War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XIX

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PRINCE ANDREY BOLKONSKY was lying on the hill of Pratzen, on the spot where

he had fallen with the flagstaff in his hands. He was losing blood, and kept

moaning a soft, plaintive, childish moan, of which he himself knew nothing.

Towards evening he ceased moaning and became perfectly still. He did not know

how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he felt again that he was alive

and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.

“Where is it, that lofty sky that I knew not till now and saw to-day?” was

his first thought. “And this agony I did not know either,” he thought. “Yes, I

knew nothing, nothing till now. But where am I?”

He fell to listening, and caught the sound of approaching hoofs and voices

speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him was again the same lofty sky,

with clouds higher than ever floating over it, and between them stretches of

blue infinity. He did not turn his head and did not see the men who, judging

from the voices and the thud of hoofs, had ridden up to him and stopped.

They were Napoleon and two adjutants escorting him. Bonaparte, making a tour

of the field of battle, had been giving his last instructions for the

strengthening of the battery firing at the Augest dam, and was inspecting the

dead and wounded on the field of battle.

“Fine men!” said Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian grenadier, who with his

face thrust into the earth and blackened neck lay on his stomach, one stiff arm

flung wide.

“The field-guns have exhausted their ammunition,” said an adjutant, arriving

that moment from the battery that was firing at Augest.

“Bring up more from the reserve,” said Napoleon, and riding a few steps away

stood still, looking at Prince Andrey, who lay on his back with the abandoned

flagstaff beside him (the flag had been taken by the French as a trophy).

“That's a fine death!” said Napoleon, looking at Bolkonsky. Prince Andrey

knew that it was said of him, and that it was Napoleon saying it. He heard the

speaker of those words addressed as “your majesty.” But he heard the words as he

heard the buzzing of flies. It was not merely that he took no interest in them,

but he did not attend to them and at once forgot them. There was a burning pain

in his head; he felt he was losing blood, and he saw above him the high,

far-away, everlasting sky. He knew it was Napoleon—his hero—but at that moment

Napoleon seemed to him such a small, insignificant creature in comparison with

what was passing now between his soul and that lofty, limitless sky with the

clouds flying over it. It meant nothing to him at that moment who was standing

over him, what was being said of him. He was only glad that people were standing

over him, and his only desire was that these people should help him and bring

him back to life, which seemed to him so good, because he saw it all quite

differently now. He made a supreme effort to stir and utter some sound. He moved

his leg faintly, and uttered a weak, sickly moan that touched himself. “Ah, he's

alive,” said Napoleon. “Pick up this young man and carry him to an ambulance!”

Saying this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who rode up to meet the

conqueror, smiling, taking off his hat and congratulating him on his

victory.

Prince Andrey remembered nothing more; he lost consciousness from the

excruciating pain caused by being laid on the stretcher, the jolting while he

was being moved, and the sounding of his wound at the ambulance. He only

regained consciousness towards the end of the day when with other Russian

officers, wounded and prisoners, he was being taken to the hospital. On this

journey he felt a little stronger, and could look about him and even

speak.

The first words he heard on coming to himself were from a French convoy

officer who was saying hurriedly: “They must stop here; the Emperor will be here

directly; it will be a pleasure for him to see these prisoners.”

“There are such a lot of prisoners to-day, almost the whole of the Russian

army, that he is probably weary of seeing them,” said another officer.

“Well, but this one, they say, is the commander of all the Emperor

Alexander's guards,” said the first speaker, pointing to a wounded Russian

officer in the white uniform of the horse-guards. Bolkonsky recognised Prince

Repnin, whom he had met in Petersburg society. Beside him stood another officer

of the horse-guards, a lad of nineteen, also wounded.

Bonaparte rode up at a gallop and pulled up. “Who is the senior officer?” he

said, on seeing the prisoners.

They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.

“Are you the commander of the regiment of Emperor Alexander's horse-guards?”

asked Napoleon.

“I was in command of a squadron,” replied Repnin.

“Your regiment did its duty honourably,” said Napoleon.

“The praise of a great general is a soldier's best reward,” said

Repnin.

