《War And Peace》Book11 CHAPTER XXIX

《War And Peace》　Book11 　CHAPTER XXIX
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

AS THE FRENCH OFFICER drew Pierre with him into the room, the latter thought
it his duty to assure the captain again that he was not a Frenchman, and would
have withdrawn, but the French officer would not hear of it. He was so
courteous, polite, good-humoured, and genuinely grateful to him for saving his
life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse, and sat down with him in the
dining-room, the first room they entered. To Pierre's asseveration that he was
not a Frenchman, the captain, plainly unable to comprehend how any one could
refuse so flattering a title, shrugged his shoulders, and said that if he
insisted in passing for a Russian, so be it, but that in spite of that he should
yet feel bound to him for ever by sentiments of gratitude for the defence of his
life.

If this man had been endowed with even the slightest faculty of perceiving
the feelings of others, and had had the faintest inkling of Pierre's sentiments,
the latter would probably have left him. But his lively impenetrability to
everything not himself vanquished Pierre.

“Frenchman or Russian prince incognito,” said the Frenchman, looking at
Pierre's fine, though dirty linen, and the ring on his finger; “I owe my life to
you, and I offer you my friendship. A Frenchman never forgets an insult or a
service. I offer you my friendship. That's all I say.”

In the tones of the voice, the expression of the face, and the gestures of
the officer, there was so much naïve good nature and good breeding (in the
French sense) that Pierre unconsciously responded with a smile to his smile, as
he took his outstretched hand.

“Captain Ramballe of the 13th Light Brigade, decorated for the affair of the
7th September,” he introduced himself, an irrepressible smile of complacency
lurking under his moustache. “Will you tell me now to whom I have the honour of
speaking so aGREeably, instead of remaining in the ambulance with that madman's
ball in my body?”

Pierre answered that he would not tell him his name, and was beginning with a
blush, while trying to invent a name, to speak of the reasons for which he was
unable to do so, but the Frenchman hurriedly interrupted him.

“Enough!” he said. “I understand your reasons; you are an officer … a staff
officer, perhaps. You have borne arms against us. That's not my business. I owe
you my life. That's enough for me. I am at your disposal. You are a nobleman?”
he added, with an intonation of inquiry. Pierre bowed.

“Your baptismal name, if you please? I ask nothing more. M. Pierre, you say?
Perfect! That's all I want to know.”

When they had brought in the mutton, an omelette, a samovar, vodka, and wine
from a Russian cellar brought with them by the French, Ramballe begged Pierre to
share his dinner; and at once with the haste and GREediness of a healthy, hungry
man, set to work on the viands himself, munching vigorously with his strong
teeth, and continually smacking his lips and exclaiming, “Excellent!
exquis!” His face became flushed and perspiring. Pierre was hungry, and
pleased to share the repast. Morel, the orderly, brought in a pot of hot water,
and put a bottle of red wine to warm in it. He brought in too a bottle of kvass
from the kitchen for them to taste. This beverage was already known to the
French, and had received a nickname. They called it limonade de cochon,
and Morel praised this “pigs' lemonade,” which he had found in the kitchen. But
as the captain had the wine they had picked up as they crossed Moscow, he left
the kvass for Morel, and attacked the bottle of bordeaux. He wrapped a napkin
round the bottle, and poured out wine for himself and Pierre. The wine, and the
satisfaction of his hunger, made the captain even more lively, and he chatted
away without a pause all dinner-time.

“Yes, my dear M. Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for saving me from
that maniac. I have bullets enough in my body, you know. Here is one from
Wagram” (he pointed to his side), “and two from Smolensk” (he showed the scar on
his cheek). “And this leg which won't walk, as you see. It was at the GREat
battle of la Moskowa on the 7th that I got that. Sacré Dieu, it was fine!
You ought to have seen that; it was a deluge of fire. You cut us out a tough
job; you can boast of that, my word on it! And on my word, in spite of the cough
I caught, I should be ready to begin again. I pity those who did not see
it.”

“I was there,” said Pierre.

“Really!” pursued the Frenchman. “Well, so much the better. You are fine
enemies, though. The GREat redoubt was well held, by my pipe. And you made us
pay heavily for it too. I was at it three times, as I'm sitting here. Three
times we were upon the cannons, and three times we were driven back like
cardboard figures. Oh, it was fine, M. Pierre. Your grenadiers were superb,
God's thunder. I saw them six times in succession close the ranks and march as
though on parade. Fine fellows. Our king of Naples, who knows all about it,
cried, Bravo! Ah, ah, soldiers like ourselves,” he said after a moment's
silence. “So much the better, so much the better, M. Pierre. Terrible in war …
gallant, with the fair” (he winked with a smile)—“there you have the French, M.
Pierre, eh?”

