War And Peace: Book 11 - CHAPTER XXV

Description

BY NINE O'CLOCK in the morning, when the troops were moving across Moscow,

people had ceased coming to Rastoptchin for instructions. All who could get away

were going without asking leave; those who stayed decided for themselves what

they had better do.

Count Rastoptchin ordered his horses in order to drive to Sokolniky, and with

a yellow and frowning face, sat in silence with folded arms in his study.

Every governing official in quiet, untroubled times feels that the whole

population under his charge is only kept going by his efforts; and it is this

sense of being indispensably necessary in which every governing official finds

the chief reward for his toils and cares. It is easy to understand that while

the ocean of history is calm, the governing official holding on from his crazy

little skiff by a pole to the ship of the people, and moving with it, must fancy

that it is his efforts that move the ship on to which he is clinging. But a

storm has but to arise to set the sea heaving and the ship tossing upon it, and

such error becomes at once impossible. The ship goes on its vast course

unchecked, the pole fails to reach the moving vessel, and the pilot, from being

the master, the source of power, finds himself a helpless, weak, and useless

person.

Rastoptchin felt this, and it drove him to frenzy. The head of the police,

who had got away from the crowd, went in to see him at the same time as an

adjutant, who came to announce that his horses were ready. Both were pale, and

the head of the police, after reporting that he had discharged the commission

given to him, informed Count Rastoptchin that there was an immense crowd of

people in his courtyard wanting to see him.

Without a word in reply, Count Rastoptchin got up and walked with rapid steps

to his light, sumptuously furnished drawing-room. He went up to the balcony

door, took hold of the door-handle, let go of it, and moved away to the window,

from which the whole crowd could be better seen. The tall young fellow was

standing in the front, and with a severe face, waving his arms and saying

something. The blood-bespattered smith stood beside him with a gloomy air.

Through the closed windows could be heard the roar of voices.

“Is the carriage ready?” said Rastoptchin, moving back from the window.

“Yes, your excellency,” said the adjutant.

Rastoptchin went again to the balcony door.

“Why, what is it they want?” he asked the head of the police.

“Your excellency, they say they have come together to go to fight the French,

by your orders; they were shouting something about treachery. But it is an angry

crowd, your excellency. I had much ado to get away. If I may venture to suggest,

your excellency …”

“Kindly leave me; I know what to do without your assistance,” cried

Rastoptchin angrily. He stood at the door of the balcony looking at the crowd.

“This is what they have done with Russia! This is what they have done with me!”

thought Rastoptchin, feeling a rush of irrepressible rage against the undefined

some one to whose fault what was happening could be set down. As is often the

case with excitable persons, he was possessed by fury, while still seeking an

object for it. “Here is the populace, the dregs of the people,” he thought,

looking at the crowd, “that they have stirred up by their folly. They want a

victim,” came into his mind, as he watched the waving arm of the tall fellow in

front. And the thought struck him precisely because he too wanted a victim, an

object for his wrath.

“Is the carriage ready?” he asked again.

“Yes, your excellency. What orders in regard to Vereshtchagin? He is waiting

at the steps,” answered the adjutant.

“Ah!” cried Rastoptchin, as though struck by some sudden recollection.

And rapidly opening the door, he walked resolutely out on the balcony. The

hum of talk instantly died down, caps and hats were lifted, and all eyes were

raised upon the governor.

“Good-day, lads!” said the count, speaking loudly and quickly. “Thanks for

coming. I'll come out to you in a moment, but we have first to deal with a

criminal. We have to punish the wretch by whose doing Moscow is ruined. Wait for

me!” And as rapidly he returned to the apartment, slamming the door

violently.

An approving murmur of satisfaction ran through the crowd. “He'll have all

the traitors cut down, of course. And you talk of the French … he'll show us the

rights and the wrongs of it all!” said the people, as it were reproaching one

another for lack of faith.

A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of the main entrance, and

gave some order, and the dragoons drew themselves up stiffly. The crowd moved

greedily up from the balcony to the front steps. Coming out there with hasty and

angry steps, Rastoptchin looked about him hurriedly, as though seeking some

one.

