“How? By remaining in the city?”
“By daring to celebrate, with a solemn service, the Czar’s coronation day, under the very beard of Napoleon.[33] We have all heard of it.”
“He never supposed he was doing anything extraordinary. The Prior of the Dominican Monastery, whom he consulted, agreed that he was right. I can tell you, Adrian, that good man himself was by no means in love with his countrymen. Though his religion is their own, and he kept his church open the whole time of the Occupation, scarcely a Frenchman darkened its doors, except a few officers of noble birth belonging to the old régime. As a rule, the soldiers of Napoleon are infidels. Sometimes, out of curiosity, they would stray into our churches. On the coronation day, a poor young fellow, a mere lad, stole into Pope Yefim’s church, and was near paying dearly for his rashness; for a party of mujiks set upon him after the service, taking him for a spy. They might have killed him; but—strangest chance of all—my friend Michael, whose thoughts by day and dreams by night are only of slaying Nyemtzi, interposed to save this one, saying he knew him, and had received a kindness at his hands. I spoke to the youth, and he told me he had been religiously brought up, and said the very sound of a church-bell, and the sight of men kneeling in prayer, seemed to do him good, though he could not understand a word of the service.”
“A queer taste,” said Adrian, shrugging his shoulders. Then to his orderly, who had just entered the tent, “Bring us the best supper you can get, and more champagne.”
“Adrian,” asked Ivan, “where is Leon?”
Adrian’s face assumed a sorrowful expression. “Gone to our mother,” he answered. “He was wounded at Borodino, though not severely. He insisted upon going out again, and met his death in a skirmish ten days ago.”
Ivan felt and showed real sorrow. Of the two companions of his youth, Leon had been his favourite, and he could not hear unmoved the tidings of his death. “Death—death everywhere,” he murmured sadly.
“Come, my friend,” said Adrian kindly, “you must not give way. It is only the fate of war. You have been so long in that horrible den of a city that your nerves are shattered. Take some more wine.”
“That horrible den!” Ivan repeated. “A lair of wild beasts! Such it has been indeed. The count, who is as hard as this,” laying his hand upon Adrian’s iron camp-bedstead, “has been asking me for reports and descriptions. I cannot describe, I can scarcely even report facts. Picture to yourself nine-tenths of the town in ashes—or in charred blackened ruins—with thousands of the wretched inhabitants, who could not, or did not, make good their escape, wandering about homeless and starving, filling the air with their lamentations. Then think of the French, like a host of demons turned loose upon their prey, ransacking the smoking ruins in search of plunder. I have seen the gold-laced uniform of the general and the woollen jacket of the private side by side, contending for the spoils of our desolated homes; while all the dangerous classes, all the thieves and ruffians who are to be found amongst the scum of the populace in every great city, joined them in the horrible work and added to the confusion and misery.”
“Did not Napoleon shoot or hang a great number of our people?”