The captain was so naïvely and good-humouredly gay and obtuse and
self-satisfied that Pierre almost winked in response, as he looked
good-humouredly at him. Probably the word “gallant” brought the captain to
reflect on the state of things in Moscow.

“By the way, tell me, is it true that all the women have left Moscow? What a
queer idea! What had they to fear?”

“Would not the French ladies quit Paris, if the Russians were to enter it?”
said Pierre.

“Ha—ha—ha!…” The Frenchman gave vent to a gay, sanguine chuckle, slapping
Pierre on the shoulder. “That's a good one, that is,” he went on. “Paris … But
Paris…”

“Paris is the capital of the world,” said Pierre, finishing the sentence for
him.

The captain looked at Pierre. He had the habit of stopping short in the
middle of conversation, and staring intently with his laughing genial
eyes.

“Well, if you had not told me you are a Russian, I would have wagered you
were a Parisian. You have that indescribable something …” and uttering this
compliment, he again gazed at him mutely.

“I have been in Paris. I spent years there,” said Pierre.

“One can see that! Paris! A man who does not know Paris is a savage … A
Parisian can be told two leagues off. Paris—it is Talma, la Duschénois, Potier,
the Sorbonne, the boulevards.” Perceiving that the conclusion of his phrase was
somewhat of an anticlimax, he added hurriedly, “There is only one Paris in the
world.… You have been in Paris, and you remain Russian. Well, I don't think the
less of you for that.”

After the days he had spent alone with his gloomy thoughts, Pierre, under the
influence of the wine he had drunk, could not help taking pleasure in conversing
with this good-humoured and naïve person.

“To return to your ladies, they are said to be beautiful. What a silly idea
to go and bury themselves in the steppes, when the French army is in Moscow.
What a chance they have lost. Your peasants are different; but you civilised
people ought to know better than that. We have taken Vienna, Berlin, Madrid,
Naples, Rome, Warsaw—all the capitals in the world. We are feared, but we are
loved. We are worth knowing. And then the Emperor…” he was beginning, but Pierre
interrupted him.

“The Emperor,” repeated Pierre, and his face suddenly wore a mournful and
embarrassed look. “What of the Emperor?”

“The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius—that is the
Emperor. It is I, Ramballe, who tell you that. I was his enemy eight years ago.
My father was an emigrant count. But he has conquered me, that man. He has taken
hold of me. I could not resist the spectacle of the GREatness and glory with
which he was covering France. When I understood what he wanted, when I saw he
was preparing a bed of laurels for us, I said to myself: ‘That is a monarch.'
And I gave myself up to him. Oh yes, he is the greatest man of the centuries,
past and to come.”

“And is he in Moscow?” Pierre asked, hesitating and looking guilty.

The Frenchman gazed at Pierre's guilty face, and grinned.

“No, he will make his entry to-morrow,” he said, and went on with his
talk.

Their conversation was interrupted by several voices shouting at the gates,
and Morel coming in to tell the captain that some Würtemberg hussars had come
and wanted to put up their horses in the yard in which the captain's had been
put up. The difficulty arose chiefly from the hussars not understanding what was
said to them.

The captain bade the senior sergeant be brought to him, and in a stern voice
asked him to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding officer, and on
what pretext he dared attempt to occupy quarters already occupied. The German,
who knew very little French, succeeded in answering the first two questions, but
in reply to the last one, which he did not understand, he answered in broken
French and German that he was quartermaster of the regiment, and had received
orders from his superior officer to occupy all the houses in the row. Pierre,
who knew German, translated the German's words to the captain, and translated
the captain's answer back for the Würtemberg hussar. On understanding what was
said to him, the German gave in, and took his men away.

The captain went out to the entrance and gave some loud commands.

When he came back into the room, Pierre was sitting where he had been sitting
before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He really was
at that moment suffering. As soon as the captain had gone out, and Pierre had
been left alone, he suddenly came to himself, and recognised the position he was
in. It was not that Moscow had been taken, not that these lucky conquerors were
making themselves at home there and patronising him, bitterly as Pierre felt it,
that tortured him at that moment. He was tortured by the consciousness of his
own weakness. The few glasses of wine he had drunk, the chat with this
good-natured fellow, had dissipated that mood of concentrated gloom, which he
had been living in for the last few days, and which was essential for carrying
out his design. The pistol and the dagger and the peasant's coat were ready,
Napoleon was making his entry on the morrow. Pierre felt it as praiseworthy and
as beneficial as ever to slay the miscreant; but he felt now that he would not
do it. He struggled against the consciousness of his own weakness, but he
vaguely felt that he could not overcome it, that his past gloomy train of ideas,
of vengeance, murder, and self-sacrifice, had been blown away like dust at
contact with the first human being.

