. They were fabricated in some inner laboratory of Bilibin's mind, portable and ready-made for social nonentities to commit to memory and take around the other drawing-rooms. Bilibin's bons mots, widely peddled in every Viennese salon, often went on to influence what people thought of as important matters.
His thin, lean, sallow face was covered all over with deep wrinkles, but they always looked as wholesome and scrupulously cleansed as fingertips fresh from a bath. All the variations of his facial expression were played out in the manipulation of these wrinkles. One moment his brow would furrow up in thick folds as his eyebrows rose, the next his eyebrows would plunge, leaving deep lines all down his cheeks. His small, deep-set eyes looked out openly and shone with good humour.
'Well, come on then, tell us about your deeds of valour,' he said.
With exemplary modesty and without any reference to himself, Bolkonsky described the engagement and his subsequent reception by the war minister.
'They welcomed me and my news like a dog in a skittle-alley,' he concluded. Bilibin grinned, relaxing all his wrinkles.
'All the same, my dear fellow,' he said, taking a long view of his fingernails and bunching up the skin over his left eye, 'for all my admiration of Holy Russia's military machine, I must say your victory was not very victorious.'
He carried on speaking French, using Russian only for words which he wanted to invest with particular derision.
'Just think. You and your massed ranks fell on the miserable Mortier with his single division, and Mortier slipped through your fingers! Is that victory?'
'No, but seriously,' answered Prince Andrey, 'at least we can claim without boasting that it's an improvement on Ulm . . .'
'You might have caught us a marshal, just one!'
'Well, things don't always turn out the way you plan them. It's not like being all neat and tidy on the parade ground. As I said, we had expected to attack the enemy in the rear at seven in the morning, but we didn't even get there till five in the afternoon.'
'But why didn't you arrive at seven in the morning? You should have arrived at seven in the morning,' said Bilibin with a smile. 'You should have arrived at seven in the morning.'
'Why didn't you manage to persuade Napoleon through diplomatic channels that he had better leave Genoa alone?' said Prince Andrey, adopting the same tone.
'I know what you're thinking,' broke in Bilibin. 'It's not difficult to capture a marshal sitting on a sofa by the fireside. That's fine, but the question remains - why didn't you capture him? You shouldn't be too surprised if the most august Emperor and King Francis, like the war minister, is not too delighted by your victory. I'm not all that jubilant, and I'm just a poor secretary in the Russian embassy . . .'
He looked directly at Prince Andrey and suddenly relaxed the bunched-up folds on his forehead.
'All right, dear boy. Now it's my turn to ask you a few questions,' said Bolkonsky. 'There's something here I don't understand. Maybe there are some diplomatic subtleties beyond my feeble intellect, but I still don't understand. Mack loses a whole army, Archduke Ferdinand and Archduke Karl give no sign of life and make one blunder after another, Kutuzov is the only one to win a proper battle, thus destroying all the mysti
que of the French - and the minister of war shows not the slightest interest in any of the details!'
'My dear fellow, that's the whole point! Listen. Three cheers for the Tsar, for Russia and the faith! All very nice, but why should we - the Austrian court - get excited about your victories? Bring us some news of a victory by Archduke Karl or Ferdinand - one archduke's much the same as another, as you well know. I don't care if they've beaten Napoleon's fire brigade - it will be something different, and we'll fire a big-gun salute. Otherwise this can only tantalize us, and it seems almost deliberate. Archduke Karl does nothing, Archduke Ferdinand covers himself with disgrace and you walk out on Vienna. No more defence. You might as well say it straight out: "God's with us, and you and your capital can go to the devil." You take one of our generals, Schmidt, loved by all and sundry, you stick him in the way of a bullet, and then congratulate us on a great victory! . . . You must admit - anything more infuriating than the news you brought would be hard to imagine. You seem to have done it on purpose. That's what it looks like. And setting that aside, if you really were to win a brilliant victory, even if Archduke Karl did, what difference would it make to the general course of events? It's too late now. Vienna has been occupied by the French forces.'
