The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhénsk battalion, breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the tables prepared for them.
Lázarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French officers embraced him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of officers and civilians drew near merely to see him. A rumble of Russian and French voices and laughter filled the air round the tables in the square. Two officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and happy, passed by Rostóv.
“What d’you think of the treat? All on silver plate,” one of them was saying. “Have you seen Lázarev?”
“I have.”
“Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhénskis will give them a dinner.”
“Yes, but what luck for Lázarev! Twelve hundred francs’ pension for life.”
“Here’s a cap, lads!” shouted a Preobrazhénsk soldier, donning a shaggy French cap.
“It’s a fine thing! First-rate!”
“Have you heard the password?” asked one Guards’ officer of another. “The day before yesterday it was ‘Napoléon, France, bravoure’; yesterday, ‘Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.’ One day our Emperor gives it and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St. George’s Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has to be done. He must respond in kind.”
Borís, too, with his friend Zhilínski, came to see the Preobrazhénsk banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostóv standing by the corner of a house.