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“Yes, yes.”
“But if I were right, I should be rendering a service to my Fatherland for which I am ready to die.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And should your Serene Highness require a man who will not spare his skin, please think of me.... Perhaps I may prove useful to your Serene Highness.”
“Yes... Yes...” Kutzov repeated, his laughing eye narrowing more and more as he looked at Pierre.
Just then Bors, with his courtierlike adroitness, stepped up to Pierre’s side near Kutzov and in a most natural manner, without raising his voice, said to Pierre, as though continuing an interrupted conversation:
“The militia have put on clean white shirts to be ready to die. What heroism, Count!”
Bors evidently said this to Pierre in order to be overheard by his Serene Highness. He knew Kutzov’s attention would be caught by those words, and so it was.
“What are you saying about the militia?” he asked Bors.
“Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highness—for death—they have put on clean shirts.”
“Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!” said Kutzov; and he closed his eyes and swayed his head. “A matchless people!” he repeated with a sigh.
“So you want to smell gunpowder?” he said to Pierre. “Yes, it’s a pleasant smell. I have the honor to be one of your wife’s adorers. Is she well? My quarters are at your service.”
And as often happens with old people, Kutzov began looking about absent-mindedly as if forgetting all he wanted to say or do.
Then, evidently remembering what he wanted, he beckoned to Andrew Kaysrov, his adjutant’s brother.
“Those verses... those verses of Mrin’s... how do they go, eh? Those he wrote about Gerkov: ‘Lectures for the corps inditing’... Recite them, recite them!” said he, evidently preparing to laugh.
Kaysrov recited.... Kutzov smilingly nodded his head to the rhythm of the verses.
When Pierre had left Kutzov, Dlokhov came up to him and took his hand.
“I am very glad to meet you here, Count,” he said aloud, regardless of the presence of strangers and in a particularly resolute and solemn tone. “On the eve of a day when God alone knows who of us is fated to survive, I am glad of this opportunity to tell you that I regret the misunderstandings that occurred between us and should wish you not to have any ill feeling for me. I beg you to forgive me.”
Pierre looked at Dlokhov with a smile, not knowing what to say to him. With tears in his eyes Dlokhov embraced Pierre and kissed him.
Bors said a few words to his general, and Count Bennigsen turned to Pierre and proposed that he should ride with him along the line.
“It will interest you,” said he.
“Yes, very much,” replied Pierre.
Half an hour later Kutzov left for Tatrinova, and Bennigsen and his suite, with Pierre among them, set out on their ride along the line.
From Grki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the bridge which, when they had looked at it from the hill, the officer had pointed out as being the center of our position and where rows of fragrant new-mown hay lay by the riverside. They rode across that bridge into the village of Borodin and thence turned to the left, passing an enormous number of troops and guns, and came to a high knoll where militiamen were digging. This was the redoubt, as yet unnamed, which afterwards became known as the Ravski Redoubt, or the Knoll Battery, but Pierre paid no special attention to it. He did not know that it would become more memorable to him than any other spot on the plain of Borodin.
They then crossed the hollow to Semnovsk, where the soldiers were dragging away the last logs from the huts and barns. Then they rode downhill and uphill, across a ryefield trodden and beaten down as if by hail, following a track freshly made by the artillery over the furrows of the plowed land, and reached some flches * which were still being dug.
* A kind of entrenchment.
At the flches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at the Shevrdino Redoubt opposite, which had been ours the day before and where several horsemen could be descried. The officers said that either Napoleon or Murat was there, and they all gazed eagerly at this little group of horsemen. Pierre also looked at them, trying to guess which of the scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon. At last those mounted men rode away from the mound and disappeared.
Bennigsen spoke to a general who approached him, and began explaining the whole position of our troops. Pierre listened to him, straining each faculty to understand the essential points of the impending battle, but was mortified to feel that his mental capacity was inadequate for the task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsen stopped speaking and, noticing that Pierre was listening, suddenly said to him:
“I don’t think this interests you?”
“On the contrary it’s very interesting!” replied Pierre not quite truthfully.
From the flches they rode still farther to the left, along a road winding through a thick, low-growing birch wood. In the middle of the wood a brown hare with white feet sprang out and, scared by the tramp of the many horses, grew so confused that it leaped along the road in front of them for some time, arousing general attention and laughter, and only when several voices shouted at it did it dart to one side and disappear in the thicket. After going through the wood for about a mile and a half they came out on a glade where troops of Tchkov’s corps were stationed to defend the left flank.
Here, at the extreme left flank, Bennigsen talked a great deal and with much heat, and, as it seemed to Pierre, gave orders of great military importance. In front of Tchkov’s troops was some high ground not occupied by troops. Bennigsen loudly criticized this mistake, saying that it was madness to leave a height which commanded the country around unoccupied and to place troops below it. Some of the generals expressed the same opinion. One in particular declared with martial heat that they were put there to be slaughtered. Bennigsen on his own authority ordered the troops to occupy the high ground. This disposition on the left flank increased Pierre’s doubt of his own capacity to understand military matters. Listening to Bennigsen and the generals criticizing the position of the troops behind the hill, he quite understood them and shared their opinion, but for that very reason he could not understand how the man who put them there behind the hill could have made so gross and palpable a blunder.
