Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

by Leo Tolstoy

  ‘This, dear Prince, is all I have to tell you about this episode in our affairs here.’

  XV

  THE report was dispatched from Tiflis on the 24th of December 1851, and on New Year’s Eve a courier, having overdriven a dozen horses and beaten a dozen drivers till they bled, delivered it to Prince Chernyshóv who at that time was Minister of War; and on the 1st of January 1852 Chernyshov took Vorontsóv’s report, among other papers, to the Emperor Nicholas.

  Chernyshóv disliked Vorontsóv because of the general respect in which the latter was held and because of his immense wealth, and also because Vorontsóv was a real aristocrat while Chernyshóv, after all, was a parvenu, but especially because the Emperor was particularly well disposed towards Vorontsóv. Therefore at every opportunity Chernyshóv tried to injure Vorontsóv.

  When he had last presented a report about Caucasian affairs he had succeeded in arousing Nicholas’s displeasure against Vorontsóv because – through the carelessness of those in command – almost the whole of a small Caucasian detachment had been destroyed by the mountaineers. He now intended to present the steps taken by Vorontsóv in relation to Hadji Murád in an unfavourable light. He wished to suggest to the Emperor that Vorontsóv always protected and even indulged the natives to the detriment of the Russians, and that he had acted unwisely in allowing Hadji Murád to remain in the Caucasus for there was every reason to suspect that he had only come over to spy on our means of defence, and that it would therefore be better to transport him to Central Russia and make use of him only after his family had been rescued from the mountaineers and it had become possible to convince ourselves of his loyalty.

  Chernyshóv’s plan did not succeed merely because on that New Year’s Day Nicholas was in particularly bad spirits, and out of perversity would not have accepted any suggestion whatever from anyone, least of all from Chernyshóv whom he only tolerated – regarding him as indispensable for the time being but looking upon him as a blackguard, for Nicholas knew of his endeavours at the trial of the Decembrists16 to secure the conviction of Zacháry Chernyshóv, and of his attempt to obtain Zacháry’s property for himself. So thanks to Nicholas’s ill temper Hadji Murád remained in the Caucasus, and his circumstances were not changed as they might have been had Chernyshóv presented his report at another time.

  * * *

  It was half-past nine o’clock Mwhen through the mist of the cold morning (the thermometer showed 13 degrees below zero Fahrenheit) Chernyshóv’s fat, bearded coachman, sitting on the box of a small sledge (like the one Nicholas drove about in) with a sharp-angled, cushion-shaped azure velvet cap on his head, drew up at the entrance of the Winter Palace and gave a friendly nod to his chum, Prince Dolgoruky’s coachman – who having brought his master to the palace had himself long been waiting outside, in his big coat with the thickly wadded skirts, sitting on the reins and rubbing his numbed hands together. Chernyshóv had on a long cloak with a large cape and a fluffy collar of silver beaver, and a regulation three-cornered hat with cocks’ feathers. He threw back the bearskin apron of the sledge and carefully disengaged his chilled feet, on which he had no over-shoes (he prided himself on never wearing any). Clanking his spurs with an air of bravado he ascended the carpeted steps and passed through the hall door which was respectfully opened for him by the porter, and entered the hall. Having thrown off his cloak which an old Court lackey hurried forward to take, he went to a mirror and carefully removed the hat from his curled wig. Looking at himself in the mirror, he arranged the hair on his temples and the tuft above his forehead with an accustomed movement of his old hands, and adjusted his cross, the shoulder-knots of his uniform, and his large-initialled epaulettes, and then went up the gently ascending carpeted stairs, his not very reliable old legs feebly mounting the shallow steps. Passing the Court lackeys in gala livery who stood obsequiously bowing, Chernyshov entered the waiting-room. He was respectfully met by a newly appointed aide-de-camp of the Emperor’s in a shining new uniform with epaulettes and shoulder-knots, whose face was still fresh and rosy and who had a small black moustache, and the hair on his temples brushed towards his eyes in the same way as the Emperor.

  Prnice Vasíli Dolgorúky, Assistant-Minister of War, with an expression of ennui on his dull face – which was ornamented with similar whiskers, moustaches, and temple tufts brushed forward like Nicholas’s – greeted him.

  ‘L’empereur?’ said Chernyshóv, addressing the aide-de-camp and looking inquiringly towards the door leading to the cabinet.

  ‘Sa majesté vient de rentrer,’17 replied the aide-de-camp, evidently enjoying the sound of his own voice, and stepping so softly and steadily that had a tumbler of water been placed on his head none of it would have been spilt, he approached the door and disappeared, his whole body evincing reverence for the spot he was about to visit.

  Dolgorúky meanwhile opened his portfolio to see that it contained the necessary papers, while Chernyshóv, frowning, paced up and down to restore the circulation in his numbed feet, and thought over what he was about to report to the Emperor. He was near the door of the cabinet when it opened again and the aide-de-camp, even more radiant and respectful than before, came out and with a gesture invited the minister and his assistant to enter.

