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There were in the room a child’s cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a table, a child’s table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew was sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was burning on the table, screened by a bound music book so that the light did not fall on the cot.
“My dear,” said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside the cot where she was standing, “better wait a bit... later...”
“Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things off—and this is what comes of it!” said Prince Andrew in an exasperated whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister.
“My dear, really... it’s better not to wake him... he’s asleep,” said the princess in a tone of entreaty.
Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed, wineglass in hand.
“Perhaps we’d really better not wake him,” he said hesitating.
“As you please... really... I think so... but as you please,” said Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion had prevailed. She drew her brother’s attention to the maid who was calling him in a whisper.
It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the boy who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their household doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town, they had been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by sleeplessness and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one another and reproached and disputed with each other.
“Ptrusha has come with papers from your father,” whispered the maid.
Prince Andrew went out.
“Devil take them!” he muttered, and after listening to the verbal instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his father’s letter, he returned to the nursery.
“Well?” he asked.
“Still the same. Wait, for heaven’s sake. Karl Ivnich always says that sleep is more important than anything,” whispered Princess Mary with a sigh.
Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.
“Confound you and your Karl Ivnich!” He took the glass with the drops and again went up to the cot.
“Andrew, don’t!” said Princess Mary.
But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his eyes, and stooped glass in hand over the infant.
“But I wish it,” he said. “I beg you—give it him!”
Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively and calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and sat down on a sofa in the next room.
He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them mechanically he began reading. The old prince, now and then using abbreviations, wrote in his large elongated hand on blue paper as follows:
Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful news—if it’s not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete victory over Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing, and the rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a German—I congratulate him! I can’t make out what the commander at Krchevo—a certain Khandrikv—is up to; till now the additional men and provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and say I’ll have his head off if everything is not here in a week. Have received another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle from Ptenka—he took part in it—and it’s all true. When mischief-makers don’t meddle even a German beats Buonaparte. He is said to be fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop off to Krchevo without delay and carry out instructions!
Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It was a closely written letter of two sheets from Bilbin. He folded it up without reading it and reread his father’s letter, ending with the words: “Gallop off to Krchevo and carry out instructions!”
“No, pardon me, I won’t go now till the child is better,” thought he, going to the door and looking into the nursery.
Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the baby.
“Ah yes, and what else did he say that’s unpleasant?” thought Prince Andrew, recalling his father’s letter. “Yes, we have gained a victory over Bonaparte, just when I’m not serving. Yes, yes, he’s always poking fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!” And he began reading Bilbin’s letter which was written in French. He read without understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a moment, what he had too long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of all else.
Bilbin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms, he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and self-derision genuinely Russian. Bilbin wrote that the obligation of diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in Prince Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the bile he had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the army. The letter was old, having been written before the battle at Preussisch-Eylau.
“Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz,” wrote Bilbin, “as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I have certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for me; what I have seen during these last three months is incredible.
“I begin ab ovo. ‘The enemy of the human race,’ as you know, attacks the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only betrayed us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but it turns out that ‘the enemy of the human race’ pays no heed to our fine speeches and in his rude and savage way throws himself on the Prussians without giving them time to finish the parade they had begun, and in two twists of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and installs himself in the palace at Potsdam.
“‘I most ardently desire,’ writes the King of Prussia to Bonaparte, ‘that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my palace in a manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as circumstances allowed, I have hastened to take all steps to that end. May I have succeeded!’ The Prussian generals pride themselves on being polite to the French and lay down their arms at the first demand.
“The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender.... All this is absolutely true.
