Book Eleven: 1812 - Chapter XXV

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Toward nine o'clock in the morning, when the troops were alreadymoving through Moscow, nobody came to the count any more forinstructions. Those who were able to get away were going of theirown accord, those who remained behind decided for themselves what theymust do.

　　The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to Sokolniki, andsat in his study with folded hands, morose, sallow, and taciturn.

　　In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator thatit is only by his efforts that the whole population under his ruleis kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensableevery administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts.While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in hisfrail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the peopleand himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move theship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the seabegins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longerpossible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion,the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly theadministrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power,becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

　　Rostopchin felt this, and it was this which exasperated him.

　　The superintendent of police, whom the crowd had stopped, went in tosee him at the same time as an adjutant who informed the count thatthe horses were harnessed. They were both pale, and the superintendentof police, after reporting that he had executed the instructions hehad received, informed the count that an immense crowd had collectedin the courtyard and wished to see him.

　　Without saying a word Rostopchin rose and walked hastily to hislight, luxurious drawing room, went to the balcony door, took holdof the handle, let it go again, and went to the window from which hehad a better view of the whole crowd. The tall lad was standing infront, flourishing his arm and saying something with a stern look. Theblood stained smith stood beside him with a gloomy face. A drone ofvoices was audible through the closed window.

　　"Is my carriage ready?" asked Rostopchin, stepping back from thewindow.

　　"It is, your excellency," replied the adjutant.

　　Rostopchin went again to the balcony door.

　　"But what do they want?" he asked the superintendent of police.

　　"Your excellency, they say they have got ready, according to yourorders, to go against the French, and they shouted something abouttreachery. But it is a turbulent crowd, your excellency- I hardlymanaged to get away from it. Your excellency, I venture to suggest..."

　　"You may go. I don't need you to tell me what to do!" exclaimedRostopchin angrily.

　　He stood by the balcony door looking at the crowd.

　　"This is what they have done with Russia! This is what they havedone with me!" thought he, full of an irrepressible fury that welledup within him against the someone to whom what was happening mightbe attributed. As often happens with passionate people, he wasmastered by anger but was still seeking an object on which to vent it."Here is that mob, the dregs of the people," he thought as he gazed atthe crowd: "this rabble they have roused by their folly! They want avictim," he thought as he looked at the tall lad flourishing hisarm. And this thought occurred to him just because he himselfdesired a victim, something on which to vent his rage.

　　"Is the carriage ready?" he asked again.

　　"Yes, your excellency. What are your orders about Vereshchagin? Heis waiting at the porch," said the adjutant.

　　"Ah!" exclaimed Rostopchin, as if struck by an unexpectedrecollection.

　　And rapidly opening the door he went resolutely out onto thebalcony. The talking instantly ceased, hats and caps were doffed,and all eyes were raised to the count.

　　"Good morning, lads!" said the count briskly and loudly. "Thankyou for coming. I'll come out to you in a moment, but we must firstsettle with the villain. We must punish the villain who has caused theruin of Moscow. Wait for me!"

　　And the count stepped as briskly back into the room and slammedthe door behind him.

　　A murmur of approbation and satisfaction ran through the crowd."He'll settle with all the villains, you'll see! And you said theFrench... He'll show you what law is!" the mob were saying as ifreproving one another for their lack of confidence.

　　A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of the front door,gave an order, and the dragoons formed up in line. The crowd movedeagerly from the balcony toward the porch. Rostopchin, coming outthere with quick angry steps, looked hastily around as if seekingsomeone.

　　"Where is he?" he inquired. And as he spoke he saw a young mancoming round the corner of the house between two dragoons. He had along thin neck, and his head, that had been half shaved, was againcovered by short hair. This young man was dressed in a threadbare bluecloth coat lined with fox fur, that had once been smart, and dirtyhempen convict trousers, over which were pulled his thin, dirty,trodden-down boots. On his thin, weak legs were heavy chains whichhampered his irresolute movements.