“Where is he?” he said, and at the moment he said it, he caught sight of a

young man with a long, thin neck, and half of his head shaven and covered with

short hair, coming round the corner of the house between two dragoons. This

young man was clothed in a fox-lined blue cloth coat, that had once been foppish

but was now shabby, and in filthy convict's trousers of fustian, thrust into

uncleaned and battered thin boots. His uncertain gait was clogged by the heavy

manacles hanging about his thin, weak legs.

“Ah!” said Rastoptchin, hurriedly turning his eyes away from the young man in

the fox-lined coat and pointing to the bottom steps. “Put him here!”

With a clank of manacles the young man stepped with effort on to the step

indicated to him; putting his finger into the tight collar of his coat, he

turned his long neck twice, and sighing, folded his thin, unworkmanlike hands

before him with a resigned gesture.

For several seconds, while the young man was taking up his position on the

step, there was complete silence. Only at the back of the mass of people, all

pressing in one direction, could be heard sighs and groans and sounds of pushing

and the shuffling of feet.

Rastoptchin, waiting for him to be on the spot he had directed, scowled, and

passed his hand over his face.

“Lads!” he said, with a metallic ring in his voice, “this man, Vereshtchagin,

is the wretch by whose doing Moscow is lost.”

The young man in the fox-lined coat stood in a resigned pose, clasping his

hands together in front of his body, and bending a little forward. His wasted

young face, with its look of hopelessness and the hideous disfigurement of the

half-shaven head, was turned downwards. At the count's first words he slowly

lifted his head and looked up from below at the count, as though he wanted to

say something to him, or at least to catch his eye. But Rastoptchin did not look

at him. The blue vein behind the young man's ear stood out like a cord on his

long, thin neck, and all at once his face flushed crimson.

All eyes were fixed upon him. He gazed at the crowd, and, as though made

hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled a timid,

mournful smile, and dropping his head again, shifted his feet on the step.

“He is a traitor to his Tsar and his country; he deserted to Bonaparte; he

alone of all the Russians has disgraced the name of Russia, and through him

Moscow is lost,” said Rastoptchin in a harsh, monotonous voice; but all at once

he glanced down rapidly at Vereshtchagin, who still stood in the same submissive

attitude. As though that glance had driven him to frenzy, flinging up his arms,

he almost yelled to the crowd:

“You shall deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you!”

The people were silent, and only pressed closer and closer on one another. To

bear each other's weight, to breathe in that tainted foulness, to be unable to

stir, and to be expecting something vague, uncomprehended and awful, was

becoming unbearable. The men in the front of the crowd, who saw and heard all

that was passing before them, all stood with wide-open, horror-struck eyes and

gaping mouths, straining all their strength to support the pressure from behind

on their backs.

“Beat him! … Let the traitor perish and not shame the name of Russia!”

screamed Rastoptchin. “Cut him down! I give the command!” Hearing not the words,

but only the wrathful tones of Rastoptchin's voice, the mob moaned and heaved

forward, but stopped again.

“Count!” … the timid and yet theatrical voice of Vereshtchagin broke in upon

the momentary stillness that followed. “Count, one God is above us …” said

Vereshtchagin, lifting his head, and again the thick vein swelled on his thin

neck and the colour swiftly came and faded again from his face. He did not

finish what he was trying to say.

“Cut him down! I command it! …” cried Rastoptchin, suddenly turning as white

as Vereshtchagin himself.

“Draw sabres!” shouted the officer to the dragoons, himself drawing his

sabre.

Another still more violent wave passed over the crowd, and reaching the front

rows, pushed them forward, and threw them staggering right up to the steps. The

tall young man, with a stony expression of face and his lifted arm rigid in the

air, stood close beside Vereshtchagin. “Strike at him!” the officer said almost

in a whisper to the dragoons; and one of the soldiers, his face suddenly

convulsed by fury, struck Vereshtchagin on the head with the flat of his

sword.

Vereshtchagin uttered a brief “Ah!” of surprise, looking about him in alarm,

as though he did not know what this was done to him for. A similar moan of

surprise and horror ran through the crowd.

