"Indeed," said the soldier, "is it so? Have a care, Napoleonder! You are swaggering too much. You lie when you say a man can live without pity. To have a soul, and to feel compassion, are one and the same thing. You have a soul, haven't you?"
"Of course I have," replied Napoleonder; "a man can't live without a soul."
"There! you see!" said the soldier. "You have a soul, and you believe in God. How, then, can you say you don't know any such thing as pity? You do know! And I believe that at this very moment, deep down in your heart, you are mortally sorry for me; only you don't want to show it. Why, then, did you kill me?"
Napoleonder suddenly became furious. "May the pip seize your tongue, you miscreant! I'll show you how much pity I have for you!" And, drawing a pistol, Napoleonder shot the wounded soldier through the head. Then, turning to his dead men, he said: "Did you see that?"
"We saw it," they replied; "and as long as it is so, we are your faithful servants always."
Napoleonder rode on.
At last night comes; and Napoleonder is sitting alone in his golden tent. His mind is troubled, and he can't understand what it is that seems to be gnawing at his heart. For years he has been at war, and this is the first time such a thing has happened. Never before has his soul been so filled with unrest. And to-morrow morning he must begin another battle—the last terrible fight with the Tsar Alexander the Blessed, on the field of Borodino.
"Akh!" he thinks, "I'll show them to-morrow what a leader I am! I'll lift the soldiers of the Tsar into the air on my lances and trample their bodies under the feet of my horses. I'll make the Tsar himself a prisoner, and I'll kill or scatter the whole Russian people."
But a voice seemed to whisper in his ear: "And why? Why?"
"I know that trick," he thought. "It's that same wounded soldier again.
All right. I won't give in to him. 'Why? Why?' As if I knew why!
Perhaps if I knew why I shouldn't make war."