　　"Ah!" said Rostopchin, hurriedly turning away his eyes from theyoung man in the fur-lined coat and pointing to the bottom step of theporch. "Put him there."

　　The young man in his clattering chains stepped clumsily to thespot indicated, holding away with one finger the coat collar whichchafed his neck, turned his long neck twice this way and that, sighed,and submissively folded before him his thin hands, unused to work.

　　For several seconds while the young man was taking his place onthe step the silence continued. Only among the back rows of thepeople, who were all pressing toward the one spot, could sighs,groans, and the shuffling of feet be heard.

　　While waiting for the young man to take his place on the stepRostopchin stood frowning and rubbing his face with his hand.

　　"Lads!" said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. "This man,Vereshchagin, is the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow is perishing."

　　The young man in the fur-lined coat, stooping a little, stood in asubmissive attitude, his fingers clasped before him. His emaciatedyoung face, disfigured by the half-shaven head, hung downhopelessly. At the count's first words he raised it slowly andlooked up at him as if wishing to say something or at least to meethis eye. But Rostopchin did not look at him. A vein in the young man'slong thin neck swelled like a cord and went blue behind the ear, andsuddenly his face flushed.

　　All eyes were fixed on him. He looked at the crowd, and renderedmore hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiledsadly and timidly, and lowering his head shifted his feet on the step.

　　"He has betrayed his Tsar and his country, he had gone over toBonaparte. He alone of all the Russians has disgraced the Russianname, he has caused Moscow to perish," said Rostopchin in a sharp,even voice, but suddenly he glanced down at Vereshchagin who continuedto stand in the same submissive attitude. As if inflamed by the sight,he raised his arm and addressed the people, almost shouting:

　　"Deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you."

　　The crowd remained silent and only pressed closer and closer toone another. To keep one another back, to breathe in that stiflingatmosphere, to be unable to stir, and to await something unknown,uncomprehended, and terrible, was becoming unbearable. Thosestanding in front, who had seen and heard what had taken placebefore them, all stood with wide open eyes and mouths, strainingwith all their strength, and held back the crowd that was pushingbehind them.

　　"Beat him!... Let the traitor perish and not disgrace the Russianname!" shouted Rostopchin. "Cut him down. I command it."

　　Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of Rostopchin'svoice, the crowd moaned and heaved forward, but again paused.

　　"Count!" exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of Vereshchagin inthe midst of the momentary silence that ensued, "Count! One God isabove us both...." He lifted his head and again the thick vein inhis thin neck filled with blood and the color rapidly came and went inhis face.

　　He did not finish what he wished to say.

　　"Cut him down! I command it..." shouted Rostopchin, suddenly growingpale like Vereshchagin.

　　"Draw sabers!" cried the dragoon officer, drawing his own.

　　Another still stronger wave flowed through the crowd and reachingthe front ranks carried it swaying to the very steps of the porch. Thetall youth, with a stony look on his face, and rigid and uplifted arm,stood beside Vereshchagin.

　　"Saber him!" the dragoon officer almost whispered.

　　And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury,struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt side of his saber.

　　"Ah!" cried Vereshchagin in meek surprise, looking round with afrightened glance as if not understanding why this was done to him.A similar moan of surprise and horror ran through the crowd. "O Lord!"exclaimed a sorrowful voice.

　　But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped fromVereshchagin he uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and that cry wasfatal. The barrier of human feeling, strained to the utmost, thathad held the crowd in check suddenly broke. The crime had begun andmust now be completed. The plaintive moan of reproach was drowned bythe threatening and angry roar of the crowd. Like the seventh and lastwave that shatters a ship, that last irresistible wave burst fromthe rear and reached the front ranks, carrying them off their feet andengulfing them all. The dragoon was about to repeat his blow.Vereshchagin with a cry of horror, covering his head with his hands,rushed toward the crowd. The tall youth, against whom he stumbled,seized his thin neck with his hands and, yelling wildly, fell with himunder the feet of the pressing, struggling crowd.

