“Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic asylum has come: what are your commands?”
“My commands? Let them go away, that’s all.... And let the lunatics out into the town. When lunatics command our armies God evidently means these other madmen to be free.”
In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison, Count Rostopchín shouted angrily at the governor:
“Do you expect me to give you two battalions—which we have not got—for a convoy? Release them, that’s all about it!”
“Your excellency, there are some political prisoners, Meshkóv, Vereshchágin...”
“Vereshchágin! Hasn’t he been hanged yet?” shouted Rostopchín. “Bring him to me!”
CHAPTER XXV
Toward nine o’clock in the morning, when the troops were already moving through Moscow, nobody came to the count any more for instructions. Those who were able to get away were going of their own accord, those who remained behind decided for themselves what they must do.
The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to Sokólniki, and sat in his study with folded hands, morose, sallow, and taciturn.
In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.