“O Lord!” some one was heard to utter mournfully. After the exclamation of

surprise that broke from Vereshtchagin he uttered a piteous cry of pain, and

that cry was his undoing. The barrier of human feeling that still held the mob

back was strained to the utmost limit, and it snapped instantaneously. The crime

had been begun, its completion was inevitable. The piteous moan of reproach was

drowned in the angry and menacing roar of the mob. Like the great seventh wave

that shatters a ship, that last, irresistible wave surged up at the back of the

crowd, passed on to the foremost ranks, carried them off their feet and engulfed

all together. The dragoon who had struck the victim would have repeated his

blow. Vereshtchagin, with a scream of terror, putting his hands up before him,

dashed into the crowd. The tall young man, against whom he stumbled, gripped

Vereshtchagin's slender neck in his hands, and with a savage shriek fell with

him under the feet of the trampling, roaring mob. Some beat and tore at

Vereshtchagin, others at the tall young man. And the screams of persons crushed

in the crowd and of those who tried to rescue the tall young man only increased

the frenzy of the mob. For a long while the dragoons were unable to get the

bleeding, half-murdered factory workman away. And in spite of all the feverish

haste with which the mob strove to make an end of what had once been begun, the

men who beat and strangled Vereshtchagin and tore him to pieces could not kill

him. The crowd pressed on them on all sides, heaved from side to side like one

man with them in the middle, and would not let them kill him outright or let him

go.

“Hit him with an axe, eh? … they have crushed him … Traitor, he sold Christ!

… living … alive … serve the thief right. With a bar! … Is he alive? …”

Only when the victim ceased to struggle, and his shrieks had passed into a

long-drawn, rhythmic death-rattle, the mob began hurriedly to change places

about the bleeding corpse on the ground. Every one went up to it, gazed at what

had been done, and pressed back horror-stricken, surprised, and

reproachful.

“O Lord, the people's like a wild beast; how could he be alive!” was heard in

the crowd. “And a young fellow too … must have been a merchant's son, to be

sure, the people … they do say it's not the right man … not the right man! … O

Lord! … They have nearly murdered another man; they say he's almost dead … Ah,

the people … who wouldn't be afraid of sin …” were saying now the same people,

looking with rueful pity at the dead body, with the blue face fouled with dust

and blood, and the long, slender, broken neck.

A punctilious police official, feeling the presence of the body unseemly in

the courtyard of his excellency, bade the dragoons drag the body away into the

street. Two dragoons took hold of the mutilated legs, and drew the body away.

The dead, shaven head, stained with blood and grimed with dust, was trailed

along the ground, rolling from side to side on the long neck. The crowd shrank

away from the corpse.

When Vereshtchagin fell, and the crowd with a savage yell closed in and

heaved about him, Rastoptchin suddenly turned white, and instead of going to the

back entrance, where horses were in waiting for him, he strode rapidly along the

corridor leading to the rooms of the lower story, looking on the floor and not

knowing where or why he was going. The count's face was white, and he could not

check the feverish twitching of his lower jaw.

“Your excellency, this way … where are you going? … this way,” said a

trembling, frightened voice behind him. Count Rastoptchin was incapable of

making any reply. Obediently turning, he went in the direction indicated. At the

back entrance stood a carriage. The distant roar of the howling mob could be

heard even there. Count Rastoptchin hurriedly got into the carriage, and bade

them drive him to his house at Sokolniky beyond the town. As he drove out into

Myasnitsky Street and lost the sound of the shouts of the mob, the count began

to repent. He thought with dissatisfaction now of the excitement and terror he

had betrayed before his subordinates. “The populace is terrible, it is hideous.

They are like wolves that can only be appeased with flesh,” he thought. “Count!

there is one God over us!” Vereshtchagin's words suddenly recurred to him, and a

disagreeable chill ran down his back. But that feeling was momentary, and Count

Rastoptchin smiled contemptuously at himself. “I had other duties. The people

had to be appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishing for the

public good,” he thought; and he began to reflect on the social duties he had

towards his family and towards the city intrusted to his care; and on

himself—not as Fyodor Vassilyevitch Rastoptchin (he assumed that Fyodor

Vassilyevitch Rastoptchin was sacrificing himself for le bien

publique)—but as governor of Moscow, as the representative of authority

intrusted with full powers by the Tsar. “If I had been simply Fyodor

Vassilyevitch, my course of action might have been quite different; but I was

bound to preserve both the life and the dignity of the governor.”