　　Some beat and tore at Vereshchagin, others at the tall youth. Andthe screams of those that were being trampled on and of those whotried to rescue the tall lad only increased the fury of the crowd.It was a long time before the dragoons could extricate the bleedingyouth, beaten almost to death. And for a long time, despite thefeverish haste with which the mob tried to end the work that hadbeen begun, those who were hitting, throttling, and tearing atVereshchagin were unable to kill him, for the crowd pressed from allsides, swaying as one mass with them in the center and rendering itimpossible for them either to kill him or let him go.

　　"Hit him with an ax, eh!... Crushed?... Traitor, he soldChrist.... Still alive... tenacious... serves him right! Tortureserves a thief right. Use the hatchet!... What- still alive?"

　　Only when the victim ceased to struggle and his cries changed to along-drawn, measured death rattle did the crowd around hisprostrate, bleeding corpse begin rapidly to change places. Each onecame up, glanced at what had been done, and with horror, reproach, andastonishment pushed back again.

　　"O Lord! The people are like wild beasts! How could he be alive?"voices in the crowd could be heard saying. "Quite a young fellowtoo... must have been a merchant's son. What men!... and they say he'snot the right one.... How not the right one?... O Lord! And there'sanother has been beaten too- they say he's nearly done for.... Oh, thepeople... Aren't they afraid of sinning?..." said the same mob now,looking with pained distress at the dead body with its long, thin,half-severed neck and its livid face stained with blood and dust.

　　A painstaking police officer, considering the presence of a corpsein his excellency's courtyard unseemly, told the dragoons to take itaway. Two dragoons took it by its distorted legs and dragged italong the ground. The gory, dust-stained, half-shaven head with itslong neck trailed twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank backfrom it.

　　At the moment when Vereshchagin fell and the crowd closed in withsavage yells and swayed about him, Rostopchin suddenly turned paleand, instead of going to the back entrance where his carriageawaited him, went with hurried steps and bent head, not knowingwhere and why, along the passage leading to the rooms on the groundfloor. The count's face was white and he could not control thefeverish twitching of his lower jaw.

　　"This way, your excellency... Where are you going?... This way,please..." said a trembling, frightened voice behind him.

　　Count Rostopchin was unable to reply and, turning obediently, wentin the direction indicated. At the back entrance stood his caleche.The distant roar of the yelling crowd was audible even there. Hehastily took his seat and told the coachman to drive him to hiscountry house in Sokolniki.

　　When they reached the Myasnitski Street and could no longer hear theshouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered withdissatisfaction the agitation and fear he had betrayed before hissubordinates. "The mob is terrible- disgusting," he said to himself inFrench. "They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease.""Count! One God is above us both!"- Vereshchagin's words suddenlyrecurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But thiswas only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchin smileddisdainfully at himself. "I had other duties," thought he. "The peoplehad to be appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishingfor the public good"- and he began thinking of his social duties tohis family and to the city entrusted to him, and of himself- nothimself as Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin (he fancied that TheodoreVasilyevich Rostopchin was sacrificing himself for the public good)but himself as governor, the representative of authority and of theTsar. "Had I been simply Theodore Vasilyevich my course of actionwould have been quite different, but it was my duty to safeguard mylife and dignity as commander in chief."

　　Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage and nolonger hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchin grewphysically calm and, as always happens, as soon as he becamephysically tranquil his mind devised reasons why he should be mentallytranquil too. The thought which tranquillized Rostopchin was not a newone. Since the world began and men have killed one another no onehas ever committed such a crime against his fellow man withoutcomforting himself with this same idea. This idea is le bien public,the hypothetical welfare of other people.

　　To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never certain, but hewho commits such a crime always knows just where that welfare lies.And Rostopchin now knew it.

　　Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he had done, buthe even found cause for self-satisfaction in having so successfullycontrived to avail himself of a convenient opportunity to punish acriminal and at the same time pacify the mob.

　　"Vereshchagin was tried and condemned to death," thoughtRostopchin (though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchagin tohard labor), "he was a traitor and a spy. I could not let him gounpunished and so I have killed two birds with one stone: to appeasethe mob I gave them a victim and at the same time punished amiscreant."