'What do you mean occupied? Vienna hasn't been occupied, has it?'
'Yes, and that's not all. Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and the count - our dear Count Vrbna - is going to see him to receive his orders.'
After the tiring demands and all the varied impressions of his journey and then his reception, and even more after the dinner he'd just eaten, Bolkonsky felt unable to take in the full significance of what he had just heard.
'Count Lichtenfels was here this morning,' Bilibin continued, 'and he showed me a letter containing every last detail of a French parade through Vienna. Prince Murat and all the rest of them . . . So you see - your victory is no great cause for rejoicing, and you can hardly expect to be received as a saviour!'
'But honestly, I'm not bothered about that - I really am not!' said Prince Andrey, as it dawned on him that his news about the battle at Krems paled into insignificance in the light of events like the occupation of Austria's capital city. 'How was Vienna taken? What about the bridge and those famous fortifications, and Prince Auersperg? We heard it said that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna.'
'Prince Auersperg is stationed on this side - our side. He's defending us, not very effectively it seems, but he is defending us. Vienna's across the river. No, the bridge has not been taken, and I hope it won't be, because it's been mined and orders have been given to blow it up. Otherwise, we'd have been up in the mountains of Bohemia ages ago, and you and your army would have had a bad time of it between two fires.'
'That still doesn't mean that the campaign is finished,' said Prince Andrey.
'I think it is. So do all the bigwigs here, though they don't dare admit it. I said when the campaign started that it wouldn't be settled by gunpowder - not by your little squabble at Durrenstein - but only by those who invented it,' said Bilibin - this was one of his bons mots - relaxing the wrinkles on his forehead and pausing for a moment. 'The only question now is what will come out of the meeting between Emperor Alexander and the Prussian king. If Prussia enters the alliance, that will force Austria's hand and there'll be war. If she doesn't, all we have to do is agree on a place where the articles of a new Campo Formio9 can be drawn up.'
'What an amazing genius that man is!' Prince Andrey burst out, clenching his small fist and banging it on the table. 'And amazingly lucky too!'
'Who is, Buonaparte?' queried Bilibin, puckering up his forehead - a clear sign that a bon mot was on its way. 'Buonaparte?' he repeated, stressing the u. 'Still, I think we might let him off the "u" now; after all, he is dictating Austria's laws from Schonbrunn. That's it, I've decided once and for all to accept the innovation and just call him Bonaparte.'
'No listen, joking apart,' said Prince Andrey, 'do you really think the campaign is finished?'
'I'll tell you what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is not used to that. She'll be out for vengeance. And why was she made a fool of? First, because her provinces have been pillaged (they say the Holy Russian army is good at looting), her army has been destroyed, her capital has been occupied, and all this to please the pretty eyes of his Sardinian Majesty. So, between you and me, old fellow, instinct tells me we're having the wool pulled over our eyes. Instinct tells me of negotiations with France and plans for a peace treaty, a secret agreement done on the side.'
'That's impossible!' said Prince Andrey. 'That would be too vile for words.'
'Time will tell,' said Bilibin, relaxing the creases on his forehead again, an indication that the subject was now closed.
When Prince Andrey retired to the room they had prepared for him and lay down in clean sheets on the feather bed with his head on the fragrant, nicely warmed pillows, the battle he had come to report on seemed to have receded into the distant past. His mind was full of the Prussian alliance, the treachery of Austria, Bonaparte's latest triumph, tomorrow's parade and reception, and his audience with Emperor Francis. His eyes closed. Instantly his ears rang with cannon-fire, muskets discharging and rumbling wheels; he could see a long line of musketeers running downhill and the French firing back at them; he could feel his heart miss a beat and watch himself galloping to the front with Schmidt, with bullets whistling all around him, and he was once again enjoying that tenfold delight in living that he had not known since childhood.
Then he woke.
