Chapter 87 Chapter Twenty-Five

Before nine o'clock in the morning, the army passed through Moscow, and no one came to ask Count Rastopchin for instructions.Those who could go went by themselves; those who remained were wondering what they should do. The count ordered the horses to go to Sokolniki.His face was withered and yellow, his brows were tightly frowned, and he sat in the study with his arms folded without saying a word. In times of peace, every magistrate feels that the people under him live entirely by his strength.This sense of necessity is the chief reward for their hard work.On a calm day in the sea of ​​history, the magistrate sailed slowly in his own dilapidated boat and on the big boat of the people with a pole, thinking that it was his strength that drove the big boat forward.The idea was natural, but when there was a storm, the sea was rough, and the ship itself was moving on, then the illusion would not arise.The big ship relies on its own huge strength to move forward, and the pole can't hit it at all.The magistrate is suddenly transformed from a ruler and a source of strength into an insignificant and inactive weakling.

Rastopchin felt this and was very annoyed. The chief of police, stopped by the crowd, came to the count together with the adjutant who had come to report that the car had been harnessed.Both were pale.The prefect of police reported that the mission was accomplished, and that there was a great crowd in the earl's court. Without answering a word, Rastopchin got up, walked quickly to the bright and splendid living room, approached the balcony door, grabbed the handle, then put it down again, and went to the window, from which the whole crowd could be seen more clearly.The tall man was standing in the front row with a straight face, waving a hand, and saying something.The blood-stained blacksmith stood beside him with a gloomy face.The commotion of the crowd could be heard through the closed windows.

"Is the carriage ready?" Rastopchin asked from the window. "Ready, my lord!" said the adjutant. Rastopching went again to the balcony door. "What do they want?" he asked the police chief. "My lord, they said they were going to fight the French at your order, and they were still yelling at treason. But, my lord, they were a mob. I got away with difficulty. My lord, I dare..." "Go away, I know what to do myself!" cried Rastopchin angrily, standing by the balcony door, looking at the crowd. "Well, what have they done to Russia! They have made me What is it like!" Rastoppe thought, feeling an uncontrollable anger against the culprit.Like any grumpy man, he was full of rage and was looking for someone to piss off. "Hmph, these little people, the scum of the people, the untouchables!" he thought, looking at the crowd, "they're foolish, they're running amuck! They need a victim," he thought, looking at the tall man waving his arms.He thought of this because he himself needed a victim, an object of anger.

"The carriage ready?" he asked again. "Ready, my lord. What are your orders about Vereschagin? He is waiting by the steps," replied the adjutant. "Oh!" exclaimed Rastopch, as if startled by an unexpected memory. He slammed the door open and walked resolutely to the balcony.The conversation ceased at once, all hats were taken off, and eyes were raised to look at the count. "Good day, brothers!" said the Count quickly and loudly, "thank you for coming here. I will come to see you in a moment, but first we have a villain to deal with. We have to punish the villain who brought down Moscow. Wait for me a moment." !” The count slammed the door shut, and hurried back into the room.

There was a murmur of approval from the crowd. "So he's going to pick up all the bad guys! You say the Frenchman...he's going to take care of things for you!" people said, as if blaming each other for lack of confidence. A few minutes later, an officer hurried out through the front door with an order, and the dragoons lined up.The crowd hastily moved from the balcony to the steps.Rastopchin strode up to the steps in a huff, and looked round hurriedly, as if looking for someone. "Where is he?" asked the count, and at that moment he saw a young man come out, carried by two dragoons.The young man had a slender neck and short hair growing out of a shaved yin and yang scalp.He was wearing a very elegant blue woolen fox fur coat and dirty prison trousers tucked into dirty old leather boots.The shackles on his thin and frail legs made his already hesitant movements even more difficult.