　　Having reached his country house and begun to give orders aboutdomestic arrangements, the count grew quite tranquil.

　　Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses across theSokolniki field, no longer thinking of what had occurred butconsidering what was to come. He was driving to the Yauza bridge wherehe had heard that Kutuzov was. Count Rostopchin was mentally preparingthe angry and stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutuzov forhis deception. He would make that foxy old courtier feel that theresponsibility for all the calamities that would follow theabandonment of the city and the ruin of Russia (as Rostopchin regardedit) would fall upon his doting old head. Planning beforehand what hewould say to Kutuzov, Rostopchin turned angrily in his caleche andgazed sternly from side to side.

　　The Sokolniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it, in front ofthe almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be seen some people inwhite and others like them walking singly across the field shoutingand gesticulating.

　　One of these was running to cross the path of Count Rostopchin'scarriage, and the count himself, his coachman, and his dragoons lookedwith vague horror and curiosity at these released lunatics andespecially at the one running toward them.

　　Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his flutteringdressing gown, this lunatic was running impetuously, his gaze fixed onRostopchin, shouting something in a hoarse voice and making signs tohim to stop. The lunatic's solemn, gloomy face was thin and yellow,with its beard growing in uneven tufts. His black, agate pupils withsaffron-yellow whites moved restlessly near the lower eyelids.

　　"Stop! Pull up, I tell you!" he cried in a piercing voice, and againshouted something breathlessly with emphatic intonations and gestures.

　　Coming abreast of the caleche he ran beside it.

　　"Thrice have they slain me, thrice have I risen from the dead.They stoned me, crucified me... I shall rise... shall rise... shallrise. They have torn my body. The kingdom of God will be overthrown...Thrice will I overthrow it and thrice re-establish it!" he cried,raising his voice higher and higher.

　　Count Rostopchin suddenly grew pale as he had done when the crowdclosed in on Vereshchagin. He turned away. "Go fas... faster!" hecried in a trembling voice to his coachman. The caleche flew overthe ground as fast as the horses could draw it, but for a long timeCount Rostopchin still heard the insane despairing screams growingfainter in the distance, while his eyes saw nothing but theastonished, frightened, bloodstained face of "the traitor" in thefur-lined coat.

　　Recent as that mental picture was, Rostopchin already felt that ithad cut deep into his heart and drawn blood. Even now he feltclearly that the gory trace of that recollection would not pass withtime, but that the terrible memory would, on the contrary, dwell inhis heart ever more cruelly and painfully to the end of his life. Heseemed still to hear the sound of his own words: "Cut him down! Icommand it...."

　　"Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident I saidthem.... I need not have said them," he thought. "And then nothingwould have happened." He saw the frightened and then infuriated faceof the dragoon who dealt the blow, the look of silent, timidreproach that boy in the fur-lined coat had turned upon him. "But Idid not do it for my own sake. I was bound to act that way.... Themob, the traitor... the public welfare," thought he.

　　Troops were still crowding at the Yauza bridge. It was hot. Kutuzov,dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with hiswhip in the sand when a caleche dashed up noisily. A man in ageneral's uniform with plumes in his hat went up to Kutuzov and saidsomething in French. It was Count Rostopchin. He told Kutuzov thathe had come because Moscow, the capital, was no more and only the armyremained.

　　"Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had nottold me that you would not abandon Moscow without another battle;all this would not have happened," he said.

　　Kutuzov looked at Rostopchin as if, not grasping what was said tohim, he was trying to read something peculiar written at that momenton the face of the man addressing him. Rostopchin grew confused andbecame silent. Kutuzov slightly shook his head and not taking hispenetrating gaze from Rostopchin's face muttered softly:

　　"No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!"

　　Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something entirely different when hespoke those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to bemeaningless, at any rate Rostopchin made no reply and hastily lefthim. And strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud CountRostopchin, took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where hebegan with shouts to drive on the carts that blocked the way.