'Yes, it really did happen!' he told himself with the happy smile of a young child, before relapsing into a deep, youthful slumber.
CHAPTER 11
Next morning he woke late. Reviewing his recent impressions, he remembered first of all that today he was to be presented to the Emperor Francis, and he also recalled the minister of war, the unctuous adjutant, Bilibin and last night's conversation. He put on his full dress uniform, which he had not worn for a long time, and walked into Bilibin's room with his arm in a sling, looking fresh, eager and handsome. Four gentlemen of the diplomatic corps were already there. Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, a secretary in the embassy, was already known to him; Bilibin introduced the others.
The visitors were a set of fashionable, wealthy and high-spirited young men who made up a special circle, originally in Vienna and now in Brno, a circle which Bilibin, their leader, referred to as 'our people'. They were almost all diplomats, but their interests extended well beyond the war and politics to take in fashionable society, relations with certain women and the official side of the service. These young gentlemen clearly took to Prince Andrey, welcoming him straightaway as 'one of ours' - a rare distinction. Out of politeness and to break the ice they asked him one or two questions about the army and the battle, but soon the conversation slipped back into inconsequential chitchat, jokes and gossip.
'No, but the best bit of all,' said one of them, describing a disaster that had happened to a service colleague, 'yes, the best bit was that the minister had told him that his appointment to London was definitely a promotion and that was how he should see it. Imagine his face! . . .'
'Worse than that, gentlemen - now I'm going to give Kuragin away - a fellow runs into a bit of trouble and this Don Juan takes full advantage! Shocking fellow!'
Prince Hippolyte was sprawling in a Voltaire armchair with his legs over the arm. He laughed and said, 'Tell me more.'
'Don Juan! You reptile!' cried various voices.
'Something you don't know, Bolkonsky,' said Bilibin, turning to Prince Andrey. 'All the atrocities of the, er, French army - I nearly said the Russian army - are nothing compared with this fellow's achievements with women.'
'A woman is . . . a good companion for a man,' declared Prince Hippolyte, peering at his elevated legs through a lorgnette.
Bilibin and the rest of 'our people' roared with laughter, staring at Hippolyte. Prince Andrey could now see that this Hippolyte, who, if he was honest abo
ut it, had brought him to the verge of jealousy over his wife, was the butt of this circle.
'No, I must treat you to a bit of Kuragin,' Bilibin whispered to Bolkonsky. 'He's wonderful when you get him going on politics. You must see the depth of his thinking.'
He sat down by Hippolyte, wrinkled up his forehead and started a conversation about politics. Prince Andrey and the others gathered round.
'The Berlin cabinet cannot express any feelings concerning an alliance,' Hippolyte began, with a knowing look, 'without expressing . . . as in its last note . . . you do see, don't you? . . . And besides, if his Majesty the Emperor doesn't go back on the principle of our alliance . . .'
'Wait, I haven't finished,' he said to Prince Andrey, seizing him by the hand. 'I can only imagine that intervention will be stronger than non-intervention. And besides . . .' He paused. 'Non-receipt of our dispatch of November the 28th doesn't count as imputing . . . Anyway, that's how it's all going to end.' And he let go of Bolkonsky's hand to indicate that he had quite finished.
'Demosthenes, I know you by the pebble in your golden mouth!'10 said Bilibin, his thick thatch of hair rippling with delight.
Everyone laughed, no one louder than Hippolyte. He was almost choking from obvious distress, but he couldn't hold back from frenzied laughter that sent spasms across his usually impassive features.
'Now listen, gentlemen,' said Bilibin, 'Bolkonsky is my guest even here in Brno and I want to entertain him to the best of my ability with all the pleasures of our life in this town. If we were in Vienna it would all be very easy, but here, in this godforsaken Moravian hole it's more difficult, and I am asking all of you to help. He must be given the freedom of Brno. You take the theatre, I'll take society life, and, of course, you, Hippolyte - the women.'