Leo Tolstoy - 3 books to know Napoleonic Wars

It must not be supposed that all these variations of his inward state were made manifest to the world. General D ‘Hubert found no difficulty in appearing wreathed in smiles. Because, in fact, he was very happy. He followed the established rules of his condition, sending over flowers (from his sister’s garden and hot-houses) early every morning, and a little later following himself to lunch with his intended, her mother, and her emigre uncle. The middle of the day was spent in strolling or sitting in the shade. A watchful deference, trembling on the verge of tenderness was the note of their intercourse on his side — with a playful turn of the phrase concealing the profound trouble of his whole being caused by her inaccessible nearness. Late in the afternoon General D ‘Hubert walked home between the fields of vines, sometimes intensely miserable, sometimes supremely happy, sometimes pensively sad; but always feeling a special intensity of existence, that elation common to artists, poets, and lovers — to men haunted by a great passion, a noble thought, or a new vision of plastic beauty.

The outward world at that time did not exist with any special distinctness for General D’Hubert. One evening, however, crossing a ridge from which he could see both houses, General D’Hubert became aware of two figures far down the road. The day had been divine. The festal decoration of the inflamed sky lent a gentle glow to the sober tints of the southern land. The grey rocks, the brown fields, the purple, undulating distances harmonized in luminous accord, exhaled already the scents of the evening. The two figures down the road presented themselves like two rigid and wooden silhouettes all black on the ribbon of white dust. General D’Hubert made out the long, straight, military capotes buttoned closely right up to the black stocks, the cocked hats, the lean, carven, brown countenances — old soldiers — vieilles moustaches! The taller of the two had a black patch over one eye; the other’s hard, dry countenance presented some bizarre, disquieting peculiarity, which on nearer approach proved to be the absence of the tip of the nose. Lifting their hands with one movement to salute the slightly lame civilian walking with a thick stick, they inquired for the house where the General Baron D’Hubert lived, and what was the best way to get speech with him quietly.

“If you think this quiet enough,” said General D’Hubert, looking round at the vine-fields, framed in purple lines, and dominated by the nest of grey and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a conical hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape of a crowning rock — “if you think this spot quiet enough, you can speak to him at once. And I beg you, comrades, to speak openly, with perfect confidence.”

They stepped back at this, and raised again their hands to their hats with marked ceremoniousness. Then the one with the chipped nose, speaking for both, remarked that the matter was confidential enough, and to be arranged discreetly. Their general quarters were established in that village over there, where the infernal clodhoppers — damn their false, Royalist hearts! — looked remarkably cross-eyed at three unassuming military men. For the present he should only ask for the name of General D’Hubert’s friends.

“What friends?” said the astonished General D’Hubert, completely off the track. “I am staying with my brother-in-law over there.”

“Well, he will do for one,” said the chipped veteran.

“We’re the friends of General Feraud,” interjected the other, who had kept silent till then, only glowering with his one eye at the man who had never loved the Emperor. That was something to look at. For even the gold-laced Judases who had sold him to the English, the marshals and princes, had loved him at some time or other. But this man had never loved the Emperor. General Feraud had said so distinctly.

General D’Hubert felt an inward blow in his chest. For an infinitesimal fraction of a second it was as if the spinning of the earth had become perceptible with an awful, slight rustle in the eternal stillness of space. But this noise of blood in his ears passed off at once. Involuntarily he murmured, “Feraud! I had forgotten his existence.”

“He’s existing at present, very uncomfortably, it is true, in the infamous inn of that nest of savages up there,” said the one-eyed cuirassier, drily. “We arrived in your parts an hour ago on post horses. He’s awaiting our return with impatience. There is hurry, you know. The General has broken the ministerial order to obtain from you the satisfaction he’s entitled to by the laws of honour, and naturally he’s anxious to have it all over before the gendarmerie gets on his scent.”

The other elucidated the idea a little further. “Get back on the quiet — you understand? Phitt! No one the wiser. We have broken out, too. Your friend the king would be glad to cut off our scurvy pittances at the first chance. It’s a risk. But honour before everything.”

General D’Hubert had recovered his powers of speech. “So you come here like this along the road to invite me to a throat-cutting match with that — that. . .” A laughing sort of rage took possession of him. “Ha! ha! ha! ha!”

His fists on his hips, he roared without restraint, while they stood before him lank and straight, as though they had been shot up with a snap through a trap door in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts, they seemed less substantial in their faded coats than their own narrow shadows falling so black across the white road: the military and grotesque shadows of twenty years of war and conquests. They had an outlandish appearance of two imperturbable bonzes of the religion of the sword. And General D’Hubert, also one of the ex-masters of Europe, laughed at these serious phantoms standing in his way.

Said one, indicating the laughing General with a jerk of the head: “A merry companion, that.”

“There are some of us that haven’t smiled from the day The Other went away,” remarked his comrade.

A violent impulse to set upon and beat those unsubstantial wraiths to the ground frightened General D’Hubert. He ceased laughing suddenly. His desire now was to get rid of them, to get them away from his sight quickly before he lost control of himself. He wondered at the fury he felt rising in his breast. But he had no time to look into that peculiarity just then.

“I understand your wish to be done with me as quickly as possible. Don’t let us waste time in empty ceremonies. Do you see that wood there at the foot of that slope? Yes, the wood of pines. Let us meet there to-morrow at sunrise. I will bring with me my sword or my pistols, or both if you like.”

The seconds of General Feraud looked at each other.

“Pistols, General,” said the cuirassier.

“So be it. Au revoir — to-morrow morning. Till then let me advise you to keep close if you don’t want the gendarmerie making inquiries about you before it gets dark. Strangers are rare in this part of the country.”

They saluted in silence. General D’Hubert, turning his back on their retreating forms, stood still in the middle of the road for a long time, biting his lower lip and looking on the ground. Then he began to walk straight before him, thus retracing his steps till he found himself before the park gate of his intended’s house. Dusk had fallen. Motionless he stared through the bars at the front of the house, gleaming clear beyond the thickets and trees. Footsteps scrunched on the gravel, and presently a tall stooping shape emerged from the lateral alley following the inner side of the park wall.

Le Chevalier de Valmassigue, uncle of the adorable Adele, ex-brigadier in the army of the Princes, bookbinder in Altona, afterwards shoemaker (with a great reputation for elegance in the fit of ladies’ shoes) in another small German town, wore silk stockings on his lean shanks, low shoes with silver buckles, a brocaded waistcoat. A long-skirted coat, a la francaise, covered loosely his thin, bowed back. A small three-cornered hat rested on a lot of powdered hair, tied in a queue.