Lightly swayed on the soft springs of the carriage, and hearing no more of

the fearful sounds of the mob, Rastoptchin was physically soothed, and as is

always the case simultaneously with physical relief, his intellect supplied him

with grounds for moral comfort. The thought that reassured Rastoptchin was not a

new one. Ever since the world has existed and men have killed one another, a man

has never committed such a crime against his fellow without consoling himself

with the same idea. That idea is le bien publique, the supposed public

good of others.

To a man not swayed by passion this good never seems certain; but a man who

has committed such a crime always knows positively where that public good lies.

And Rastoptchin now knew this.

Far from reproaching himself in his meditations on the act he had just

committed, he found grounds for self-complacency in having so successfully made

use of an occasion so à propos for executing a criminal, and at the same

time satisfying the crowd. “Vereshtchagin had been tried and condemned to the

death penalty,” Rastoptchin reflected (though Vereshtchagin had only been

condemned by the senate to hard labour). “He was a spy and a traitor; I could

not let him go unpunished, and so I hit two birds with one stone. I appeased the

mob by giving them a victim, and I punished a miscreant.”

Reaching his house in the suburbs, the count completely regained his

composure in arranging his domestic affairs.

Within half an hour the count was driving with rapid horses across the

Sokolniky plain, thinking no more now of the past, but absorbed in thought and

plans for what was to come. He was approaching now the Yauzsky bridge, where he

had been told that Kutuzov was. In his own mind he was preparing the biting and

angry speeches he would make, upbraiding Kutuzov for his deception. He would

make that old court fox feel that the responsibility for all the disasters bound

to follow the abandonment of Moscow, and the ruin of Russia (as Rastoptchin

considered it), lay upon his old, doting head. Going over in anticipation what

he would say to him, Rastoptchin wrathfully turned from side to side in the

carriage, and angrily looked about him.

The Sokolniky plain was deserted. Only at one end of it, by the alms-house

and lunatic asylum, there were groups of people in white garments, and similar

persons were wandering about the plain, shouting and gesticulating.

One of them was running right across in front of Count Rastoptchin's

carriage. And Count Rastoptchin himself and his coachman, and the dragoons, all

gazed with a vague feeling of horror and curiosity at these released lunatics,

and especially at the one who was running towards them.

Tottering on his long, thin legs in his fluttering dressing-gown, this madman

ran at headlong speed, with his eyes fixed on Rastoptchin, shouting something to

him in a husky voice, and making signs to him to stop. The gloomy and triumphant

face of the madman was thin and yellow, with irregular tufts of beard growing on

it. The black, agate-like pupils of his eyes moved restlessly, showing the

saffron-yellow whites above. “Stay! stop, I tell you!” he shouted shrilly, and

again breathlessly fell to shouting something with emphatic gestures and

intonations.

He reached the carriage and ran alongside it.

“Three times they slew me, three times I rose again from the dead. They

stoned me, they crucified me … I shall rise again … I shall rise again … I shall

rise again. My body they tore to pieces. The kingdom of heaven will be

overthrown … Three times I will overthrow it, and three times I will set it up

again,” he screamed, his voice growing shriller and shriller. Count Rastoptchin

suddenly turned white, as he had turned white when the crowd fell upon

Vereshtchagin. He turned away. “G … go on, faster!” he cried in a trembling

voice to his coachman.

The carriage dashed on at the horses' topmost speed. But for a long while yet

Count Rastoptchin heard behind him the frantic, desperate scream getting further

away, while before his eyes he saw nothing but the wondering, frightened,

bleeding face of the traitor in the fur-lined coat. Fresh as that image was,

Rastoptchin felt now that it was deeply for ever imprinted on his heart. He felt

clearly now that the bloody print of that memory would never leave him, that the

further he went the more cruelly, the more vindictively, would that fearful

memory rankle in his heart to the end of his life. He seemed to be hearing now

the sound of his own words: “Tear him to pieces, you shall answer for it to me!—

Why did I say these words? I said it somehow without meaning to … I might not

have said them,” he thought, “and then nothing would have happened.” He saw the

terror-stricken, and then suddenly frenzied face of the dragoon who had struck

the first blow, and the glance of silent, timid reproach cast on him by that lad

in the fox-lined coat. “But I didn't do it on my own account. I was bound to act

in that way. La plèbe … le tra

$$ Buy "War And Peace: Book 11 - CHAPTER XXV" on Amazon $$