  The Winter Palace had been rebuilt after a fire some considerable time before this, but Nicholas was still occupying rooms in the upper storey. The cabinet in which he received the reports of his ministers and other high officials was a very lofty apartment with four large windows. A big portrait of the Emperor Alexander I hung on the front side of the room. Two bureaux stood between the windows, and several chairs were ranged along the walls. In the middle of the room was an enormous writing-table, with an arm-chair before it for Nicholas, and other chairs for those to whom he gave audience.

  Nicholas sat at the table in a black coat with shoulder-straps but no epaulettes, his enormous body – with his overgrown stomach tightly laced in – was thrown back, and he gazed at the newcomers with fixed, lifeless eyes. His long pale face, with its enormous receding forehead between the tufts of hair which were brushed forward and skilfully joined to the wig that covered his bald patch, was specially cold and stony that day. His eyes, always dim, looked duller than usual, the compressed lips under his upturned moustaches, the high collar which supported his chin, and his fat freshly shaven cheeks on which symmetrical sausage-shaped bits of whiskers had been left, gave his face a dissatisfied and even irate expression. His bad mood was caused by fatigue, due to the fact that he had been to a masquerade the night before, and while walking about as was his wont in his Horse Guards’ uniform with a bird on the helmet, among the public which crowded round and timidly made way for his enormous, self-assured figure, he had again met the mask who at the previous masquerade had aroused his senile sensuality by her whiteness, her beautiful figure, and her tender voice. At that former masquerade she had disappeared after promising to meet him at the next one.

  At yesterday’s masquerade she had come up to him, and this time he had not let her go, but had led her to the box specially kept ready for that purpose, where he could be alone with her. Having arrived in silence at the door of the box Nicholas looked round to find the attendant, but he was not there. He frowned and pushed the door open himself, letting the lady enter first.

  ‘Il y a quelqu’un!’18 said the mask, stopping short.

  And the box actually was occupied. On the small velvet-covered sofa, close together, sat an Uhlan officer and a pretty, fair curly-haired young woman in a domino, who had removed her mask. On catching sight of the angry figure of Nicholas drawn up to its full height, she quickly replaced her mask, but the Uhlan officer, rigid with fear, gazed at Nicholas with fixed eyes without rising from the sofa.

  Used as he was to the terror he inspired in others, that terror always pleased Nicholas, and by way of contrast he sometimes liked to astound those plunged in terror by addressing kindly words to them. He did so on this occasion.

  ‘Well, friend,
’ said he to the officer, ‘you are younger than I and might give up your place to me!’

  The officer jumped to his feet, and growing first pale and then red and bending almost double, he followed his partner silently out of the box, leaving Nicholas alone with his lady.

  She proved to be a pretty, twenty-year-old virgin, the daughter of a Swedish governess. She told Nicholas how when quite a child she had fallen in love with him from his portraits; how she adored him and had made up her mind to attract his attention at any cost. Now she had succeeded and wanted nothing more – so she said.

  The girl was taken to the place where Nicholas usually had rendezvous with women, and there he spent more than an hour with her.

  When he returned to his room that night and lay on the hard narrow bed about which he prided himself, and covered himself with the cloak which he considered to be (and spoke of as being) as famous as Napoleon’s hat, it was a long time before he could fall asleep. He thought now of the frightened and elated expression on that girl’s fair face, and now of the full, powerful shoulders of his established mistress, Nelidova, and he compared the two. That profligacy in a married man was a bad thing did not once enter his head, and he would have been greatly surprised had anyone censured him for it. Yet though convinced that he had acted rightly, some kind of unpleasant after-taste remained, and to stifle that feeling he dwelt on a thought that always tranquillized him – the thought of his own greatness.

  Though he had fallen asleep so late, he rose before eight, and after attending to his toilet in the usual way – rubbing his big well-fed body all over with ice – and saying his prayers (repeating those he had been used to from childhood – the prayer to the Virgin, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, without attaching any kind of meaning to the words he uttered), he went out through the smaller portico of the palace onto the embankment in his military cloak and cap.

  On the embankment he met a student in the uniform of the School of Jurisprudence, who was as enormous as himself. On recognizing the uniform of that school, which he disliked for its freedom of thought, Nicholas frowned, but the stature of the student and the painstaking manner in which he drew himself up and saluted, ostentatiously sticking out his elbow, mollified his displeasure.

  ‘Your name?’ said he.

  ‘Polosátov, your Imperial Majesty.’

  ‘… fine fellow!’

  The student continued to stand with his hand lifted to his hat.

  Nicholas stopped.

  ‘Do you wish to enter the army?’

  ‘Not at all, your Imperial Majesty.’

  ‘Blockhead!’ And Nicholas turned away and continued his walk, and began uttering aloud the first words that came into his head.

  ‘Kopervine … Kopervine —’ he repeated several times (it was the name of yesterday’s girl). ‘Horrid … horrid —’ He did not think of what he was saying, but stifled his feelings by listening to the words.

  ‘Yes, what would Russia be without me?’ said he, feeling his former dissatisfaction returning. ‘What would – not Russia alone but Europe be, without me?’ and calling to mind the weakness and stupidity of his brother-in-law the King of Prussia, he shook his head.

