capital is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier losses than any opposing army in previous wars from Austerlitz to Wagram. But all of a sudden, instead of the chance contingencies and genius that had ensured such a consistent, uninterrupted run of successes leading him towards his destined goal he is faced with a vast number of chance contingencies working in reverse, from the cold he caught at Borodino to the spark that set Moscow on fire, and instead of genius we see in him unparalleled stupidity and wickedness.
The invading army runs away, turns back and runs away again; by now all the chance contingencies are going against him rather than for him.
Then comes the reverse movement from east to west, astonishingly similar to the west-to-east movement that has preceded it. As in 1805, 1807 and 1809 the same tentative westward lunges precede the great eastward movement. There is the same combination into a single group of vast proportions, the same process by which the peoples of Central Europe join in with the general movement, the same half-way hesitation and the same acceleration as the goal gets nearer.
Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. Napoleon's government and armies are in tatters. Napoleon himself is of no further consequence; all his actions are obviously mean and pathetic, but once again inexplicable chance intervenes. The allies detest Napoleon, seeing him as the cause of all their troubles. Stripped of all power and authority, exposed as a crook and a villain, he ought to have been recognized as he had been ten years earlier, and would be a year later, as a bandit and an outlaw. But by some curious contingency no one sees this. His part has not been fully played out. The man who ten years before, and one year later, was looked on as a bandit and an outlaw is now dispatched to an island two days' journey from France presented to him as his dominion, with guards and millions to spend, as if he had done something worth paying for.
CHAPTER 4
The oceanic surge of the peoples begins to settle down within its shores. Its huge waves have flooded back, leaving little eddies on a calm surface - diplomats who fondly imagine that they have been the calming influence.
Then suddenly the calm sea surges up again. The diplomats imagine that they and their bones of contention are the cause of this new upheaval, and they anticipate warfare between their sovereigns. The situation seems impossible. But although they can sense the gathering wave, it doesn't come from where they expect it. It is the same wave with the same starting point - in Paris - the last backwash of the movement from the west, a wave that will soon resolve the diplomatic difficulties that seem so intractable and put an end to the military unrest of the period.
The man who has devastated France comes back to France alone, with no secret plan and no soldiers. Any policeman could arrest him, but by a strange contingency no one does; on the contrary, everybody gives a warm welcome to the man they were cursing only yesterday and will curse again within the month.
This man is still needed to vindicate events occurring in the last act of a collective drama.
The act is over. The last part has been played. The actor is told to take off his costume and wash off his powder and paint. He won't be needed again.
And for several years to come this man, alone on his island, plays out his pathetic little comedy to himself as the only audience, scheming and lying over silly details in order to vindicate his actions when vindication is no longer required, and demonstrating for all the world to see the true nature of what had been mistaken for power when all the time he had been guided by an unseen hand.
The theatre manager has brought the drama to a close, and made the actor take off his costume. Now he shows him to us.
'Look, this is what you have believed in! Here he is! I hope you can all see now that he hasn't been moving you - I have.'
But, dazzled by the power of movement, the people take a long time to absorb this.
There is even greater consistency and inevitability in the life of Alexander I, the figure who stood at the head of the east-west counter-movement.
What qualities would be needed for a man to eclipse all others and stand at the head of an east-west counter-movement?
He would need a sense of justice, deep involvement in the affairs of Europe tempered by sufficient detachment to leave his view unobscured by petty interests. He would need moral superiority over his fellows, the other sovereigns of the day. He would need to have a gentle and appealing personality and also a personal grudge against Napoleon. And Alexander I satisfies these requirements, all of them prepared long before by an infinite number of chance contingencies arising in his earlier life, in his upbringing and early liberalism, in the advisers circulating around him, in Austerlitz, Tilsit and Erfurt.
While ever the war centres on his own country this character stands idle; he is not needed. But once the need for a pan-European war becomes inevitable this character, finding himself in the right place at the right time, brings the European peoples together and leads them towards their goal.
The goal is reached. After the last of the wars in 1815 Alexander finds himself at the very summit of human power. How does he use it?
Alexander, the peacemaker of Europe, the man who from early youth had striven for nothing but the good of his peoples, the first champion of liberal reforms in his own country, now the possessor of maximum power and therefore the opportunity of promoting the welfare of his people, behaved very differently from Napoleon in exile, who was busy concocting childish and duplicitous schemes for blessings to be showered on humanity if only he had the power. Alexander, sensing that his mission is now accomplished and God's hand is upon him, and recognizing the paltriness of this mirage of power, turns away from it, hands it on to despicable creatures, men he despises and has only this to say:
'Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name . . . !11 I am a man, a man like you. Let me live like a man, and think about my soul and God.'
Just as the sun and every atom of ether is both a sphere complete in itself and also only a tiny part of an inconceivably vast whole, so every personality bears within himself his own aims whilst bearing them also in the service of generalized aims that lie beyond human comprehension.