The captain came into the room, limping a little, and whistling some
tune.

The Frenchman's chatter that had amused Pierre struck him now as revolting.
And his whistling a tune, and his gait, and his gesture in twisting his
moustaches, all seemed insulting to Pierre now.

“I'll go away at once, I won't say another word to him,” thought Pierre. He
thought this, yet went on sitting in the same place. Some strange feeling of
weakness riveted him to his place; he longed to get up and go, and could
not.

The captain, on the contrary, seemed in exceedingly good spirits. He walked a
couple of times up and down the room. His eyes sparkled and his moustaches
slightly twitched as though he were smiling to himself at some amusing
notion.

“Charming fellow the colonel of these Würtembergers,” he said all at once.
“He's a German, but a good fellow if ever there was one. But a German.”

He sat down facing Pierre.

“By the way, you know German?”

Pierre looked at him in silence.

“How do you say ‘asile' in German?”

“Asile?” repeated Pierre. “Asile in German is
Unterkunft.”

“What do you say?” the captain queried quickly and doubtfully.

“Unterkunft,” repeated Pierre.

“Onterkoff,” said the captain, and for several seconds he looked at
Pierre with his laughing eyes. “The Germans are awful fools, aren't they, M.
Pierre?” he concluded.

“Well, another bottle of this Moscow claret, eh? Morel, warm us another
bottle!” the captain shouted gaily.

Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain looked at Pierre in
the candle-light, and was obviously struck by the troubled face of his
companion. With genuine reGREt and sympathy in his face, Ramballe approached
Pierre, and bent over him.

“Eh, we are sad!” he said, touching Pierre on the hand. “Can I have hurt you?
No, really, have you anything against me?” he questioned. “Perhaps it is owing
to the situation of affairs?”

Pierre made no reply, but looked cordially into the Frenchman's eyes. This
expression of sympathy was pleasant to him.

“My word of honour, to say nothing of what I owe you, I have a liking for
you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and death. With my
hand and my heart, I say so,” he said, slapping himself on the chest.

“Thank you,” said Pierre. The captain gazed at Pierre as he had gazed at him
when he learnt the German for “refuge,” and his face suddenly brightened.

“Ah, in that case, I drink to our friendship,” he cried gaily, pouring out
two glasses of wine.

Pierre took the glass and emptied it. Ramballe emptied his, pressed Pierre's
hand once more, and leaned his elbow on the table in a pose of pensive
melancholy.

“Yes, my dear friend, such are the freaks of fortune,” he began. “Who would
have said I should be a soldier and captain of dragoons in the service of
Bonaparte, as we used to call him. And yet here I am at Moscow with him. I must
tell you, my dear fellow,” he continued in the mournful and measured voice of a
man who intends to tell a long story, “our name is one of the most ancient in
France.”

And with the easy and naïve unreserve of a Frenchman, the captain told Pierre
the history of his forefathers, his childhood, boyhood, and manhood, and all his
relations, his fortunes, and domestic affairs. “Ma pauvre mère,” took, of
course, a prominent part in this recital.

“But all that is only the setting of life; the real thing is love. Love! Eh,
M. Pierre?” he said, warming up. “Another glass.”

Pierre again emptied his glass, and filled himself a third.

“O women! women!” and the captain, gazing with moist eyes at Pierre, began
talking of love and his adventures with the fair sex. They were very numerous,
as might readily be believed, judging from the officer's conceited, handsome
face and the eager enthusiasm with which he talked of women. Although all
Ramballe's accounts of his love affairs were characterised by that peculiar
nastiness in which the French find the unique charm and poetry of love, the
captain told his stories with such genuine conviction that he was the only man
who had tasted and known all the sweets of love, and he described the women he
had known in such an alluring fashion that Pierre listened to him with
curiosity.

It was evident that l'amour the Frenchman was so fond of was neither
that low and simple kind of love Pierre had at one time felt for his wife, nor
the romantic love, exaggerated by himself, that he felt for Natasha. For both
those kinds of love Ramballe had an equal contempt—one was l'amour des
charretiers, the other l'amour des nigauds. L'amour for which the
Frenchman had a weakness consisted principally in an unnatural relation to the
woman, and in combinations of monstrous circumstances which lent the chief charm
to the feeling.