"Oh!" Rastopchin said, hastily averting his eyes from the young man in the fox fur coat, pointing to the bottom step, "bring him here!" Walking to the designated steps, he stretched the tight collar of his coat with one finger, turned his slender neck twice, sighed, and obediently folded his two thin hands that did not work on his stomach. After the young man stood on the steps, no one said a word for several seconds.Only the crowd at the back squeezed together, where there were sighs, groans, and footsteps. Rastopkhin frowned, wiped his face with his hands, and waited for Vereshchagin to stand at the designated place.

"Brothers!" said Rastopkhin in a metallic voice, "this is the man, Vereshchagin, the scoundrel who ruined Moscow." The young man in the fox fur coat stood there obediently, with his hands folded on his stomach, and his waist slightly bent.His haggard face, ugly with the shaven head, looked down with a look of despair.He heard the count's first words, slowly raised his head, and looked at the count from bottom to top, as if he wanted to speak to him, or at least to meet his gaze.But Rastopuchin didn't look at him.In the young man's slender neck, a blood vessel swelled like a rope and turned blue behind the ear.His face flushed red.

All eyes stared at him.He looked at the crowd, as if he saw hope from the expressions on their faces. He smiled sadly and timidly, then lowered his head again, and stood with his feet on the steps. "He betrayed the Tsar and the motherland, and surrendered to Napoleon. He is the only Russian who has humiliated the identity of a Russian, and Moscow let him destroy it." Rastopchin said in a steady and sharp voice; but suddenly looked down Looking at Wei Liexiajin who was still standing obediently.The sight seemed to irritate him, and he raised his hand, and almost shouted to the crowd, "Do with him yourselves! I'll hand him over to you!"

The crowd was silent, but squeezed closer and closer to each other.Crowding each other, breathing suffocating air, unable to move, waiting for a terrible unknown situation - this situation makes people feel more and more uncomfortable.The people standing in the front row, facing everything that happened in front of them, widened their eyes and opened their mouths in fear, trying to block the pressure from behind. "Beat him! . . . Kill the traitor, don't let him tarnish the identity of the Russians!" Rastopchin shouted. "Behead him! I order!" It was not Rastopchin's words that were heard by the crowd, but his Angry voice.The crowd stirred up and rushed forward, but stopped again.

"Count! . . . " In the reappearing momentary silence, Vereshchagin said timidly and theatrically, "Count, God is over us..." Vereshchagin raised his head, and the thick veins in his thin neck filled again. Blood, his face turned red and turned white.He didn't finish what he had to say. "Behead him! I order! . . . " Rastopkhin suddenly turned pale like Vereshchagin, and shouted. "Draw your sword!" the officer ordered the dragoons, and drew his sword himself. A still stronger wave rolled through the crowd, rolling all the way to the front rows, pushing the crowded crowd to the steps.The tall man, with an expressionless face, stood beside Vereschagin with one hand raised.