  As he was returning to the small portico, he saw the carriage of Helena Pávlovna,19 with a red-liveried footman, approaching the Saltykóv entrance of the palace.

  Helena Pávlovna was to him the personification of that futile class of people who discussed not merely science and poetry, but even the ways of governing men: imagining that they could govern themselves better than he, Nicholas, governed them! He knew that however much he crushed such people they reappeared again and again, and he recalled his brother, Michael Pávlovich, who had died not long before. A feeling of sadness and vexation came over him and with a dark frown he again began whispering the first words that came into his head, which he only ceased doing when he reentered the palace.

  On reaching his apartments he smoothed his whiskers and the hair on his temples and the wig on his bald patch, and twisted his moustaches upwards in front of the mirror, and then went straight to the cabinet in which he received reports.

  He first received Chernyshov, who at once saw by his face, and especially by his eyes, that Nicholas was in a particularly bad humour that day, and knowing about the adventure of the night before he understood the cause. Having coldly greeted him and invited him to sit down, Nicholas fixed on him a lifeless gaze. The first matter Chernyshóv reported upon was a case of embezzlement by commissariat officials which had just been discovered; the next was the movement of troops on the Prussian frontier; then came a list of rewards to be given at the New Year to some people omitted from a former list; then Vorontsov’s report about Hadji Murád; and lastly some unpleasant business concerning an attempt by a student of the Academy of Medicine on the life of a professor.

  Nicholas heard the report of the embezzlement silently with compressed lips, his large white hand – with one ring on the fourth finger – stroking some sheets of paper, and his eyes steadily fixed on Chernyshóv’s forehead and on the tuft of hair above it.

  Nicholas was convinced that everybody stole. He knew he would have to punish the commissariat officials now, and decided to send them all to serve in the ranks, but he also knew that this would not prevent those who succeeded them from acting in the same way. It was a characteristic of officials to steal, but it was his duty to punish them for doing so, and tired as he was of that duty he conscientiously performed it.

  ‘It seems there is only one honest man in Russia!’ said he.

  Chernyshóv at once understood that this one honest man was Nicholas himself, and smiled approvingly.

  ‘It looks like it, your Imperial Majesty,’ said he.

  ‘Leave it – I will give a decision,’ said Nicholas, taking the document and putting it on the left side of the table.

  Then Chernyshóv reported about the rewards to be given and about moving the army on the Prussian frontier.

  Nicholas looked over the list and struck out some names, and then briefly and firmly gave orders to move two divisions to the Prussian frontier. He could not forgive the King of Prussia for granting a Constitution to his people after the events of 1848, and therefore while expressing most friendly feelings to his brother-in-law in letters and conversation, he considered it necessary to keep an army near the frontier in case of need. He might want to use these troops to defend his brother-in-law’s throne if the people of Prussia rebelled (Nicholas saw a readiness for rebellion everywhere) as he had used troops to suppress the rising in Hungary a few years previously. They were also of use to give more weight and influence to such advice as he gave to the King of Prussia.

  ‘Yes – what would Russia be like now if it were not for me?’ he again thought.

  ‘Well, what else is there?’ said he.

  ‘A courier from the Caucasus,’ said Chernyshóv, and he reported what Vorontsóv had written about Hadji Murád’s surrender.

  ‘Well, well!’ said Nicholas. ‘It’s a good beginning!’

  ‘Evidently the plan devised by your Majesty begins to bear fruit,’ said Chernyshóv.

  This approval of his strategic talents was particularly pleasant to Nicholas because, though he prided himself upon them, at the bottom of his heart he knew that they did not really exist, and he now desired to hear more detailed praise of himself.

  ‘How do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘I mean that if your Majesty’s plans had been adopted before, and we had moved forward slowly and steadily, cutting down forests and destroying the supplies of food, the Caucasus would have been subjugated long ago. I attribute Hadji Murád’s surrender entirely to his having come to the conclusion that they can hold out no longer.’

  ‘True,’ said Nicholas.

  Although the plan of a gradual advance into the enemy’s territory by means of felling forests and destroying the food supplies was Ermólov’s and Velyamínov’s plan, and was quite contrary to Nicholas’s own plan of
seizing Shamil’s place of residence and destroying that nest of robbers – which was the plan on which the Dargo expedition in 1845 (that cost so many lives) had been undertaken – Nicholas nevertheless attributed to himself also the plan of a slow advance and a systematic felling of forests and devastation of the country. It would seem that to believe the plan of a slow movement by felling forests and destroying food supplies to have been his own would have necessitated hiding the fact that he had insisted on quite contrary operations in 1845. But he did not hide it and was proud of the plan of the 1845 expedition as well as of the plan of a slow advance – though the two were obviously contrary to one another. Continual brazen flattery from everybody round him in the teeth of obvious facts had brought him to such a state that he no longer saw his own inconsistencies or measured his actions and words by reality, logic, or even simple common sense; but was quite convinced that all his orders, however senseless, unjust, and mutually contradictory they might be, became reasonable, just, and mutually accordant simply because he gave them. His decision in the case next reported to him – that of the student of the Academy of Medicine – was of that senseless kind.