At one of the posting stations he overtook a convoy carrying Russian wounded. The Russian officer who was leading the transport, sprawled in the front cart, shouted something, abusing a soldier in rude terms. Six or more pale, bandaged, and dirty wounded went jolting down the rocky road in each of the long German Vorspanns. Some of them were talking (he heard Russian speech), others were eating bread, the most seriously wounded gazed at the courier galloping past them silently, with a meek and sickly childish interest.
Prince Andrei ordered the driver to stop and asked the soldiers what action they had been wounded in.
“Two days ago on the Danube,” a soldier replied. Prince Andrei took out a purse and gave the soldier three gold pieces.
“For all of you,” he added, addressing the approaching officer. “Get well, lads,” he said to the soldiers, “there’s still a lot to be done.”
“Well, Mister Adjutant, what news?” asked the officer, obviously wishing to strike up a conversation.
“Good news!…Drive on,” he cried to the coachman and galloped on his way.
It was already quite dark when Prince Andrei drove into Brünn and saw himself surrounded by tall buildings, lighted shops, windows, street lamps, fine carriages noisily driving over the pavement, and all the atmosphere of a big, lively town, which is always so attractive for a military man after camp life. Prince Andrei, despite the quick driving and the sleepless night, felt himself still more animated than the day before as he pulled up to the palace. Only his eyes shone with a feverish gleam and his thoughts followed one another with extraordinary speed and clarity. He vividly pictured again all the details of the battle, not vaguely now, but in the well-defined, concise account which, in his imagination, he was giving to the emperor Franz. He vividly pictured the casual questions that might be put to him and the answers he would give to them. He supposed that he would be presented to the emperor at once. But at the main entrance to the palace, an official came running out to him and, recognizing that he was a courier, led him to another entrance.
“To the right from the corridor; there, Euer Hochgeboren,*186 you will find the imperial adjutant on duty,” said the official. “He will take you to the minister of war.”
The imperial adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrei, asked him to wait and went to the minister of war. Five minutes later the imperial adjutant returned and, inclining with particular courtesy and letting Prince Andrei go ahead of him, led him down the corridor to the office where the minister of war worked. The imperial adjutant seemed to want to protect himself from any attempts at familiarity from the Russian adjutant. Prince Andrei’s joyful feeling weakened significantly as he approached the doors of the minister of war’s office. He felt offended, and the feeling of offense turned that same instant, without his noticing it, into a feeling of totally groundless scorn. His resourceful mind suggested to him that same instant the point of view from which he had the right to scorn both the adjutant and the minister of war. “To him it must seem very easy to win a victory, having never had a whiff of powder!” he thought. His eyes narrowed scornfully; he entered the minister of war’s office especially slowly. This feeling increased still more when he saw the minister of war sitting at the big desk and for the first two minutes paying no attention to the one who had entered. The minister of war had lowered his bald head with gray temples between two wax candles and was reading some papers, making notes with a pencil. He went on reading to the end, without raising his head, when the door opened and footsteps were heard.
“Take this and deliver it,” the minister of war said to his adjutant, handing him the papers and still paying no attention to the courier.
Prince Andrei felt that either, of all the matters that occupied the minister of war, the actions of Kutuzov’s army must interest him the least, or that he had to give the Russian courier that feeling. “But it’s all quite the same to me,” he thought. The minister of war put the rest of the papers together, stacked them evenly, and raised his head. He had an intelligent and characteristic head. But the moment he turned to Prince Andrei, the intelligent and firm expression on the minister of war’s face changed, evidently habitually and consciously: there remained on his face the stupid, feigned smile, which did not conceal its feigning, of a man who receives many petitioners one after the other.
“From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?” he asked. “With good news, I hope? There was an encounter with Mortier? A victory? About time!”
He took the dispatch, which was addressed to him, and began reading it with a sorrowful expression.
“Ah, my God! My God! Schmidt!” he said in German. “What a misfortune! What a misfortune!”
Having looked through the dispatch, he put it on the table and glanced at Prince Andrei, clearly weighing something.
“Ah, what a misfortune! You say it was a decisive action? Mortier wasn’t taken, however.” (He reflected.) “I’m very glad you’ve come with good news, though Schmidt’s death is a high price for a victory. His Majesty will certainly wish to see you, but not today. Thank you, get some rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the parade. I’ll let you know, however.”
The stupid smile that had disappeared during the conversation reappeared on the minister of war’s face.
“Good-bye, thank you very much. The sovereign emperor will probably wish to see you,” he repeated and inclined his head.
When Prince Andrei left the palace, he felt that all the interest and happiness afforded him by the victory had now left him and been given over into the indifferent hands of the minister of war and the courteous adjutant. His whole way of thinking changed instantly: the battle appeared to him now as a long-past, far-off memory.
X
Prince Andrei stayed in Brünn with his acquaintance, the Russian diplomat Bilibin.
“Ah, dear prince, there’s no guest more welcome,” said Bilibin, coming out to meet Prince Andrei. “Franz, take the prince’s things to my bedroom!” he turned to the servant who accompanied Bolkonsky. “What, are you a herald of victory? Excellent. And I’m sitting here sick, as you see.”
Prince Andrei, having washed and dressed, came out to the diplomat’s luxurious study and sat down to the prepared dinner. Bilibin settled comfortably by the fireplace.
Not only after his trip, but after the whole campaign, during which he had been deprived of all the comforts of cleanliness and the refinements of life, Prince Andrei experienced the pleasant feeling of repose amidst the luxurious conditions of life to which he had been accustomed since childhood. Besides, it was pleasant for him, after his Austrian reception, to speak, if not Russian (they spoke French), at least with a Russian man, who, he supposed, shared the general Russian aversion (now especially sharply felt) to the Austrians.
Bilibin was a man of about thirty-five, a bachelor, of the same society as Prince Andrei. They had been acquainted back in Petersburg, but had become more closely acquainted during Prince Andrei’s visit to Vienna with Kutuzov. As Prince Andrei was a young man who promised to go far in his military career, so, and still more, was Bilibin promising in the diplomacy. He was still a young man, but no longer a young diplomat, since he had begun to serve at the age of sixteen, had been in Paris, in Copenhagen, and now occupied a rather important post in Vienna. Both the chancellor and our ambassador in Vienna7 knew him and valued him. He did not belong to that large number of diplomats whose duty it is to have only negative merits, to not do certain things, and to speak French so as to be very good diplomats; he was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness, he occasionally spent nights at his desk. He worked equally well whatever the essence of the work consisted of. He was interested not in the question “Why?” but in the question “How?” What the diplomatic business consisted of made no difference to him; but to compose a circular, a memorandum, a report artfully, aptly, and elegantly—in that he took great pleasure. Bilibin’s merits were valued, apart from his written work, also for his skill at moving and speaking in higher spheres.