A bee has settled on a flower and stung a child. And the child is scared of bees and says that bees are there to sting people. A poet admires the bee as it imbibes inside the sepals of the flower and says that bees are there to imbibe nectar inside flowers. A beekeeper, observing that the bee collects pollen and brings it back to the hive, says that the bee is there to collect honey. Another beekeeper, one who has studied the life of the swarm more closely, says the bee collects pollen to feed the young ones and rear a queen, and the bee is there for the propagation of its species. A botanist observes the bee flying over with pollen to fertilize the pistil on a diclinous flower and sees this as the purpose of the bee. Another one, observing the tendency for plants to migrate and the bee's contribution to this process, feels able to claim this as the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first, second or third purpose discernible by the human intellect. The higher the human intellect goes in discovering more and more purposes, the more obvious it becomes that the ultimate purpose is beyond comprehension.
Human comprehension does not extend beyond observation of the interaction between the living bee and other manifestations of life. The same applies to the purposes of historical characters and nations.
CHAPTER 5
Natasha's marriage to Bezukhov in 1813 was the last happy occasion enjoyed by the old Rostov family. Count Ilya died the same year, and, as always, with the father's death the family was broken up.
The events of the previous year - the burning of Moscow and the flight from the city, the death of Prince Andrey and Natasha's despair, the death of Petya and the old countess's grief - had rained down on the old count's head in a series of blows. He seemed not to understand, and he felt unable to understand, the significance of all these events, his morale collapsed and he bowed his old head as if to invite further blows that would finish him off. His mood swung between abject fear and frenzied excitement.
Natasha's marriage kept him busy on the outside for quite some time. He organized dinners and suppers, and he was patently doing his best to look cheerful, but his good cheer, instead of infecting everybody else as it used to do, had the opposite effect, arousing sympathy in those who knew and loved him.
Once Pierre and his wife had gone away he withdrew into himself and started complaining of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his bed. In spite of soothing words from the doctors he knew from the first days of his illness that he would never get up again. For two solid weeks the countess sat in a chair at his bedside and never changed her clothes. Every time she gave him his medicine, he snuffled as he kissed her hand and never said a word. On the last day, racked with sobs, he asked his wife and his absent son to forgive him for squandering their property, the worst of the sins that lay on his conscience. After receiving communion and extreme unction he died peacefully, and the next day a crowd of people who had known him turned up to pay their last respects, filling the Rostovs' rented apartments. These acquaintances, who had dined and danced so often in his house, and so often enjoyed a good laugh at his expense, were all feeling the same kind of inner self-reproach mixed with deep emotion, and they kept saying the same things, as if to vindicate themselves: 'Oh yes, say what you will about him, he was a splendid man. You don't meet people like him any more. And we all have our faults, don't we? . . .'
At the very time when the old count's affairs had become so involved there was no imagining how it would all have ended if things had gone on for another year, he had suddenly died.
Nikolay was away in Paris with the Russian army when news of his father's death reached him. He applied for immediate discharge, and instead of waiting for it to come through he took leave and left for Moscow. Within a month of the old count's death his financial position became absolutely clear, astounding everyone by the vast sums owed in various petty debts, the existence of which no one had suspected. The debts came to more than double the value of the estate.
Nikolay's friends and relations advised him to refuse his inheritance. But Nikolay thought this would be a slur on his father's honoured memory, so he wouldn't hear of any such thing; he took on the inheritance including the obligation to pay off all the debts.
The creditors, who had kept quiet for so long, restraining themselves during the old count's lifetime under the vague but powerful influence of his easy-going nature, descended on Nikolay all at once. As always happens, they began to compete with each other for early payment, and people like Mitenka and others who held IOUs given to them as presents were among the most persistent of the creditors. They wouldn't give Nikolay a moment's peace, and the same people who had shown obvious pity for the old man who had been responsible for their losses (in the case of losses rather than presents) now hounded the young heir without mercy, even though he was clearly innocent as far as they were concerned and had volunteered to settle the debts.
None of the schemes devised by Nikolay paid off. The estate went under the hammer and realized only half its true value, leaving half the debts still unpaid. Nikolay accepted thirty thousand roubles offered by his brother-in-law, Bezukhov, and paid off anything he recognized as a genuine monetary obligation. Then, to avoid being thrown into prison for the remaining debts, as threatened by the creditors, he re-entered government service.
Any possibility of returning to the army, where he was next in line for promotion to colonel, was out of the question, because his mother now clung on to her son for dear life. And so despite his reluctance to stay on in Moscow, mingling with people who had known him in days gone by, and despite his hatred of the civil service, he accepted a civilian post in Moscow, discarded his dearly loved uniform and set himself up with his mother and Sonya in modest lodgings in one of the poorer districts.
Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at this time, and they had no clear idea of Nikolay's situation. Having borrowed money from his brother-in-law, Nikolay did everything he could to hide his poverty-stricken situation from him. What made things worse was the need not only to keep himself, Sonya and his mother on a salary of twelve hundred roubles, but to keep his mother in such a way that she wouldn't notice how poor they had become. The countess couldn't conceive of life without the luxuries she had been used to since childhood, and, blissfully unaware of causing any problems for her son, she would insist on sending a carriage round to fetch a friend, even though they had no carriage, ordering expensive delicacies for herself, or wine for her son, and asking for money to buy surprise presents for Natasha, Sonya or Nikolay himself.
Sonya ran the house, waited on her aunt, read to her, put up with her tantrums and half-concealed enmity and conspired with Nikolay to conceal from the old countess their poverty-stricken situation. Nikolay felt irredeemably indebted to Sonya, deeply grateful for everything she did for his mother, and he also greatly admired her patience and devotion. Nevertheless, he did what he could to distance himself from her.
In his heart of hearts he seemed to resent the fact that she was too perfect, beyond all criticism. She possessed all the admirable qualities, but very little to make him love her. And he felt that the more admirable she became the less he loved her. He had taken her at her word when she had written to give him his freedom, and now he behaved towards her as if what had happened between them was ancient history, long forgotten, something that could never under any circumstances be returned to.
Nikolay's position was going from bad to worse. His idea of building up some savings out of his salary proved to be an idle dream. Far from saving anything, he was even running up small debts to satisfy his mother's demands. There seemed to be no way out of this situation. He had no time for the idea of marrying a rich woman, which his female relatives kept suggesting. The only other solution - his mother's death - never even crossed his mind. There was soon nothing he wanted, nothing to hope for, and in his heart of hearts he took a grim and gloomy satisfaction in the stoical way he put up with things. He went out of his way to avoid old acquaintances, with their expressions of sympathy and humiliating offers of assistance. He avoided every kind of frivolity and amusement; and even at home he did nothing but play patience with his mother, and pace the room silently, smoking one pipe after another. He seemed to cultivate this dark mood of his; it was the only thing that kept him going.
CHAPTER 6
At the beginning of the winter Princess Marya arrived in Moscow. From the city's rumour mill she heard about the Rostovs' situation; the word was that 'the son was sacrificing himself for his mother'. 'I would have expected nothing less of him,' Princess Marya told herself, only too delighted to find confirmation of her love for him. Bearing in mind her friendly, almost intimate relationship with the Rostovs - she was almost a member of the family - she felt duty-bound to call on them. But when she thought of her relations with Nikolay in Voronezh she was scared to do so. A few weeks after her arrival in Moscow, however, she plucked up the courage and went to see the Rostovs.
Nikolay was the first to meet her because it was impossible to get to the countess's room without walking through his. Princess Marya took one glance at him and instead of the anticipated expression of delight all she saw was a look of chilly aloofness and pride that she had never seen before. Nikolay asked after her health, led her through to his mother and stayed no more than five minutes before walking out.
When Princess Marya was leaving Nikolay met her again, and saw her through into the hall with almost exaggerated formality and stiffness. He made no comment on what she said about the countess's health. 'It's got nothing to do with you. Just leave me alone,' his eyes seemed to say.
'What does she think she's doing prowling about in here? What's she after? I can't stand these fine ladies and their nice ways!' he said out loud in Sonya's presence, obviously unable to contain his annoyance, once the princess's carriage had trundled away.
'Oh, Nicolas, how can you talk like that?' said Sonya, beside herself with delight. 'She's such a nice person, and Mamma is so fond of her.'
Nikolay said nothing in reply, and would have liked to drop the subject of Princess Marya, but from then on the old countess brought her into the conversation several times a day. She praised her to the skies, told her son he must go and see her, wanted to see more of her herself, yet she was always in a funny mood when she spoke about her.
Nikolay tried to hold back when his mother talked about Princess Marya, but his silence annoyed her.
'She's a lovely girl. I think very highly of her,' she would say, 'and you must go round and see her. At least you'd be outside meeting people. You must be bored stiff spending all your time in here with us.'
'But I've no wish to do that, Mamma.'
'Hm, you used to like meeting people. Now all you can say is, "I've no wish to do that." I really don't understand you, my dear. One minute you're bored stiff, and the next you're refusing to go out and meet people.'
'I didn't say I was bored.'
'Oh no? I distinctly heard you say you don't even want to see her. I think very highly of her, and you used to like her yourself. Now all of a sudden you're behaving oddly and you have your own funny reasons. Nobody tells me anything.'
'That's not true, Mamma.'
'It would be different if I was asking you to do something unpleasant, but as things stand I'm just asking you to go round and see her. It's the polite thing to do . . . Anyway, I've said my say, and I shan't interfere any more. You can go on keeping secrets from your mother.'
'All right, I'll go round, if that's what you want.'
'I don't mind one way or the other. I'm only thinking of you.'
Nikolay gave a sigh, bit his moustache and dealt the cards in an attempt to change the subject.
The next day and the following day, and the day after that, they went through exactly the same conversation again and again.
After her visit to the Rostovs and the une