"Cut!" the officer ordered the dragoons almost in a whisper.Then a soldier suddenly showed a maddened face, and slashed at Wei Liexiajin's head with the back of his knife. "Oh!" Vereschagin yelled in short surprise, looking back in horror, as if he didn't understand why he was being treated like this.There was also this exclamation of surprise and fear from the crowd. "Oh, Lord!" Someone let out a scream. But after Wei Liexiajin screamed, he screamed again because of the pain, and this scream was about to kill him.The floodgates of favor that controlled the crowd, already under extreme pressure, were suddenly thrown open.Once the crime begins, it must be carried through to the end.The blaming complaint was drowned out by the ferocious and angry roar of the crowd.The irresistible wave that rose from the back row, like a seventh wave that can break a ship, hit the front row, knocked them down, and swept everything.The dragoon who moved the knife wanted to cut again.Wei Liexiajin uttered a horrified cry, put his head in his hands and ran towards the crowd.The tall man was impacted by Vereshagin, grabbed Vereshagin's thin neck with both hands, uttered a wild cry, and fell together with him at the feet of the roaring and surging crowd. Some beat Wei Liexiajin, some beat the tall man.The screams of the downtrodden and the cries of those trying to save the tall ones only enraged the crowd more.For a long time the dragoons were unable to free the bloody and half-beaten workman.Although the crowd was eager to finish what had begun, they beat, pinched, and tore Vereshchagin, but they could not kill him, because the crowd was coming from all sides.Take them as the center, swarm over, swarm over, so that they can neither kill him nor leave him behind. "With an axe? ... Trampled him to death ... Traitor, he betrayed Christ! ... Alive ... Not dead ... A thief deserves what he deserves. Beat him with a club! ... Is he still alive?" The crowd hurried away from the bloody corpse until the victim stopped struggling and the cries turned into a uniform and slender gasp.Everyone came to see what had been done, and pushed back with horror, reproach, and surprise. "Oh, Lord! People have turned into beasts, how can he survive!" The crowd sighed, "Such a young man... he must belong to a merchant's family, what a person has become Yes!... They say, not the man... How not the man... Oh Lord!... It is said that they beat another man and nearly killed him... Oh, man... who is not afraid of sin Ah..." said the same men, looking with pity at the corpse with its livid face covered in blood and mud and its elongated neck broken. The industrious police officer thought a dead body in the commandant's yard unsightly, and ordered the dragoons to drag the body into the street.Two dragoons grabbed the mangled legs and dragged the body into the street.The bloody yin-yang head and slender neck of the dead man, covered in dust, were dragged around on the ground.The crowd huddled away from the body. When Vereschagin fell, and the crowd screamed and crowded around him, Rastopkhin suddenly turned pale, and instead of going to the back door where a carriage was waiting for him, he bowed his head and walked quickly along the Walking down the corridor of the room downstairs, I don't know where to go or what to do.The count was pale, and his chin trembled like a malaria. "My lord, go here...where are you going?...go here." Someone behind him trembled in fear.Count Rastopching had no strength to answer, turned around obediently, and walked in the direction pointed out to him.A carriage was parked outside the back door.Here, too, the roar of the crowd could be heard in the distance.Count Rastopchin hurried into the carriage and told the coachman to go to his dacha in the suburbs of Sokolniki.When the carriage reached Butcher Street, and the crowd could no longer be heard, the count began to confess.Now, sullenly, he remembered the excitement and terror he had shown in front of his subordinates. "The crowd is terrible, the crowd is disgusting," he said to himself in French, "they are like a pack of wolves, and nothing can satisfy them but meat." "Count! God is over us!" He suddenly thought of Veresher. An unpleasant shiver ran down his spine at Kim's words.But this feeling was only for a moment, and Count Rastopching laughed at himself contemptuously. "I have other responsibilities," he thought, "that the wishes of the people must be fulfilled. Many have been sacrificed to the common good, and many more will be sacrificed." Then he thought of his social responsibilities: to the family, to the The ancient capital was defended for him, for himself—not as Count Rastopchin (who he thought was sacrificing himself for the well-being of the masses), but as commander of the Moscow garrison, as representative of the government and of the tsar. "If I were only Count Rastopching, I would act completely differently, but I have a duty to protect the life and dignity of the garrison commander." Rastopchin swayed slightly on the soft spring carriage, he no longer heard the terrifying voices of the crowd, his body calmed down, and as his body calmed down, his mind also came up with reasons for his mental calmness as usual .What calmed Rastopching was not a new idea.Ever since the world came into existence and human beings began to kill each