Читать книгу War and Peace: Original Version - Лев Толстой, Leo Tolstoy, Liev N. Tolstói - Страница 46

“Well now, Mikhail Ivanovich, our Buonaparte is having a hard time of it. From what Prince Andrei” (he always referred to his son in this way in the third person) “has told me, huge forces are gathering against him! Yet you and I have always considered him an insignificant individual.”

Mikhail Ivanovich, who quite definitely did not know when you and I had said any such thing about Bonaparte, but realised that he was necessary for the preamble to this favourite topic of discussion, glanced in surprise at the young prince, wondering to himself what would come of this.

“I have a great tactician here!” the prince said to his son, indicating the architect, and the conversation moved on to Bonaparte and the modern-day generals and statesmen. The old prince seemed convinced, not only that all the current public figures were mere boys with no grasp of the essentials of either warfare or statecraft, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant little Frenchman, who was only successful because there were no Potemkins and Suvorovs to oppose him; he was even convinced there were not really any political troubles in Europe, nor any war either, but that there was a comic puppet play of some kind being acted out by modern-day people pretending that they were doing something serious. Prince Andrei cheerfully endured his father’s jibes at the new men, challenging his father to discussion and listening to him with evident pleasure.

“Everything from the old times may seem so fine,” he said, “but did not that same Suvorov fall into a trap set for him by Moreau and was he not unable to get out of it?”

“Who told you that? Who told you?” cried the prince. “Suvorov!” And he swept aside his plate, which Tikhon deftly caught. “Suvorov!… Two of them, Friedrich and Suvorov … Moreau! Moreau would have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand, but he had the Hofskriegswurstschnappsrat sitting on his hands. You go and you’ll recognise those Hofskriegswurstrats soon enough. Suvorov couldn’t best them, so how will Mikhailo Kutuzov cope? No, my friend,” he continued, “you and your generals can’t manage against Bonaparte, you have to get in a Frenchman, you set a thief to catch a thief. They’ve sent the German Pahlen to New York, to America, to get the Frenchman Moreau,” he said, alluding to the invitation that had been sent that year to Moreau to enter service with the Russians. “Wonderful! Tell me, were the Potemkins, Suvorovs and Orlovs all Germans, then? I tell you, brother, either all of you up there have lost your minds or I’m so old that I’ve lost mine. May God be with you, but we shall see. Bonaparte’s a great general for them now! Hm!

“Mikhail Ivanych!” the old prince cried to the architect, who was setting about his entrée in the hope they had forgotten about him. “Didn’t I tell you that Bonaparte was a great tactician? He says so too.”

“But of course, your excellency,” replied the architect.

The prince laughed his cold laugh once again.

“Bonaparte was born under a lucky star. He has excellent soldiers. That’s all.”

And the prince began analysing all the mistakes which, in his opinion, Bonaparte had made in all his wars, and even in affairs of state. His son did not object, but it was clear that, no matter what arguments might be presented to him, he was as little capable of changing his opinion as the old prince. Prince Andrei listened, suppressing his objections and marvelling, despite himself, at how this old man who had spent all these years alone out in the countryside could know all the military and political affairs of Europe in recent years in such great detail, and discuss them with such subtlety.

“Do you think I am an old man and do not understand the present state of affairs?” said the prince in conclusion. “I have it all right here. I don’t sleep for nights at a time. Well, where is this great general of yours, where has he shown his mastery?”

“That would be a long story,” his son replied.

“Off you go to your Buonoparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne, here is one more admirer of your lackey-emperor,” he shouted in excellent French.

“You know, prince, that I am not a Bonapartist.”

“‘God knows when he’ll be back …’,” the prince sang out of tune, and laughed on an even falser note as he got up from the table.

Throughout the argument and the rest of dinner the little princess said nothing, but from time to time she glanced in fright, now at Princess Marya, now at her father-in-law. When they got up from the table, she took her sister-in-law by the hand and drew her into the next room.

“What a clever man your father is,” she said. “Perhaps that is why I am afraid of him.”

“Ah, but he is so kind!” said Princess Marya.