ing what was said to him. Wolzogen, noticing “the old gentleman's” agitation, said with a smile:
“I have not considered it right to conceal from your Serene Highness what I have seen. The troops are in complete disorder.. . .”
“You have seen? You have seen?. . . Kutúzov shouted frowning, and rising quickly he went up to Wolzogen.
“How. . . how dare you!. . .” he shouted, choking and making a threatening gesture with his trembling arms: “How dare you. sir, say that to me? You know nothing about it. Tell General Barclay from me that his information is incorrect and that the real course of the battle is better known to me, the commander in chief, than to him.”
Wolzogen was about to make a rejoinder, but Kutúzov interrupted him.
“The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated on the right flank. If you have seen amiss, sir, do not allow yourself to say what you don't know! Be so good as to ride to General Barclay and inform him of my firm intention to attack the enemy tomorrow,” said Kutúzov sternly.
All were silent, and the only sound audible was the heavy breathing of the panting old general.
“They are repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God and our brave army! The enemy is beaten, and tomorrow we shall drive him from the sacred soil of Russia,” said Kutúzov crossing himself, and he suddenly sobbed as his eyes filled with tears.
Wolzogen, shrugging his shoulders and curling his lips, stepped silently aside, marveling at “the old gentleman's” conceited stupidity.
“Ah, here he is, my hero!” said Kutúzov to a portly, handsome, dark-haired general who was just ascending the knoll.
This was Raévski, who had spent the whole day at the most important part of the field of Borodinó.
Raévski reported that the troops were firmly holding their ground and that the French no longer ventured to attack.
After hearing him, Kutúzov said in French:
“Then you do not think, like some others, that we must retreat?”
“On the contrary, your Highness, in indecisive actions it is always the most stubborn who remain victors,” replied Raévski, “and in my opinion. . .”
“Kaysárov!” Kutúzov called to his adjutant. “Sit down and write out the order of the day for tomorrow. And you,” he continued, addressing another, “ride along the line and announce that tomorrow we attack.”
While Kutúzov was talking to Raévski and dictating the order of the day, Wolzogen returned from Barclay and said that General Barclay wished to have written confirmation of the order the field marshal had given.
Kutúzov, without looking at Wolzogen, gave directions for the order to be written out which the former commander in chief, to avoid personal responsibility, very judiciously wished to receive.
And by means of that mysterious indefinable bond which maintains throughout an army one and the same temper, known as “the spirit of the army,” and which constitutes the chief sinew of war, Kutúzov's words, his order for a battle next day, immediately became known from one end of the army to the other.
It was far from being the same words or the same order that reached the farthest links of that chain. The tales passing from mouth to mouth at different ends of the army did not even resemble what Kutúzov had said, but the sense of his words spread everywhere because what he said was not the outcome of cunning calculations, but of a feeling that lay in the commander in chief's soul as in that of every Russian.
And on learning that tomorrow they were to attack the enemy, and hearing from the highest quarters a confirmation of what they wanted to believe, the exhausted, wavering men felt comforted and inspirited.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Prince Andrew's regiment was among the reserves which till after one o'clock were stationed inactive behind Semënovsk, under heavy artillery fire. Toward two o'clock the regiment, having already lost more than two hundred men, was moved forward into a trampled oatfield in the gap between Semënovsk and the Knoll Battery, where thousands of men perished that day and on which an intense. concentrated fire from several hundred enemy guns was directed between one and two o'clock.
Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot the regiment here lost another third of its men. From in front and especially from the right, in the unlifting smoke the guns boomed, and out of the mysterious domain of smoke that overlay the whole space in front, quick hissing cannon balls and slow
