The Tsar was on a level with Rostov, and he stood still there. Alexander’s face was even handsomer than it had been at the review three days before. It beamed with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youthfulness, that suggested the playfulness of a boy of fourteen, and yet it was still the face of the majestic Emperor. Glancing casually along the squadron, the Tsar’s eyes met the eyes of Rostov, and for not more than two seconds rested on them. Whether it was that the Tsar saw what was passing in Rostov’s soul （it seemed to Rostov that he saw everything）, any way he looked for two seconds with his blue eyes into Rostov’s face. （A soft, mild radiance beamed from them.） Then all at once he raised his eyebrows, struck his left foot sharply against his horse, and galloped on.
The young Emperor could not restrain his desire to be present at the battle, and in spite of the expostulations of his courtiers, at twelve o’clock, escaping from the third column which he had been following, he galloped to the vanguard. Before he reached the hussars, several adjutants met him with news of the successful issue of the engagement.
The action, which had simply consisted in the capture of a squadron of the French, was magnified into a brilliant victory over the enemy, and so the Tsar and the whole army believed, especially while the smoke still hung over the field of battle, that the French had been defeated, and had been forced to retreat against their will. A few minutes after the Tsar had galloped on, the division of the Pavlograd hussars received orders to move forward. In Vishau itself, a little German town, Rostov saw the Tsar once more. In the market-place of the town where there had been rather a heavy firing before the Tsar’s arrival, lay several dead and wounded soldiers, whom there had not been time to pick up. The Tsar, surrounded by his suite of officers and courtiers, was mounted on a different horse from the one he had ridden at the review, a chestnut English thoroughbred. Bending on one side with a graceful gesture, holding a gold field-glass to his eyes, he was looking at a soldier lying on his face with a blood-stained and uncovered head. The wounded soldier was an object so impure, so grim, and so revolting, that Rostov was shocked at his being near the Emperor. Rostov saw how the Tsar’s stooping shoulders shuddered, as though a cold shiver had passed over them, how his left foot convulsively pressed the spur into the horse’s side, and how the trained horse looked round indifferently and did not stir. An adjutant dismounting lifted the soldier up under his arms, and began laying him on a stretcher that came up. The soldier groaned.
“Gently, gently, can’t you do it more gently？” said the Tsar, apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.
Rostov saw the tears in the Tsar’s eyes, and heard him say in French to Tchartorizhsky, as he rode off： “What an awful thing war is, what an awful thing！”
The forces of the vanguard were posted before Vishau in sight of the enemy’s line, which had been all day retreating before us at the slightest exchange of shots. The Tsar’s thanks were conveyed to the vanguard, rewards were promised, and a double allowance of vodka was served out to the men. Even more gaily than on the previous night the bivouac fires crackled, and the soldiers sang their songs. Denisov on that night celebrated his promotion to major, and, towards the end of the carousal, after a good deal of drinking, Rostov proposed a toast to the health of the Emperor, but “not our Sovereign the Emperor, as they say at official dinners,” said he, “but to the health of the Emperor, the good, enchanting, great man, let us drink to his health, and to a decisive victory over the French！”
“If we fought before,” said he, “and would not yield an inch before the French, as at Sch？ngraben, what will it be now when he is at our head？ We will all die, we will gladly die for him. Eh, gentlemen？ Perhaps I’m not saying it right. I’ve drunk a good deal, but that’s how I feel, and you do too. To the health of Alexander the First！ Hurrah！”
“Hurrah！” rang out the cheery voices of the officers. And the old captain Kirsten shouted no less heartily and sincerely than Rostov, the boy of twenty.
When the officers had drunk the toast and smashed their glasses, Kirsten filled some fresh ones, and in his shirt-sleeves and riding-breeches went out to the soldiers’ camp-fires, glass in hand, and waving his hand in the air stood in a majestic pose, with his long grey whiskers and his white chest visible through the open shirt in the light of the camp-fire.
“Lads, to the health of our Sovereign the Emperor, to victory over our enemies, hurrah！” he roared in his stalwart old soldier’s baritone. The hussars thronged about him and responded by a loud shout in unison.
Late at night, when they had all separated, Denisov clapped his short hand on the shoulder of his favourite Rostov. “To be sure he’d no one to fall in love with in the field, so he’s fallen in love with the Tsar,” he said.
“Denisov, don’t joke about that,” cried Rostov, “it’s such a lofty, such a sublime feeling, so…”
“I believe you, I believe you, my dear, and I share the feeling and approve…”
“No, you don’t understand！” And Rostov got up and went out to wander about among the camp-fires, dreaming of what happiness it would be to die—not saving the Emperor’s life—（of that he did not even dare to dream）, but simply to die before the Emperor’s eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms and the hope of coming victory. And he was not the only man who felt thus in those memorable days that preceded the battle of Austerlitz： nine-tenths of the men in the Russian army were at that moment in love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms.
