Balashev respectfully ventured to disagree with the French Emperor.
'Every country has its own character,' said he.
'But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that,' said Napoleon.
'I beg your Majesty's pardon,' returned Balashev, 'besides Russia there is Spain, where there are also many churches and monasteries.'
This reply of Balashev's, which hinted at the recent defeats of the French in Spain, was much appreciated when he related it at Alexander's court, but it was not much appreciated at Napoleon's dinner, where it passed unnoticed.
The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals showed that they were puzzled as to what Balashev's tone suggested. 'If there is a point we don't see it, or it is not at all witty,' their expressions seemed to say. So little was his rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon did not notice it at all and naively asked Balashev through what towns the direct road from there to Moscow passed. Balashev, who was on the alert all through the dinner, replied that just as 'all roads lead to Rome,' so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and 'among them the road through Poltava, which Charles XII chose.' Balashev involuntarily flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this reply, but hardly had he uttered the word Poltava before Caulaincourt began speaking of the badness of the road from Petersburg to Moscow and of his Petersburg reminiscences.
After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon's study, which four days previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander. Napoleon sat down, toying with his Sevres coffee cup, and motioned Balashev to a chair beside him.
Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood which, more than any reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to consider everyone his friend. It seemed to him that he was surrounded by men who adored him: and he felt convinced that, after his dinner, Balashev too was his friend and worshiper. Napoleon turned to him with a pleasant, though slightly ironic, smile.
'They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander occupied? Strange, isn't it, General?' he said, evidently not doubting that this remark would be agreeable to his hearer since it went to prove his, Napoleon's, superiority to Alexander.
Balashev made no reply and bowed his head in silence.
'Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and Stein were deliberating,' continued Napoleon with the same derisive and self-confident smile. 'What I can't understand,' he went on, 'is that the Emperor Alexander has surrounded himself with my personal enemies. That I do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may the same?' and he turned inquiringly to Balashev, and evidently this thought turned him back on to the track of his morning's anger, which was still fresh in him.
'And let him know that I will do so!' said Napoleon, rising and pushing his cup away with his hand. 'I'll drive all his Wurttemberg, Baden, and Weimar relations out of Germany.... Yes. I'll drive them out. Let him prepare an asylum for them in Russia!'
Balashev bowed his head with an air indicating that he would like to make his bow and leave, and only listened because he could not help hearing what was said to him. Napoleon did not notice this expression; he treated Balashev not as an envoy from his enemy, but as a man now fully devoted to him and who must rejoice at his former master's humiliation.
'And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command of the armies? What is the good of that? War is my profession, but his business is to reign and not to command armies! Why has he taken on himself such a responsibility?'
Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced several times up and down the room in silence, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, went up to Balashev and with a slight smile, as confidently, quickly, and simply as if he were doing something not merely important but pleasing to Balashev, he raised his hand to the forty-year-old Russian general's face and, taking him by the ear, pulled it gently, smiling with his lips only.
To have one's ear pulled by the Emperor was considered the greatest honor and mark of favor at the French court.
'Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander, why don't you say anything?' said he, as if it was ridiculous, in his presence, to be the adorer and courtier of anyone but himself, Napoleon. 'Are the horses ready for the general?' he added, with a slight inclination of his head in reply to Balashev's bow. 'Let him have mine, he has a long way to go!'
The letter taken by Balashev was the last Napoleon sent to Alexander. Every detail of the interview was communicated to the Russian monarch, and the war began...
CHAPTER VIII
After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to Petersburg, on business as he told his family, but really to meet Anatole Kuragin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching Petersburg he inquired for Kuragin but the latter had already left the city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on his track. Anatole Kuragin promptly obtained an appointment from the Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia. While in Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutuzov, his former commander who was always well disposed toward him, and Kutuzov suggested that he should accompany him to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general had been appointed commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having received an appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey.
Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge Kuragin. He thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause it might compromise the young Countess Rostova and so he wanted to meet Kuragin personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel. But he again failed to meet Kuragin in Turkey, for soon after Prince Andrew arrived, the latter returned to Russia. In a new country, amid new conditions, Prince Andrew found life easier to bear. After his betrothed had broken faith with him--which he felt the more acutely the more he tried to conceal its effects--the surroundings in which he had been happy became trying to him, and the freedom and independence he had once prized so highly were still more so. Not only could he no longer think the thoughts that had first come to him as he lay gazing at the sky on the field of Austerlitz and had later enlarged upon with Pierre, and which had filled his solitude at Bogucharovo and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he even dreaded to recall them and the bright and boundless horizons they had revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical matters unrelated to his past interests, and he seized on these the more eagerly the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above him had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weighed him down, in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.
