“If he could have attacked us, he would have done so to-day,” he said.

“You suppose him, then, to be powerless?” said Langeron.

“I doubt if he has as much as forty thousand troops,” answered Weierother with the smile of a doctor to whom the sick-nurse is trying to expound her own method of treatment.

“In that case, he is going to meet his ruin in awaiting our attack,” said Langeron with a subtle, ironical smile, looking round again for support to Miloradovitch near him. But Miloradovitch was obviously thinking at that instant of anything in the world rather than the matter in dispute between the generals.

“Ma foi,” he said, “to-morrow we shall see all that on the field of battle.”

Weierother smiled again, a smile that said that it was comic and queer for him to meet with objections from Russian generals and to have to give proofs to confirm what he was not simply himself convinced of, but had thoroughly convinced their majesties the Emperors of too.

“The enemy have extinguished their fires and a continual noise has been heard in their camp,” he said. “What does that mean? Either they are retreating—the only thing we have to fear, or changing their position” (he smiled ironically). “But even if they were to take up their position at Turas, it would only be saving us a great deal of trouble, and all our arrangements will remain unchanged in the smallest detail.”

“How can that be?…” said Prince Andrey, who had a long while been looking out for an opportunity of expressing his doubts. Kutuzov waked up, cleared his throat huskily, and looked round at the generals.

“Gentlemen, the disposition for to-morrow, for to-day indeed (for it’s going on for one o’clock), can’t be altered now,” he said. “You have heard it, and we will all do our duty. And before a battle nothing is of so much importance…” (he paused) “as a good night’s rest.”

He made a show of rising from his chair. The generals bowed themselves out. It was past midnight. Prince Andrey went out.

The council of war at which Prince Andrey had not succeeded in expressing his opinion, as he had hoped to do, had left on him an impression of uncertainty and uneasiness. Which was right—Dolgorukov and Weierother? or Kutuzov and Langeron and the others, who did not approve of the plan of attack—he did not know. But had it really been impossible for Kutuzov to tell the Tsar his views directly? Could it not have been managed differently? On account of personal and court considerations were tens of thousands of lives to be risked—“and my life, mine?” he thought.

“Yes, it may well be that I shall be killed to-morrow,” he thought.

And all at once, at that thought of death, a whole chain of memories, the most remote and closest to his heart, rose up in his imagination. He recalled his last farewell to his father and his wife; he recalled the early days of his love for her, thought of her approaching motherhood; and he felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously overwrought and softened mood he went out of the cottage at which he and Nesvitsky were putting up, and began to walk to and fro before it. The night was foggy, and the moonlight glimmered mysteriously through the mist. “Yes, to-morrow, to-morrow!” he thought. “To- morrow, maybe, all will be over for me, all these memories will be no more, all these memories will have no more meaning for me. To-morrow, perhaps—for certain, indeed—to-morrow, I have a presentiment, I shall have for the first time to show all I can do.” And he pictured the engagement, the loss of it, the concentration of the fighting at one point, and the hesitation of all the commanding officers. And then the happy moment—that Toulon he had been waiting for so long—at last comes to him. Resolutely and clearly he speaks his opinion to Kutuzov and Weierother, and the Emperors. All are struck by the justness of his view, but no one undertakes to carry it into execution, and behold, he leads the regiment, only making it a condition that no one is to interfere with his plans, and he leads his division to the critical