Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
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Chinese pagodas."
"Well?" asked Napoleon.
"One of Platovs Cossacks says that Platovs corps is joining up
with the main army and that Kutuzov has been appointed commander in
chief. He is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow."
Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and
bring the man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several
adjutants galloped off, and an hour later, Lavrushka, the serf Denisov
had handed over to Rostov, rode up to Napoleon in an orderlys
jacket and on a French cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face.
Napoleon told him to ride by his side and began questioning him.
"You are a Cossack?"
"Yes, a Cossack, your Honor."
"The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleons
plain appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental
mind the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the
incidents of the war," says Thiers, narrating this episode. In reality
Lavrushka, having got drunk the day before and left his master
dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the village in quest of
chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him
prisoner. Lavrushka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who
have seen all sorts of things, consider it necessary to do
everything in a mean and cunning way, are ready to render any sort
of service to their master, and are keen at guessing their masters
baser impulses, especially those prompted by vanity and pettiness.
Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had
easily and surely recognized, Lavrushka was not in the least abashed
but merely did his utmost to gain his new masters favor.
He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleons presence
could no more intimidate him than Rostovs, or a sergeant majors with
the rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant
major or Napoleon could deprive him of.
So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the
orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the
Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka screwed
up his eyes and considered.
In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see
cunning in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.
"Its like this," he said thoughtfully, "if theres a battle soon,
yours will win. Thats right. But if three days pass, then after that,
well, then that same battle will not soon be over."
Lelorgne dIdeville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon
thus: "If a battle takes place within the next three days the French
will win, but if later, God knows what will happen." Napoleon did
not smile, though he was evidently in high good humor, and he
ordered these words to be repeated.
Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending
not to know who Napoleon was, added:
"We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in
the world, but we are a different matter..."--without knowing why or
how this bit of boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.
The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase,
and Bonaparte smiled. "The young Cossack made his mighty
interlocutor smile," says Thiers. After riding a few paces in silence,
Napoleon turned to Berthier and said he wished to see how the news
that he was talking to the Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who
had written his immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would
affect this enfant du Don.*
*"Child of the Don."
The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka.
Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex him and
that Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his new
masters promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his
eyes wide, and assumed the expression he usually put on when taken
to be whipped. "As soon as Napoleons interpreter had spoken," says
Thiers, "the Cossack, seized by amazement, did not utter another word,
but rode on, his eyes fixed on the conqueror whose fame had reached
him across the steppes of the East. All his loquacity was suddenly
arrested and replaced by a naive and silent feeling of admiration.
Napoleon, after making the Cossack a present, had him set free like
a bird restored to its native fields."
Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed to his
imagination, and "the bird restored to its native fields" galloped
to our outposts, inventing on the way all that had not taken place but
that he meant to relate to his
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