“I bestow it upon you with pleasure,” said Napoleon. “Who is this young man

beside you?” Prince Repnin gave his name, Lieutenant Suhtelen.

Looking at him, Napoleon said with a smile: “He has come very young to meddle

with us.”

“Youth is no hindrance to valour,” said Suhtelen in a breaking voice.

“A fine answer,” said Napoleon; “young man, you will go far.”

Prince Andrey, who had been thrust forward under the Emperor's eyes to

complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to attract his notice. Napoleon

apparently remembered seeing him on the field, and addressing him he used the

same epithet, “young man,” with which his first sight of Bolkonsky was

associated in his memory.

“And you, young man,” he said to him, “how are you feeling, mon

brave?”

Although five minutes previously Prince Andrey had been able to say a few

words to the soldiers who were carrying him, he was silent now, with his eyes

fastened directly upon Napoleon. So trivial seemed to him at that moment all the

interests that were engrossing Napoleon, so petty seemed to him his hero, with

his paltry vanity and glee of victory, in comparison with that lofty, righteous,

and kindly sky which he had seen and comprehended, that he could not answer him.

And all indeed seemed to him so trifling and unprofitable beside the stern and

solemn train of thought aroused in him by weakness from loss of blood, by

suffering and the nearness of death. Gazing into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrey

mused on the nothingness of greatness, on the nothingness of life, of which no

one could comprehend the significance, and on the nothingness—still more—of

death, the meaning of which could be understood and explained by none of the

living.

The Emperor, after vainly pausing for a reply, turned away and said to one of

the officers in command—

“See that they look after these gentlemen and take them to my bivouac; let my

doctor Larrey attend to their wounds. Au revoir, Prince Repnin,” and he

galloped away.

His face was radiant with happiness and self-satisfaction.

The soldiers, who had been carrying Prince Andrey, had come across the golden

relic Princess Marya had hung upon her brother's neck, and taken it off him, but

seeing the graciousness the Emperor had shown to the prisoners, they made haste

to restore the holy image.

Prince Andrey did not see who put it on him again, nor how it was replaced,

but all at once he found the locket on its delicate gold chain on his chest

outside his uniform.

“How good it would be,” thought Prince Andrey, as he glanced at the image

which his sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence, “how

good it would be if all were as clear and simple as it seems to Marie. How good

to know where to seek aid in this life and what to expect after it, there,

beyond the grave!”

“How happy and at peace I should be, if I could say now, ‘Lord, have mercy on

me!…' But to whom am I to say that? Either a Power infinite, inconceivable, to

which I cannot appeal, which I cannot even put into words, the great whole, or

nothing,” he said to himself, “or that God, who has been sewn up here in this

locket by Marie? There is nothing, nothing certain but the nothingness of all

that is comprehensible to us, and the grandeur of something incomprehensible,

but more important!”

The stretchers began to be moved. At every jolt he felt intolerable pain

again. The fever became higher, and he fell into delirium. Visions of his

father, his wife, his sister, and his future son, and the tenderness he had felt

for them on the night before the battle, the figure of that little, petty

Napoleon, and over all these the lofty sky, formed the chief substance of his

delirious dreams. The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bleak Hills

passed before his imagination. He was enjoying that happiness when suddenly

there appeared that little Napoleon with his callous, narrow look of happiness

in the misery of others, and there came doubts and torments, and only the sky

promised peace. Towards morning all his dreams mingled and melted away in the

chaos and darkness of unconsciousness and oblivion, far more likely, in the

opinion of Napoleon's doctor, Larrey, to be ended by death than by

recovery.

“He is a nervous, bilious subject,” said Larrey; “he won't recover.”

Prince Andrey, with the rest of the hopeless cases, was handed over to the

care of the inhabitants of the district.

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1. Ebooks list page : 82
2. War And Peace: Book 4 - CHAPTER V
3. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER III
4. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER II
5. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER I
6. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER IV
7. War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XVI
8. War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XV
9. War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER XIV
10. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER V
11. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER VI
12. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XIX
13. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XVI
14. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XIV
15. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XV
16. War And Peace: Book 2 - CHAPTER XI