It wouldn't have happened to a fifteen-year-old, and that is absolutely so, because if I had been fifteen years old, I wouldn't have run away from our wooden house in Old Basmannaya Street on the day Napoleon entered Moscow, away from my mother, who was too late in leaving Moscow13 and trembling with fear.
If I had been fifteen, I would have turned coward, but, being ten, I feared nothing and pushed my way through the crowd up to the very porch of the palace, just as Napoleon was dismounting from his horse."
"Unquestionably, you have made an excellent observation, that precisely at ten one might not be afraid . . ." the prince yessed him shyly, pained by the thought that he was about to blush.
"Unquestionably, and it all happened so simply and naturally, as things can only happen in reality; if a novelist were to turn to it, he would heap up all sorts of incredible tales."
"Oh, that's quite so!" cried the prince. "I was struck by that same thought, and quite recently.
I know about an actual murder over a watch, it's in all the newspapers now.
If a writer had invented it, the critics and connoisseurs of popular life would have shouted at once that it was incredible; but reading it in the newspapers as a fact, you feel that it is precisely from such facts that you learn about Russian reality.
That is a wonderful observation, General!" the prince concluded warmly, terribly glad that he could evade the color appearing on his face.
"Isn't it true?
Isn't it true?" cried the general, his eyes even flashing with pleasure.
"A boy, a child, who has no understanding of danger, makes his way through the crowd, to see the splendor, the uniforms, the suite, and, finally, the great man, about whom he has heard so much shouting.
Because at that time everyone, for several years in a row, had been shouting about him alone.
The world was filled with his name; I had, so to speak, sucked it in with my mother's milk.
Napoleon, passing within two steps of me, happened to catch my glance; I was dressed like a young gentleman, in very good clothes.
I was the only one dressed like that in the crowd, you'll agree . . ."
"Unquestionably, that must have struck him and proved to him that not everybody had left, that some of the nobility had stayed with their children."
"Precisely, precisely!
He wanted to attract the boyars!14 When he cast his eagle's gaze on me, my eyes must have flashed in response to him.
'Voila un garcon bien eveille!
Qui est ton pere?'* I answered at once, almost breathless with excitement: 'A general who died on the battlefields of his fatherland.'
'Le fils d'un boyard et d'un brave par-dessus le marche!
J'aime les boyards.
M'aimes-tu, petit?'+ To this quick question I replied as quickly: 'The Russian heart can discern a great man even in the enemy of his fatherland!'
That is, as a matter of fact, I don't remember whether I literally expressed myself that way ... I was a child . . . but that must have been the sense of it!
Napoleon was struck, he pondered and said to his suite: 'I like this boy's pride!
But if all Russians think as this child does, then . . .' He didn't finish and went into the palace.
I at once mingled with his suite and ran after him.
In the suite they already stepped back for me and looked on me as a favorite.
But all that merely flashed by ... I remember only that, on going into the first hall, the emperor suddenly stopped before the portrait of the empress Catherine, looked at it thoughtfully for a long time, and finally said:
'That was a great woman!'—and walked on.
Two days later everybody already knew me in the palace and in the Kremlin and called me 'le petit boyard.'
I went home only to sleep.
At home they nearly lost their minds.
Two days after that Napoleon's chamber-page, the Baron de Bazancourt,15 died from the hardships of the campaign.
Napoleon remembered about me; I was taken, brought there without any explanations, the uniform of the deceased, a boy of about twelve, was tried on me, and when they brought me before the emperor in the uniform, and he nodded his head at me, they announced to me that I had been granted a favor and made his majesty's chamber-page.
I was glad. I actually felt a * There's a sprightly lad! Who is your father? + The son of a boyar and of a brave man to boot! I like the boyars. Do you like me, little boy? warm sympathy for him, and had for a long time . . . well, and besides, you'll agree, there was the splendid uniform, which means a lot for a child ... I went about in a dark green tailcoat, with long and narrow tails, gold buttons, red piping on the gold-embroidered sleeves, a high, stiff, open collar, embroidered with gold, and embroidered coattails; white, close-fitting chamois breeches, a white silk waistcoat, silk stockings, and buckled shoes . . . or, during the emperor's promenades on horseback, if I was in his suite, high top-boots.
Though the situation was not brilliant, and there was already a presentiment of great calamities, etiquette was observed as far as possible, and the more punctually the stronger the presentiment of those calamities."
"Yes, of course . . ." murmured the prince, looking almost lost, "your memoirs would be . . . extremely interesting."
The general, of course, was repeating what he had told Lebedev the day before, and therefore repeating it very smoothly; but here again he mistrustfully glanced sidelong at the prince.
"My memoirs," he spoke with redoubled pride, "to write my memoirs?
That doesn't tempt me, Prince!
If you wish, my memoirs have already been written, but . . . but they are lying in my desk.
Let them, when earth has closed my eyes, let them appear then and, undoubtedly, be translated into other languages, not for their literary merit, no, but for the importance of the tremendous facts of which I was an evident witness, though a child; but all the more so: as a child I penetrated into the very intimate, so to speak, bedroom of 'the great man'!
At night I heard the groaning of this 'giant in misfortune,' he could not be ashamed of groaning and weeping before a child, though I already understood that the cause of his suffering was the silence of the emperor Alexander."
"Yes, he did write letters . . . with offers of peace . . ." the prince agreed timidly.
"As a matter of fact, we do not know precisely with what offers he wrote, but he wrote every day, every hour, letter after letter!
He was terribly worried.
Once, during the night, when we were alone, I rushed to him in tears (oh, yes, I loved him!):
'Ask forgiveness, ask forgiveness of the emperor Alexander!' I cried to him.
That is, I ought to have said: