Then Ivan-angel stepped forward and said: "I'll go."
At that very time Napoleonder had just gained a great victory and was riding over the field of battle on a greyhound of a horse. He trampled with his horse's hoofs on the bodies of the dead, without pity or regret, and the only thought in his mind was, "As soon as I have done with Russia, I'll march against the Chinese and the white Arabs; and then I shall have conquered exactly the whole world."
But just at that moment he heard some one calling, "Napoleonder! O Napoleonder!" He looked around, and not far away, under a bush on a little mound, he saw a wounded Russian soldier, who was beckoning to him with his hand. Napoleonder was surprised. What could a wounded Russian soldier want of him? He turned his horse and rode to the spot. "What do you want?" he asked the soldier.
"I don't want anything of you," the wounded soldier replied, "except an answer to one question. Tell me, please, what have you killed me for?"
Napoleonder was still more surprised. In the many years of his conquering he had wounded and killed a multitude of men; but he had never been asked that question before. And yet this Russian soldier didn't look as if he had anything more than ordinary intelligence. He was just a young, boyish fellow, with light flaxen hair and blue eyes—evidently a new recruit from some country village.
"What do you mean—'killed you for'?" said Napoleonder. "I had to kill you. When you went into the army, didn't you take an oath that you would die?"
"I know what oath I took, Napoleonder, and I'm not making a fuss about dying. But you—why did you kill me?"
"Why shouldn't I kill you," said Napoleonder, "when you were the enemy,—that is, my foe,—come out to fight me on the field of Borodino?"
"Cross yourself, Napoleonder!" said the young soldier. "How could I be your foe, when there has never been any sort of quarrel between us? Until you came into our country, and I was drafted into the army, I had never even heard of you. And here you have killed me—and how many more like me!"
"I killed," said Napoleonder, "because it was necessary for me to conquer the world."