that almost killed the countess, this second blow, restored
Natasha to life.
A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual
body is like a physical wound and, strange as it may seem,
just as a deep wound may heal and its edges join, physical
and spiritual wounds alike can yet heal completely only as
the result of a vital force from within.
Natasha’s wound healed in that way. She thought her
life was ended, but her love for her mother unexpectedly
showed her that the essence of lifelovewas still active within
her. Love awoke and so did life.
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Prince Andrew’s last days had bound Princess Mary and
Natasha together; this new sorrow brought them still closer
to one another. Princess Mary put off her departure, and for
three weeks looked after Natasha as if she had been a sick
child. The last weeks passed in her mother’s bedroom had
strained Natasha’s physical strength.
One afternoon noticing Natasha shivering with fever,
Princess Mary took her to her own room and made her
lie down on the bed. Natasha lay down, but when Princess
Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away she called
her back.
‘I don’t want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little.’
‘You are tiredtry to sleep.’
‘No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me.’
‘She is much better. She spoke so well today,’ said Princess Mary.
Natasha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the
room scanned Princess Mary’s face.
‘Is she like him?’ thought Natasha. ‘Yes, like and yet not
like. But she is quite original, strange, new, and unknown.
And she loves me. What is in her heart? All that is good. But
how? What is her mind like? What does she think about
me? Yes, she is splendid!’
‘Mary,’ she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary’s hand
to herself, ‘Mary, you mustn’t think me wicked. No? Mary
darling, how I love you! Let us be quite, quite friends.’
And Natasha, embracing her, began kissing her face and
hands, making Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this
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demonstration of her feelings.
From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as
exists only between women was established between Princess Mary and Natasha. They were continually kissing and
saying tender things to one another and spent most of their
time together. When one went out the other became restless
and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt more in harmony with one another than either of them felt with herself
when alone. A feeling stronger than friendship sprang up
between them; an exclusive feeling of life being possible
only in each other’s presence.
Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after
they were already in bed they would begin talking and go
on till morning. They spoke most of what was long past.
Princess Mary spoke of her childhood, of her mother, her
father, and her daydreams; and Natasha, who with a passive lack of understanding had formerly turned away from
that life of devotion, submission, and the poetry of Christian self-sacrifice, now feeling herself bound to Princess
Mary by affection, learned to love her past too and to understand a side of life previously incomprehensible to her. She
did not think of applying submission and self-abnegation
to her own life, for she was accustomed to seek other joys,
but she understood and loved in another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For Princess Mary, listening
to Natasha’s tales of childhood and early youth, there also
opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of life:
belief in life and its enjoyment.
Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to
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lower (as they thought) their exalted feelings by words; but
this silence about him had the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without being conscious of it.
Natasha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak
that they all talked about her health, and this pleased her.
But sometimes she was suddenly overcome by fear not only
of death but of sickness, weakness, and loss of good looks,
and involuntarily she examined her bare arm carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her drawn
and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed
to her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.
One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out
of breath. Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason
for going down, and then, testing her strength, ran upstairs
again, observing the result.
Another time when she called Dunyasha her voice trembled, so she called againthough she could hear Dunyasha
comingcalled her in the deep chest tones in which she had
been wont to sing, sing, and listened attentively to herself.
She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the layer of slime that covered her soul and seemed
to her impenetrable, delicate young shoots of grass were
already sprouting, which taking root would so cover with
their living verdure the grief that weighed her down that it
would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound had
begun to heal from within.
At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow,
and the count insisted on Natasha’s going with her to consult the doctors.
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Chapter IV
After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had
been unable to hold back his troops in their anxiety to
overwhelm and cut off the enemy and so on, the farther
movement of the fleeing French, and of the Russians who
pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without a battle. The flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing
the French could not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses broke down, and the information received of the
movements of the French was never reliable.
The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this
continuous marching at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day
that they could not go any faster.
To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army
it is only necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact
that, while not losing more than five thousand killed and
wounded after Tarutino and less than a hundred prisoners,
the Russian army which left that place a hundred thousand
strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty thousand.
The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our army as the flight of the French was to theirs.
The only difference was that the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of destruction as hung over
the French, and that the sick Frenchmen were left behind
in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind were
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among their own people. The chief cause of the wastage of
Napoleon’s army was the rapidity of its movement, and a
convincing proof of this is the corresponding decrease of
the Russian army.
Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to
check the movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian army generals, directed his whole
activity here, as he had done at Tarutino and Vyazma, to
hastening it on while easing the movement of our army.
But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous
diminution of the army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident, another reason for slackening
the pace and delaying presented itself to Kutuzov. The aim
of the Russian army was to pursue the French. The road
the French would take was unknown, and so the closer our
troops trod on their heels the greater distance they had to
cover. Only by following at some distance could one cut
across the zigzag path of the French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals meant fresh movements of
the army and a lengthening of its marches, whereas the only
reasonable aim was to shorten those marches. To that end
Kutuzov’s activity was directed during the whole campaign
from Moscow to Vilnanot casually or intermittently but so
consistently that he never once deviated from it.
Kutuzov felt and knewnot by reasoning or science but
with the whole of his Russian beingwhat every Russian soldier felt: that the French were beaten, that the enemy was
flying and must be driven out; but at the same time he like
the soldiers realized all the hardship of this march, the
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rapidity of which was unparalleled for such a time of the
year.
But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the
Russian army, who wished to distinguish themselves, to
astonish somebody, and for some reason to capture a king
or a dukeit seemed that nowwhen any battle must be horrible and senselesswas the very time to fight and conquer
somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when
one after another they presented projects of maneuvers to
be made with those soldiersill-shod, insufficiently clad, and
half starvedwho within a month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half their number, and who at the best
if the flight continued would have to go a greater distance
than they had already traversed, before they reached the
frontier.
This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to
overthrow, and to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians stumbled on the French army.
So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one
of the three French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen thousand men. Despite all
Kutuzov’s efforts to avoid that ruinous encounter and to
preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob of
French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe
for three days.
Toll wrote a disposition: ‘The first column will march
to so and so,’ etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the disposition. Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg
fired from a hill over the French crowds that were running
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past, and demanded reinforcements which did not arrive.
The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and hid themselves in the forest by night, making their way round as best
they could, and continued their flight.
Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the commissariat affairs of his detachment,
and could never be found when he was wantedthat chevalier sans peur et sans reproche* as he styled himselfwho was
fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys demanding
their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was
ordered