other, no one has comforted himself with the idea of ​​committing crimes of the same kind: assuming that he is working for the happiness of others and the general public. A man who is free from desires never knows this happiness; but a criminal must know what it is.And Rastopchen knew this now. Not only did he feel no guilt for his actions, but he also flattered that he had exploited his opportunities so skillfully; punishing criminals and placating the populace. "Vereschagin is condemned to death," thought Rastopch (in fact Vereschagin was only sentenced to hard labor by the Senate), "he is a traitor, a traitor; I must punish him, and kill two birds with one stone: I will give a victim to the people vented their anger and executed a mob." The count came to the suburban villa, took care of the housework, and felt completely at peace. Half an hour later the count drove through the Sokolniki fields in a fast carriage.He stopped thinking about what happened just now, and only thought about the future.He is now going to the Yauza Bridge, where Kutuzov is said to be.Count Rastopchin was thinking of the angry and bitter reproach he had to make against Kutuzov for deceiving him.He wanted to make the old fox of the court feel that all the responsibility for the fall of the old capital and the demise of Russia lay on his fatuous and old head.Rastopchin angrily turned around on the carriage, looked viciously at the fields on both sides, and considered what he was going to say. The Sokolniki fields were deserted.Only at the end of it, next to nursing homes and madhouses, are groups of people in white clothes.A few more of these singles were walking across the field, waving their arms and yelling. One of them stopped Count Rastopching's carriage.Count Rastopching himself, his coachman, and the dragoons all watched the released madmen, especially the one running towards them, with a mixture of horror and curiosity. The lunatic in a loose nightgown, with his long, slender legs, came running hastily, fixed his eyes on Rastopchin, shouted hoarsely at him, and beckoned him to stop.The lunatic had a thin, yellow face, melancholy and solemn, and a large ragged beard.His dark and bright pupils turned in panic in the yellowish whites of his eyes. "Stop! Stop! I say!" he screamed, screaming out of breath, and gesturing at the same time. He caught up with the carriage and ran beside it. "Three times they killed me and three times I resurrected. They stoned me and crucified me... I will rise... I will rise... I will rise. They will tear my body apart. They will overthrow the kingdom of heaven... I will overthrow three times and rebuild three times!" he cried, his voice growing louder.Count Rastopchen turned pale immediately, just like the crowd rushed towards Vereschagin just now.He turned away. "Quick... go!" he shouted to the coachman in a trembling voice. The carriage moved forward at full speed, but Earl Rastopching still heard the frantic screams that gradually disappeared, and before his eyes appeared the terrified bloody face of the traitor in the leather coat. Although this memory was still very fresh, Rastopuchin felt that it was deeply engraved in his heart, and it made his heart bleed.Now he clearly felt that the bloody wound of this memory would never heal, on the contrary, it would remain in his heart until the end of his life, and the longer it was, the more painful it was, the more painful it was.Now he seems to have heard what he himself said: "Behead him, and you will take your head to account for me!" He thought: "Why should I say such a thing! How inappropriate it is... I could have said nothing, this way Nothing will happen." He saw the frightened and then suddenly cruel face of the dragoon who drew the knife, and the timid and silent reproachful eyes of the young man in the fox fur coat... "But what I did was not For my own sake. I have to do it. The common people, the thugs... the happiness of the masses!" he thought. The army was still huddled next to the Yauza Bridge.Hot weather.Kutuzov frowned, and sat listlessly on a bench by the bridge, gesturing in the sand with his whip.At this moment a carriage rumbled towards him.A man in a general's uniform and a plumed cap, with eyes that seemed to be rolling with anger and fear, came up to Kutuzov and spoke to him in French.It was Count Rastopching.He told Kutuzov that he had come here because the ancient capital of Moscow no longer existed and only an army remained. "If your Commander hadn't told me that you wouldn't give up Moscow without a fight, that would be another matter, and all this wouldn't have happened!" he said. Kutuzov looked at Rastopchin, as though he did not understand what he was saying, and tried to read a peculiar expression on the speaker's face.Rastopuqing shut up in embarrassment.Kutuzov shook his head slightly, fixed his examining eyes on Rastopkhin, and said in a low voice: "Yes, I will not give up Moscow without a fight." When Kutuzov said this, perhaps he was thinking of something else entirely, or he said it knowingly that it was meaningless, but Count Rastopchin made no reply and hurried away from Kutuzov. husband.Strange to say!The commander of the Moscow garrison, the arrogant Count Rastopchin, went to the bridge with a whip in his hand and shouted loudly to disperse the vehicles blocking the way.