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“I know myself that one cannot help one’s sympathies and antipathies,” thought Prince Andrew, “so it will not do to present my proposal for the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor personally, but the project will speak for itself.”
He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend of his father’s. The field marshal made an appointment to see him, received him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few days later Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see the Minister of War, Count Arakchev.
On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakchev’s waiting room at nine in the morning.
He did not know Arakchev personally, had never seen him, and all he had heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man.
“He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been commissioned to consider my project, so he alone can get it adopted,” thought Prince Andrew as he waited among a number of important and unimportant people in Count Arakchev’s waiting room.
During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen the anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such rooms were well known to him. Count Arakchev’s anteroom had quite a special character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting their turn for an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the faces of those of higher rank expressed a common feeling of awkwardness, covered by a mask of unconcern and ridicule of themselves, their situation, and the person for whom they were waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and down, others whispered and laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname “Sla Andrevich” and the words, “Uncle will give it to us hot,” in reference to Count Arakchev. One general (an important personage), evidently feeling offended at having to wait so long, sat crossing and uncrossing his legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.
But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all faces—that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the adjutant on duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look and was told that his turn would come in due course. After some others had been shown in and out of the minister’s room by the adjutant on duty, an officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and frightened air was admitted at that terrible door. This officer’s audience lasted a long time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a harsh voice was heard from the other side of the door, and the officer—with pale face and trembling lips—came out and passed through the waiting room, clutching his head.
After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer on duty said in a whisper, “To the right, at the window.”
Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man of forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep wrinkles, scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an overhanging red nose. Arakchev turned his head toward him without looking at him.
“What is your petition?” asked Arakchev.
“I am not petitioning, your excellency,” returned Prince Andrew quietly.
Arakchev’s eyes turned toward him.
“Sit down,” said he. “Prince Bolknski?”
“I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me...”
“You see, my dear sir, I have read your project,” interrupted Arakchev, uttering only the first words amiably and then—again without looking at Prince Andrew—relapsing gradually into a tone of grumbling contempt. “You are proposing new military laws? There are many laws but no one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody designs laws, it is easier writing than doing.”
“I came at His Majesty the Emperor’s wish to learn from your excellency how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have presented,” said Prince Andrew politely.
“I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to the committee. I do not approve of it,” said Arakchev, rising and taking a paper from his writing table. “Here!” and he handed it to Prince Andrew.
Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital letters, misspelled, and without punctuation: “Unsoundly constructed because resembles an imitation of the French military code and from the Articles of War needlessly deviating.”
“To what committee has the memorandum been referred?” inquired Prince Andrew.
“To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that your honor should be appointed a member, but without a salary.”
Prince Andrew smiled.
“I don’t want one.”
“A member without salary,” repeated Arakchev. “I have the honor... Eh! Call the next one! Who else is there?” he shouted, bowing to Prince Andrew.
While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the committee Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances, particularly those he knew to be in power and whose aid he might need. In Petersburg he now experienced the same feeling he had had on the eve of a battle, when troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly attracted to the ruling circles where the future, on which the fate of millions depended, was being shaped. From the irritation of the older men, the curiosity of the uninitiated, the reserve of the initiated, the hurry and preoccupation of everyone, and the innumerable committees and commissions of whose existence he learned every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in Petersburg a vast civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in chief of which was a mysterious person he did not know, but who was supposed to be a man of genius—Spernski. And this movement of reconstruction of which Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Spernski its chief promoter, began to interest him so keenly that the question of the army regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his consciousness.
Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception in the highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The reforming party cordially welcomed and courted him, in the first place because he was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly because by liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of being a liberal. The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured the innovations, turned to him expecting his sympathy in their disapproval of the reforms, simply because he was the son of his father. The feminine society world welcomed him gladly, because he was rich, distinguished, a good match, and almost a newcomer, with a halo of romance on account of his supposed death and the tragic loss of his wife. Besides this the general opinion of all who had known him previously was that he had greatly improved during these last five years, having softened and grown more manly, lost his former affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony, and acquired the serenity that comes with years. People talked about him, were interested in him, and wanted to meet him.
