LITMIR.BIZ

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bonapartist,” she thought, looking at his big, close-cropped head and his large, fleshy features. “So this is the upbringing they give young men nowadays. You can tell a man of good society straight away,” she said to herself, admiring the vicomte’s composure.

      “Almost the entire nobility,” Pierre continued, “has gone over to Bonaparte.”

      “So say the Bonapartists,” said the vicomte. “It is hard these days to discover the opinion of the French public.”

      “As Bonaparte said,” Prince Andrei began, and involuntarily everyone turned in the direction of his voice, which was low and indolent, but always audible because of its self-assurance, waiting to hear exactly what Bonaparte had said.

      “‘I showed them the path to glory, but they did not want it,’” Prince Andrei continued after a brief silence, again repeating the words of Napoleon. “‘I opened up my ante-chambers and the crowds rushed in.’ I do not know how justified he was in saying that, but it was clever, viciously clever,” he concluded with an acid smile and turned away.

      “He did have the right to speak out like that against the royalist aristocracy; it no longer exists in France,” Pierre put in, “or if it does, then it carries no weight. And the people? The people adore the great man, and the people have chosen him. The people are without prejudice; they have seen the greatest genius and hero in the world.”

      “He might be a hero to some,” said the vicomte, not replying to the young man and not even looking at him, but addressing Anna Pavlovna and Prince Andrei, “but after the murder of the duke there is one more martyr in heaven and one less hero on earth.”

      Anna Pavlovna and the others had no time to appreciate the vicomte’s words before the unbroken horse continued his novel and amusing bucking.

      “The execution of the Duc d’Enghien,” Pierre continued, “was a state necessity, and I see precisely greatness of soul in the fact that Napoleon was not afraid to take upon himself alone the responsibility for that act.”

      “You approve of murder!” Anna Pavlovna exclaimed in a ghastly whisper.

      “Monsieur Pierre, how can you see greatness of soul in murder?” said the little princess, smiling and drawing her work closer to her.

      “Ah! Oh!” said various voices.

      “Magnificent,” Prince Hippolyte suddenly said in English, and began slapping his open hand against his knee. The vicomte merely shrugged.

      “Is the murder of the duke a good deed or a bad one?” he said, surprising everyone with his high-toned presence of mind. “One or the other …”

      Pierre sensed that this dilemma had been posed for him so that if he replied in the negative, they would force him to repudiate his admiration for his hero, but if he replied in the positive, that the deed was a good one, then God alone knew what might happen to him. He replied in the positive, unafraid of what would happen.

      “This deed is a great one, like everything that this great man does,” he said audaciously, paying no attention to the horror expressed on all of their faces except the face of Prince Andrei, or to the contemptuous shrugs; he carried on talking on his own, even though his hostess clearly did not wish it. Everyone exchanged glances of amazement as they listened to him, except Prince Andrei. Prince Andrei listened with sympathy and a quiet smile.

      “Surely he knew,” continued Pierre, “what a furious storm the death of the duke would stir up against him? He knew that for this one head he would be obliged once again to wage war against the whole of Europe, that he would fight, and would be victorious again, because …”

      “Are you Russian?” asked Anna Pavlovna.

      “I am. But he will be victorious, because he is a great man. The death of the duke was necessary. He is a genius and the difference between a genius and ordinary people is that he does not act for himself, but for humanity. The royalists wished to inflame once again the internal war and revolution that he had suppressed. He needed domestic peace, and with the execution of the duke he set an example that made the Bourbons stop their intrigues.”

      “But, mon cher Monsieur Pierre,” said Anna Pavlovna, attempting to overcome him by meekness, “how can you call the means to the restoration of the legitimate throne intrigues?”

      “Only the will of the people is legitimate,” he replied, “and they drove out the Bourbons and handed power to the great Napoleon.”

      And he looked triumphantly over the top of his spectacles at his listeners.

      “Ah! The Social Contract,” the vicomte said in a quiet voice, evidently reassured at having recognised the source from which his opponent’s views were derived.

      “Well, after this …!” exclaimed Anna Pavlovna.

      But even after this Pierre continued speaking just as uncivilly.

      “No,” he said, growing more and more animated, “the Bourbons and the royalists fled from the revolution, they could not understand it. But this man rose above it, and suppressed its abuses while retaining all that is good – the equality of citizens and freedom of speech and of the press, and only because of this did he acquire power.”

      “Indeed, but if, having taken power, he had returned it to the rightful king,” said the vicomte ironically, “then I should call him a great man.”

      “He could not have done that. The people gave him power only so that he could rid them of the Bourbons, and because the people saw in him a great man. The revolution itself was a great thing,” continued Monsieur Pierre, demonstrating with this audacious and challenging introductory phrase his great youth and desire to express everything as quickly as possible.

      “Revolution and regicide are a great thing! After this …”

      “I am not talking of regicide. When Napoleon appeared, the revolution had already run its course, and the nation put itself into his hands of its own accord. But he understood the ideas of the revolution and became its representative.”

      “Yes, the ideas of plunder, murder and regicide,” the ironic voice interrupted once again.

      “Those were the extremes, of course, but that is not what is most important, what is important are the rights of man, emancipation from prejudices, the equality of citizens; and Napoleon retained all of these ideas in full force.”

      “Liberty and equality,” the vicomte said derisively, as though he had decided finally to demonstrate seriously to this youth the full stupidity of his words. “All high-sounding words which have been compromised long ago. Who does not love liberty and equality? Our Saviour preached liberty and equality. But after the revolution were people any happier? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte is destroying it.”

      Prince Andrei looked with a merry smile by turns at Monsieur Pierre, at the vicomte and at his hostess, and evidently found this unexpected and indecorous episode amusing. During the first minute of Pierre’s outburst Anna Pavlovna had been horrified, for all her experience of the world, but when she saw that, despite the sacrilegious sentiments expressed by Pierre, the vicomte did not lose his temper, and when she became convinced that it was no longer possible to suppress what was being said, she gathered her strength and joined forces with the vicomte to assail the orator.

      “But, my dear Monsieur Pierre,” said Anna Pavlovna, “how do you explain a great man who was capable of executing a duke or, in the final analysis, simply a man, without a trial and without any proven guilt?”

      “I would like to ask,” said the vicomte, “how Monsieur Pierre explains the Eighteenth Brumaire. Surely this is deceit? It is cheap swindling, in no way resembling the conduct of a great man.”

      “And the prisoners whom he killed in Africa?” the little princess interjected at the same point. “That is awful.” And she shrugged her little shoulders.

      “He is a scoundrel, no matter what you say,” said Prince Hippolyte.

      Monsieur

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