Thus the captain related the touching history of his love for a fascinating
marquise of five-and-thirty, and at the same time for a charming, innocent child
of seventeen, the daughter of the fascinating marquise. The conflict of
generosity between mother and daughter, ending in the mother sacrificing herself
and offering her daughter in marriage to her lover, even now, though it was a
memory in the remote past, moved 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 reminiscences of Germany,
where Unterkunft means asile, where the husbands eat cabbage soup,
and where the young girls are too flaxen-haired.

The last episode was one in Poland, still fresh in the captain's memory, and
described by him with rapid gestures and a glowing face. The story was that he
had saved the life of a Pole—the episode of saving life was continually cropping
up in the captain's anecdotes—and that Pole had intrusted to his care his
bewitching wife, a Parisian in heart, while he himself entered the French
service. The captain had been happy, the bewitching Polish lady had wanted to
elope with him; but moved by a magnanimous impulse, the captain had restored the
wife to the husband with the words: “I saved your life, and I save your
honour.”

As he repeated these words, the captain wiped his eyes and shook himself, as
though to shake off the weakness that overcame him at this touching
recollection.

As men often do at a late hour at night, and under the influence of wine,
Pierre listened to the captain's stories, and while he followed and understood
all he told him, he was also following a train of personal reminiscences which
had for some reason risen to his imagination. As he listened to those love
affairs, his own love for Natasha suddenly came into his mind, and going over
all the pictures of that love in his imagination, he mentally compared them with
Ramballe's stories. As he heard the account of the conflict between love and
duty, Pierre saw before him every detail of the meeting with the object of his
love at the Suharev Tower. That meeting had not at the time made much impression
on him; he had not once thought of it since. But now it seemed to him that there
was something very significant and romantic in that meeting.

“Pyotr Kirillitch, come here, I recognise you”; he could hear her words now,
could see her eyes, her smile, her travelling cap, and the curl peeping out
below it … and he felt that there was something moving, touching in all
that.

When he had finished his tale about the bewitching Polish lady, the captain
turned to Pierre with the inquiry whether he had had any similar experience of
self-sacrifice for love and envy of a lawful husband.

Pierre, roused by this question, lifted his head and felt an irresistible
impulse to give expression to the ideas in his mind. He began to explain that he
looked upon love for woman somewhat differently. He said he had all his life
long loved one woman, and still loved her, and that that woman could never be
his.

“Tiens!” said the captain.

Then Pierre explained that he had loved this woman from his earliest youth,
but had not dared to think of her because she was too young, and he had been an
illegitimate son, with no name of his own. Then when he had received a name and
wealth, he had not dared think of her because he loved her too much, because he
set her too high above all the world, and so even more above himself. On
reaching this point, Pierre asked the captain, did he understand that.

The captain made a gesture expressing that whether he understood it or not,
he begged him to proceed.

“Platonic love; moonshine…” he muttered. The wine he had drunk, or an impulse
of frankness, or the thought that this man did not know and never would know,
any of the persons concerned in his story, or all together loosened Pierre's
tongue. With faltering lips and with a faraway look in his moist eye, he told
all his story; his marriage and the story of Natasha's love for his dearest
friend and her betrayal of him, and all his own simple relations with her. In
response to questions from Ramballe, he told him, too, what he had at first
concealed—his position in society—and even disclosed his name.

What impressed the captain more than anything else in Pierre's story was the
fact that Pierre was very wealthy, that he had two palatial houses in Moscow,
and that he had abandoned everything, and yet had not left Moscow, but was
staying in the town concealing his name and station.

Late in the night they went out together into the street. The night was warm
and clear. On the left there was the glow of the first fire that broke out in
Moscow, in Petrovka. On the right a young crescent moon stood high in the sky,
and in the opposite quarter of the heavens hung the brilliant comet which was
connected in Pierre's heart with his love. At the gates of the yard stood
Gerasim, the cook, and two Frenchmen. Pierre could hear their laughter and talk,
incomprehensible to one another. They were looking at the glow of the fire
burning in the town.

There was nothing alarming in a small remote fire in the immense city.

Gazing at the lofty, starlit sky, at the moon, at the comet and the glow of
the fire, Pierre felt a thrill of joyous and tender emotion. “How fair it all
is! what more does one want?” he thought. And all at once, when he recalled his
design, his head seemed going round; he felt so giddy that he leaned against the
fence so as not to fall.

Without taking leave of his new friend, Pierre left the gate with unsteady
steps, and going back to his room lay down on the sofa and at once fell
asleep.